During the WSOP, I took a shot one night at playing 25/50 NL at the Bellagio. The game looked decent, the stacks were fairly small and I wanted to see if I could make something happen.

I sat with $5000 and had run that up to about $8000 in an hour while getting smacked upside the head with the deck. Every hand I showed down was a premium hand. I played aggressively but was never out of line. I hadn't been caught bluffing yet because I hadn't had to bluff yet, I was just a card rack.

MP2 had just sat down to the table 2 orbits earlier. He saw me show down 3 hands, all winners. He appeared to be solid, but I had no reads from his hands to confirm this.

25/50 NL @ Bellagio, 8 Handed

Me: UTG+1 ($8,000)
MP2: ($17,000)

I pick up A A and open the pot for $175, which was the standard opening raise. MP2 reraises me to $500 total. Action folds back to me and I smooth call.

Flop: $1075 (2 Players)

Q 7 2

I check and he checks behind.

Turn: $1075 (2 Players)

4

I check, he bets $700 and I call with a slight hesitation.

River: $2475 (2 Players)

9

I check, he thinks for a few moments then bets $1700 which I call quickly.

He tables K K and I win the pot.

My intent preflop was to trap him, obviously. I felt he had a big pair, most likely KK or QQ with AK a distant 3rd choice. I figured that any low flop would be bad for him and I could get a decent pot built, maybe even a double though. While this looks like a good flop for my hand, I am not happy. I now feel that there's a roughly 50% chance that he's outflopped me with a set of queens. This feeling is not helped when he checks behind on the flop. The turn card falls and I see no reason to declare my hand now. If he has KK, he will bet the hand for me. If he has QQ the same thing will happen. If I lead out now, he might raise with either hand and I will have a very tough decision. The same thinking takes place on the river. If he has either hand, he is going to value bet it, so I see no reason to bet myself.

I probably extracted maximum value on the hand as it was played while never giving him a chance to move me off of my hand. If I retook the lead at any point, he would have likely folded or come over the top of me, likely forcing me to fold my hand. It may seem overly passive to play AA in a manner like this, but as the hand played out, it was very apparent that he could easily have me beaten and each one of his actions reinforced that feeling, from the flop check to the value bets on the turn and river. I knew that he would have to bet the hand on the turn and river, so there was no sense in me doing it. By allowing him to bet the hand, I allowed myself to lose the minimum, or in this case, win the maximum.

Certainly when I read this hand, I felt like you were dead on the flop. It felt like QQ to me.

I think you played the hand perfectly post-flop. By slow-playing preflop, you forced yourself into a check-call situation. If you raise, he's certainly coming back at you with KK and I don't think you can call. You gave him no opportunity to push you out of the hand.

What is the highest X-7-2 board you'd raise with?

Also, where on earth are you playing a game where the board doesn't come down K-Q-J of diamonds when you trap here?

No doubt. Every time I try to get fancy with AA, I get screwed.

Even as this hand played out, I'm always worried about the set so I probably would have tried to take it at the turn with a check raise. Granted, I only play tournament poker though.....at much lower stakes.

I've been burned too many times trying to get fancy.

The thing is, if I check-raise, he has to put me on a hand he can beat. The way that hand played out, if I CR'd him, he couldn't beat AA and he couldn't beat QQ, which were my 2 most likely holdings. If he thought he could move me off of the AA by coming back at me, he'd reraise, if not, he folds.

If the board was J72, I would have CR'd him. I really didn't think he'd reraise me preflop with JJ or worse. Also, if that's the case and he has KK, now he's beating QQ, which is a hand I might have played in such a manner.

He was angry with himself for betting the river, saying that he had a feeling he was in bad shape. I think it's almost impossible not to value bet KK there. That's why I felt safe knowing that the hand would get bet, whether I was ahead or behind.

I was calling with AQ, I might have even been stubborn with a hand like JJ, putting him on AK because of his flop check, but probably not..

there a couple of keys to this hand. the first is smooth-calling the 3-bet preflop. this only makes sense if you think he'll fold if you reraise. do you have any indication he's a good enough player to lay down KK/QQ here if you reraise to, say, $1800?

secondly, there's the fact that you're out of position. this should lead you against slow-playing, because being out of position post-flop will cost you value when you're ahead and cost you more when you're behind. thus you should try to get as much money in when you know your hand is best, so that he can't give you tricky decisions later on. That the stacks are quite deep (~160BBs) makes the post-flop positional advantage even greater.

thirdly, there's his 3-betting range. Is he only ever 3-betting here with QQ/KK/AA/AK? Some aggressive players might do this with 1010 or 99 when stacks are this deep, in order to knock out players behind them and ensure they have position. but it sounds like our read isn't that clear here, so we should probably give him credit for at least JJ+, AK.

the problem is that the only one of those hands you're likely to win any significant money from post-flop is KK. because you opened from early position and you've been showing down good hands, he has to give you credit for a real hand. If he holds QQ, he has to be very worried about KK or AA, which means he probably won't pay you off significantly post-flop unless he flops a set. If he has JJ or worse this is even more true. If he holds AK he has to flop top pair to pay you off, and that's not happening very often since you have two of his outs. And if a K comes off you'll have to be worried he has a set, so you won't get full value then either.

thus, i prefer reraising. if you reraise to $1700, he has to call $1200, with $2200 in the pot and 6300 behind. That's giving 8500/1200, or 7:1, which is almost just right for him to call. why offer him these odds? because often he'll pay you off even when he doesnt flop a set, making his call a mistake. sometimes with KK he'll push preflop, sometimes he'll smooth-call. with the pot already taht large, you can pay off a set on the flop as long as it doesnt come down KQJ because he's paying you off often enough to make playing the flop aggressively worthwhile.

(1) I can't believe villian checked flop with KK
(2) Do you realize by getting cute here you cost yourself a double up?
(3) I'm ok with changing gears with AA now and again but I like to get paid and you played this way too soft IMO

1. It is an excellent check with KK. I could easily have QQ here and if I don't, he's selling his hand as a lot weaker than it is, which might induce me to bluff. He's not worried about being drawn out on, since the most outs I could probably have here is 5, if I had AQ. His check is deceptive and it controls the pot size a little bit in case he's behind.

2. If I reraise preflop, he very well might laydown the kings to me. Certainly once that flop comes, he can no longer beat any hands in my range and I will likely not get paid anymore.

3. I got paid almost $3000 with a 1 pair hand that went to showdown. That's a pretty decent hand. There might have been a little more value in the hand, but it's not as much as people are saying there is.

You are correct about the second point, but you're focusing too much on this specific hand. If the villain had AK here, our hero made himself 2400 he wouldn't have made by playing more aggressively. I'm assuming that Slick doesn't play his hand the same way every time and if put in this exact same situation, he might choose to play it faster.

Is the only reason though because there was no straight, flush, or boat possibility? Nobody had a reason to rush the hand. To me, this would be one of the very few times you can do what you did.

this is just wrong. there's no way he fires the bullet on the river with AK. maybe he bets the flop with AK, but once we call a flop bet, with no draws out there, and our original EP raise, he's not going to bluff again.

You assume too much here. At that limit, players are very capable of firing 3 bullets with nothing, especially when they are shown weakness, which I was definitely showing by checking 3 times in a row.

this is correct in that you are lucky the board came so dry. if instead of Q-7-2, the board came Q-10-9 with two suits, things get a whole lot trickier and there is a much greater chance you lay down the best hand at some point, or that KK doesn't value bet twice, or that you get outdrawn. given the way you played the hand, you ended up with pretty much the only situation you could make any money: against KK, on a very dry board. given that, when you smooth-call preflop, you don't know that the board will be dry, i think it's the wrong play.

but you look trapping as much as you look weak. raise from EP, call 3-bet, call flop bet OOP on a dry board (if he bet the flop with AK?) who does that if he can't beat ace-high? sure, players at this limit are capable of firing three barrells when doing so is a reaonsable play. this isn't one of those times.

This is the only hand that we have to work with. If the board had come out differently, the action would have gone differently. As it was, we were able to tiptoe our way to the showdown without being worried about draws that were present. If the flop was 223, he might have bet the flop, I'd check raise, he'd come over the top and I'd go all in. Smooth calling with AA (both in position and OOP) is more common than you'd think at the limits 10/20 and 25/50NL and above. If you feel that you have a good idea on what the other person is holding, you know how dangerous flops are or are not.

In this hand, I was confident that I was in a dominating position preflop, so I threw him a little rope. The flop, coupled with him checking behind got me very worried about my hand and caused the action to follow as it did.

Sometimes, the flop comes down something like 357 with 2 hearts and I check raise all in. The only reason that the hand played out as it did without me making a bet aside from my opening preflop raise is because of the non-threatening board and the action on each street.

Villain didn't fire a flop bet, though. He checked the flop.

I will disagree with you completely. There's almost no scenario where AK doesn't fire at this river, especially after checking that flop. The way the OP played this hand, I would think I could get him off his hand with AK.

When I check the river, it no longer looks like I'm trapping, it just looks weak. I knew he was strong and I knew he'd bet.

this is results-oriented thinking. sure, you got paid, but only because a bunch of factors happened to line up perfectly. there was no reason to think that would be the case. and anyway, playing it differently might have got you paid even more.

Playing it differently gets him a lot less when villain has AK and loses a lot more when villain has QQ. I think it's fair to say that the villain was on one of those three hands. Acid even said it was 50-50 after the flop that he was up against QQ or KK.

this is besides the point. the previous action would have been different if had had AK in that he's much more likely to bet the flop because his hand has little showdown value. and, anyway, he was value-betting, not bluffing, hoping you'd make a crying call with AQ or JJ or something. a bet with AK would be a pure bluff.

It's results-oriented to be commenting on how the flop came down and how I managed the pot. If a different flop comes down, I stack him. If a different flop comes down, he stacks me. if a different flop comesdown, neither of us do any betting becuase we're both worried the other has outdrawn us.

The fact of the matter is that I knew where I was at in the hand and I made the plays which I thought would result in me making the most money on the hand. With that board, if I check raised at any point, he knows that he can't be winning becuase I either have AA or QQ and he folds.

I can't help what flop comes out. It's a trap play, smooth calling with AA. Whether you're in position or not, it's a risk that you're taking in hopes of making a bigger profit on the hand. This hand was a weird case where I chose not to bet it at any point and I let the Villain do it for me.

We've touched on this a bit during this thread.

If you do raise on the turn and he sticks it, do you fold?

I think if you change the results so that he's holding QQ or AK, everyone compliments you for losing/winning the most. It just so happened that he had the one hand where you might've stacked him.

A bluff does not have to be a big bet. Read my other post titled "Bluffing the River" A bluff is a bet without a winning hand designed to get the winning hand to fold. If he thought that I had AQ or JJ and could move me off of it, those are the PERFECT bets to make becuase they look like he wants a call, which is what it should look like. The thinking could have very easily gone like this post flop for the Villain.

Flop: Wow, I totally whiffed on that flop. I don't want to risk getting CR'd. There are no draws, so I'll just check and take a free card.
Turn: Still nothing, but he's not betting either. Maybe I should take a stab at this, after all, if I had a big pair or a set, I'd definitely slowplay that flop.
River: Ok, so I got nothing, but he's still checking. He must not be that strong becuase if he had a big pair or a set, he wouldn't risk me checking behind him. He probably has like JJ or AQ or something and is trying ot get out of here cheaply. If I bet $1700, I'm definitely repping a big hand and I think he'll fold his one pair hand.

I actually like the play. As I said, it's way out of my league to play at these levels.

The one thing I don't get though is the river bet. We are losing to 1 hand here, assuming that villain wouldn't have raised with 22, 44, 77, or 99 or any combination to make 2 pair. So that leaves us with only QQ to worry about. With the texture of the board, do we not re-raise the river here, or is this standard at these limits? I would want to either shove here, or at worst re-raise (which would probably induce his shove).

Or are you so deep that you just aren't sure anymore so you take what you can get?

If I check raise the turn and he sticks it, I'm gonna be a little sick with myself. I think that it would depend on how he's acting after he raised. After all, if he has QQ, he's got the mortal nuts and isn't worried about a thing. If he looks nervous at all, he's gonna get called. I guess I'm just glad I didn't have to make that decision.

If I change the results, then yeah, I get all kinds of praise or whatever, but I don't care. This hand took place months ago and is all done. I'm just trying to give people stuff to think about and to discuss. At least this one seems to be sparking some debate.

nh

I play it the same against a competent opponent, which is probably bad news for you. I think you gain and lose the optimal amount against his likely range by playing AA hand like this on such a board. Both of you played it well IMO. I don't think villain should be mad at himself for betting the river; overall it's +EV.

I think our analysis might be a bit different on this one if you don't include the results in the OP, so I'd like to ask you to keep them out next time, but like I said in a previous post, please oh please keep them coming. These high limit NL hands are fascinating, and definitely something I'd love to see a lot more of, in all forms of poker, at FCP.

Cheers.

- Zach

Yeah, I was only trying to point out that a raise is only valuable against one-third of the possible holdings for our villain.

It's a good point, but think about the action on the hand.

Let's say I do decide to check raise the river. The two options are he has me beaten (and yes, I'm worried about ONLY QQ here) and he reraises, at which point I've already put in 60-70% of my chips and I get stacked because I'm pretty well committed and I can't fold just in case he's capable of doing it with KK.

Let's say that he does have KK and I raise the river. That's pretty easy for him to figure out and get away from, don't you think? I've appeared cautious the whole hand. If I had AQ or some other hand which I thought was good, wouldn't I just call? If I'm raising, then I must have been up to something all along, which probably means that I have the QQ and he's been dead from the flop on.

The end result is that if I raise on the river, and I am beat, I'm almost certainly committing myself to getting stacked and losing $5000 that I didn't need to lose. If I raise and he doesn't have me beat, he probably figures things out really quickly and folds. There's nothing to win on the river, but $5000 to lose, so that's why I didn't raise.

I appreciate the compliments and that you're enjoying the past hands that I have played. I know that the norm for this forum is not to post results so that people can comment on what they WOULD do in the hand.

I am posting more as a post-hand analysis thing that I do all of the time. It's important to see how the hand played out from start to finish, as well as what the villain held. That way you are able to reconstruct the hand, as well as the villain's thinking and your own and see if they were in line and if they made sense.

I guess that what I'm getting at is that I want these hands used to analyze what happened and analyze the decisions on all streets. I think ti's helpful to know what the villain turned over. Was it in my range of hands that I assigned him? Was I way off? Did he represent the actual hand that he had? What things did he do in the hand to throw us off of his trail?

All of these are important things to analyze and they are things that you can only analyze when you know the whole story. I'll try to keep posting these, but they're gonna include an ending as well. I like the discussion that goes on better than people trying to say what they would do when faced with that river bet, or criticizing my choice to flat call preflop. You can criticize after, but it's important to understand that there were very distinct reasons that I did the things that I did. Now that you see the decisions, do you agree with them? Why or why not?

That's the kind of discussion I'm trying to spark.

If you post the results, you'll get a biased answer. I personally like the discussions that detail the hands one street at a time, but this was a good discussion.

Yeah, I understand what you are trying to do, and again, I appreciate it, however, whether we like to believe it or not, it really does bias the discussion. I won't get on you any more about it though. If you choose to post the villain's hand in future posts, that's fine. You certainly are smart enough to know when it is or isn't warranted.

- Zach

I agree that people will be biased. I think that they should also try and learn to say "well, what if he didn't have that hand" and still critique the play.

Naismith had the right idea. He said that the only reason that people are critical of my play in the hand is becuase the villain turned over the one hand that he might have paid me more with. That's true.

That also doesn't mean that I made mistakes in the hand. It's good if people can start to open their eyes to that a little bit. I'll make some posts in the future that are a little more open ended. I just want to see if people can read the results and comment intelligently anyway.

Sounds good to me.

considering the pf line we took...this is really the 'best' line to take.

unless he was a lag..id narrow his range to KK/QQ and AK...so a Qxx flop while not necc. bad..i wouldn't just fling my stack into the pot. The flop check obviously means he is scared of us having QQ, but we don't know he has KK himself.

Personally, I might lead the turn, but I think for pot control and all that, and then of course not wanting to be outplayed...check/calling is fine.

- Jordan

I hear people saying this all the time, and I just don't see the sense in checking the flopped nuts. I never, repeat, NEVER give a free card in this situation.

You missed your chance to double up. If it's me, I re-raise preflop and villain probably can't resist pushing back. Then you go all in, define your hand and he either folds or pays you off.

But if you're out of your bankroll, it gets scary.

look, you're a much more successful player than i am, and play at limits far beyond anything i've ever played at. that said, i still feel that smooth-calling to trap here is a mistake most of the time.

when you have aces, you raise, and you get reraised, and you're out of position, trapping is not your goal. stacking him is your goal. the ONLY reason to smooth-call is if you think he can fold kings preflop. even if he doesn't have kings, you should act as if he does. why? because your goal is to win as big a pot as possible. since kings is a likely holding, you should play in order to maximize your win agianst that hand, because that win will be significantly larger than your win against any other hand he might hold. see my reasoning in an earlier post for why he won't pay off very much with QQ or AK no matter what happens. assuming he has KK and trying to stack him is much, much better than thinking he might have AK and bluff off a bet or two.

this is the same reasoning for betting hte flop when you hit a set - you're trying to build a big pot while holding the best hand.

notice also that he doesn't have to call every time you raise for this to still to be the most profitable play. because every time you raise, and he calls or pushes, you'll almost certainly stack him, the payoff is so much larger that you can afford to win it a little less frequently. even if he'll fold half the time to your reraise of $1700 (and considering his range, he's probably not folding that often), you'll stack him the other half, which has an approximate EV of ~.8*.5*8000+.5*2200=+$4300. it's harder to estimate the EV of just calling because there are more variables involved, but i would expect it's less than that. smooth-calling reeks of fancy-play syndrome. sometimes poker is as simple as sticking your money in with the best hand.

Trapping is not a goal, it's a tool. In this case, I believed that I could lure more chips, or all of them, into the pot by taking this line. I don't do it every time, it's called varying your play. Give it a try.

My goal in the hand was not to get him to bluff at me. I read him for a VERY strong hand preflop, as I said in the OP, most likely KK or QQ, with AK a much lesser possibility. I feel that you have not read my post or don't understand the reason that I slowed down so much post flop and chose to take such an odd line. Your assertion that I should "assume he has KK and try to stack him instead of getting him to bluff with AK" is ridiculous. I never once thought that he had AK in the hand after it played out as it did. I read him for strength and I acted accordingly.

I wasn't really "out of my bankroll " per se, but I was taking a shot at a higher limit. I was fully aware that I could easily lose my buyin, but I was not afraid to put my chips in the pot, don't make that mistake.

IF he had flopped a set of queens on that board, there is virtually no harm in checking. The only way I'm even drawing live without runner runner is if I have AA or KK. If there's ever a board to check top set on to set a little trap, that would be the board.

If you check how does that help you, apart from giving you the chance of a free card and hitting your set. You cant know for sure he didn't re-raise with AK AQs. I realize that this is quite a high limit, but people are still capable of making slightly sub-standard plays.

If he raised with AQ and decided to check behind you on every street thats a lot of missed value bets. He may also be suspicious of a player calling such a large raise pre-flop and not betting.

If he pushes on the river do you still call? He may be playing super cute with his set waiting for you to make a move,Then push on the river trying to represent a bluff, especially if he senses your strength.

Did you consider re-raising pre-flop?, maybe it would help to define his hand more. Although it also defines your hand as well, at least it would of made it less likely he was holding Queens. Who knows he may of put you all-in

I didn't call a large raise preflop. His reraise was a very small one, which led me to believe he had a big hand, definitely not AQ. My flat call of the raise would have come with any 2 cards that I chose to raise with, whether it was 22 or 78 suited.

I don't know if I call if he pushes the river.

I already said the reasons why I chose not to reraise preflop. I dind't feel the need to define his hand anymore since I thought I knew almost exactly what he held. Since I was pretty sure where he was at, I didn't want to let him know where I was at.

If I reraised preflop he is folding QQ about 90% of the time in my estimation. I am not sure how he'd play KK if I reraised preflop.

I'd like to think about what the distribution of his range looks like here.

Suppose he puts in the second raise here if and only if he has QQ, KK, AA or AK.

Combinations that make those hands:
AA: 2 choose 2 = 1 (5%)
QQ: 4 choose 2 = 6 (29%)
KK: 4 choose 2 = 6 (29%)
AK: (2 choose 1)(4 choose 1) = 2 x 4 = 8 (38%)

The total # of combinations is 21, so I divide by 21 to get the percentage.

Wow, that's just . . . completely unhelpful. He might have a pair. He might not. Maybe math has something to tell us about his distribution after the flop.

P(opponent has QQ) = 1/21 = 0.2857
P(flop contains a Q) = 1 - (46/50)(45/49)(44/48) = 0.2255
P(flop contains a Q | opponent has QQ) = 1 - (46/48)(45/47)(44/46) = 0.1223

Bayes theorem in general:
P(A|B) = P(B|A) x P(A) / P(B)

Substitute for A = opponent has QQ and B = flop contains a queen.

P(opponent has QQ | flop contains a Q) = P(flop contains a queen | opponent has QQ) x P(opponent has QQ) / P(flop contains a queen)
= (0.1223)(0.2857)/(0.2255)
= 0.1549

I suppose that makes sense. He's about half as likely to have QQ if we know one of the queens isn't in his hand.

(3 choose 2) / (4 choose 2 ) = 3/6 = 1/2

Should we check-raise the river? He's roughly twice as likely to have KK as QQ. Our action makes no difference if he has AK. We might occasionally get a fold on the rare occasion we face AA.

Does it change your analysis if I said that I'm about 95% certain that he wouldn't even have called a min raise on the river since he actaully took his time before betting on the river and admittedly the only thing he was thinking about was not how much to bet, but whether or not he needed to check behind me?

If you minraise you're giving him almost 4.5:1. I think I'd pay you off if were the villain in that situation. (In reality, I would've reraised preflop with AA and then gone for a change of underwear on the flop. I'm imagining this is 0.25/0.50 .)

Suppose he never bluffs and you fold to a re-raise:

EV = bet[(2/3)(chance he calls with KK) - (1/3)]

Break-even at EV = 0
0 = (2/3)(chance he calls with KK) - 1/3
(1/3)/(2/3) = chance he calls with KK
1/2 = chance he calls with KK

So if you really think there's a 95% chance he'll fold, then a bet here is clearly negative EV. It does give us an idea of how to play JJ though.

I saw him seriously thinking about it on the river. I thought I'd misread his hand becuase it looked like he was conflicted on whether or not to bet the river. He said he just couldn't imagine me checking AA or QQ 3 times there. He definitely would not have called a raise.

Do you ever limp into this pot? Considering your position I like that play maybe a little bit more than open-raising. If someone raises, we can either continue the trap, or re-raise (which I lean towards). Obv. we can't know MP2 is gonna wake up w/ KK, but if he does then we're gonna get paid off on this hand. Esp. considering that you said you've been running hot and tabling only winners. You said opponent may lay down KK, but given all the facts, I don't think there's any chance in hell he lays that down against you.

As played I know we only have one pair, but the board is EXTREMELY DRY and I'm just not convinced we got all the value we could from our AA. I've never sat at a game that high (not even close), so take my opinion for what it's worth... I just feel like given the pre-flop action exactly 1 hand has us beat, and we're pretty much burying everything else. I would like to see a raise on one of the later streets. Besides QQ, what hand are we afraid of here?

I considered limping, but chose the more straight forward play. I hadn't been limping into pots, so I didn't want to start now.

If you read all of the posts, you will see that I commented several times that the villain almost didn't bet the river becuase he was worried he was beaten. He looked confident when he bet the turn, but on the river, he pondered for quite a while before betting. The reason the river was not raised was becuase his apprehension to bet was either A: An act because of his hand strength, hoping to get called or B: real doubt about whether or not he should put more chips in the pot. If it's either A or B, then raising has no value.

I like raising to better define villain's hand.

It just HAPPENED to work out that the flop was dry.

That's a luxury that's not provided on every flop.

In the end, the villain wagered $1,700 that he had the best hand on the river. He makes this wager only if he thinks he's ahead more than half of the time. Putting myself in his shoes, I'd be concerned about reopening the betting. I think the hesitation indicates that he's working through what he'd do against a raise here. I think that's evidence that he's giving careful consideration to the possibility of calling that raise.

While we're bumping old threads, the villain in this hand is actually FoxwoodsFiend but I didn't know it at the time.

And lol at me commenting on cash hands.