I had 90 minutes to kill before heading to the airport after a day's business in Brisbane. I headed to the casino where they had about 8 tables, I think - 5 were active. The lowest limit was a NL100-NL250 BI with 2.50/5.00 blinds.
My table seemed to be full of regulars and a few poker-savvy backpacker types. I bought in for the minimum as I wouldn't have time to get a read and didn't want pushed off a good marginal hand for a 250 stack. 100, I'll coin flip (worst case) for stacks.
I ended up the session +$36 with relative ease. Had great p/f hands but missed all flops. Stole blinds once, c-bet once, folded all others. The other interesting hand, I'd like comments on.
The 4 players to my left were all LAG. 4 to my right were a mix of TAG and T/P. 20 hands into the session I was dealt AA. UTG limped for $5, I knew that I'd be raised, so I limped. Next player had just sat down and min-raised. one caller, BB called, UTG called so there is $45 in the pot and I have $95 more in front of me. Everyone has me covered.
What would you do?
5 years ago
3 comments:
Limp-reraise screams aces, but if you just win the $45 there you've done ok.
You're at least a 4-1 favourite against any hand that is likely to call you. You need to raise at least enough so a caller doesn't have implied odds against you (140 against the amount of your raise). You would also prefer at most one or two callers. I go for around a $40 raise, intending to shove the remaining $50 on virtually any flop. An immediate shove is probably also fine with $45 in the pot, but I reckon there is some postflop equity lost that way.
The table had been calling $50 bets routinely.
I reckoned that if I put in a pot-sized raise that I was getting committed anyway and didn't want multi-way on a scary board, especially paired.
I decided to shove and be happy either way, call or not. Everyone folded and I was happy - even though I shouldn't have been.
In retrospect, a pot-sized bet would have been a better play, I think, regardless of outcome.
With a limited time in a strange casino, the low variance play sits just fine with me psychologically though.
As always, the Blindman was spot on.
In terms of pure EV, the more players call your $50 bet the better (especially since they will be virtually committed for the rest of their chips). With AA you have >50% equity even against four opponents with random cards (and your equity is probably even better against hands that are likely to call a big PF bet).
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