AA on the Button! Dream come true....or nightmare? (1 Viewer)

[dkersey]

Was playing 1/2 NLHE at a local venue last night and had this hand. I'll step through it and let everyone opine at each step.

Started with $200, an hour into the session I had worked it up to $289, when I woke up with AA on the button! UTG raised to 12, folded to me, I raise to 25, BB called, UTG called. Pot = $76. Flop: 4h As 9h. Wow, flopped top set. A dream come true, right?

It was checked to me. My action?

 

[kirchhausen]

I think you raised a little low pre-flop. I would have made it 30-35. AS played bet 55-60.

 

[Blaster]

2 hearts showing, & a 3-player pot, & you weren't the original raiser ... bet the pot.

 

[xxmurrxx]

Agree with above, would have raised more preflop.
Bet 3/4 - pot

You have the Ah in hand?

 

[dkersey]

oh, forgot this. My rep should be a tight player. I've played only a few hands, and all hands that went to showdown I have won with a strong hand.

 

[Mr Tree]

You have the Ah in hand?

VERY important question.

 

[BukNaked36]

Do you have the Ah?

How deep are your opponents? If effective stacks are less than $120 ish, then push

$60 would be a typical bet for me. My rules of thumb - 3/4 pot on flop, 2/3 pot on turn and 1/2 pot on river.

 

[DrStrange]

Preflop - Hero looks at a pot with $27 and raised $13. That is barely more than half pot and is too small. Raising to $35 would be better because that spoils the odds for UTG.

So now we have three way action with $76 (less rake?) We don't know the villain stack sizes, which might matter. All we can say is Hero's Stack-to-Pot-Ratio is something between three and four. Hero is pot committed on all semi dry to dry flops.

Flop - Hero flops top set. As noted by others, Hero's possession of the is meaningful. I bet $50 with the ace of hearts and $60 without that ace. Hero is pot committed holding the ace of hearts. If Hero doesn't hold the then Villain reads matter here - Hero might find a fold on flushing turn under the most adverse set of facts.

VS casino unknowns, Hero shouldn't be folding top set to a less than pot sized bet. { period }

DrStrange

 

[Mr Tree]

Preflop - Hero looks at a pot with $27 and raised $13. That is barely more than half pot and is too small. Raising to $35 would be better because that spoils the odds for UTG.

So now we have three way action with $76 (less rake?) We don't know the villain stack sizes, which might matter. All we can say is Hero's Stack-to-Pot-Ratio is something between three and four. Hero is pot committed on all semi dry to dry flops.

Flop - Hero flops top set. As noted by others, Hero's possession of the is meaningful. I bet $50 with the ace of hearts and $60 without that ace. Hero is pot committed holding the ace of hearts. If Hero doesn't hold the then Villain reads matter here - Hero might find a fold on flushing turn under the most adverse set of facts.

VS casino unknowns, Hero shouldn't be folding top set to a less than pot sized bet. { period }

DrStrange

The good doctor has spoken.

I have a feeling this hand ends in tears from the setup, but you need to be getting it imo this situation.

 

[dkersey]

Both opponents have me covered, both are between 300-500.

 

[dkersey]

My action: My first thought was that I was way ahead and need to slow play this. Was not worried too much about the 2 hearts, but knew flush was possible. I bet $25. If they got part of it, they would call, otherwise they would fold. They both called! Crap! Turn was Jh. Crap, another heart! Now I'm definitely worried about the flush. BB bets $50, UTG snap calls! Crap! I figure 1 or both have the flush. I could be 3rd best here. I'm considering folding. I re-check my hand. Yes, I have the Ah! I call the $50.

 

[redwine]

You have to ask yourself what are TWO players calling with when the 3bettor continues and you can see three of the aces are locked up on the flop.

I would've bet the flop but check back turn hoping to fill up.

 

[Mr Tree]

My action: My first thought was that I was way ahead and need to slow play this. Was not worried too much about the 2 hearts, but knew flush was possible. I bet $25. If they got part of it, they would call, otherwise they would fold. They both called! Crap! Turn was Jh. Crap, another heart! Now I'm definitely worried about the flush. BB bets $50, UTG snap calls! Crap! I figure 1 or both have the flush. I could be 3rd best here. I'm considering folding. I re-check my hand. Yes, I have the Ah! I call the $50.

You bet $25 into a $75 pot on a flop with two opponents and a flush draw? Lol do you like being drawn out on? You are betting way too light. As is call the $50 with $250 in the pot on a snap. We have both a nut flush draw and a boat draw. Currently you are almost certainly beat with two players betting into you.

 

[Chippy McChiperson]

My action: My first thought was that I was way ahead and need to slow play this. Was not worried too much about the 2 hearts, but knew flush was possible. I bet $25. If they got part of it, they would call, otherwise they would fold. They both called! Crap! Turn was Jh. Crap, another heart! Now I'm definitely worried about the flush. BB bets $50, UTG snap calls! Crap! I figure 1 or both have the flush. I could be 3rd best here. I'm considering folding. I re-check my hand. Yes, I have the Ah! I call the $50.

I would have 3 bet to at least 3X the initial raise preflop, so probably like $36. On the flop, with a pot of about $75, I would have bet about $45. That being said, I'm not so sure you're behind here. What flushes could BB have here...he cold called a 3 bet out of position, so maybe KQhh? To me its more likely he flopped or turned a set. And UTG raising and calling, sure he could have a flush, but if so, why wouldn't he raise the turn? We know he doesn't have the nut flush, you have the ace of hearts in your hand. More likely to me he has a big pocket pair with a heart in it (kings or queens) which makes UTG having KQhh even less likely. Knowing this, I probably jam here, and if I AM somehow behind, I have a metric crap-ton of outs to suck out with.

 

[mummel]

You have 19 outs to hit the nuts no????? Load up the truck!

 

[Chippy McChiperson]

You have 19 outs to hit the nuts no????? Load up the truck!

No, an ace gives you the nuts, as does the 2,3,5, or 6 of hearts. Any other heart could give someone a straight flush, or any other pairing card could give someone quads.

 

[dkersey]

The River: 6h. a heart! Made the flush, the nut flush! The BB looks defeated, checks. UTG bets $100. I pause, then go All-In. Now BB is definitely showing exasperation, folds. UTG calls. I show my aces, including the Ah, UTG shows AxKh. BB said he had 2 hearts, thus had us both beat at the turn. I collect many chips! Took me 3 hands to stack them all, lol.

So my dream start hand seemed to be turning into a nightmare, but eventually was a dream come true.

 

[Adam Crowley]

It's important to take away the lessons from this hand. You made a lot of mistakes and could be in danger of letting the strength of your hand and a good run out mask them.

As discussed 3b more preflop. I would even go larger then 3x to around $45. Chances are at $1/$2 you can still get 2 callers with a pretty large equity advantage.

Flop is probably the best flop you can hope for as even if the draw hits you have a redraw to the nuts on many cards. Raising more preflop does make this hand hit your range more and less your opponents but your collecting a sizable pot on he flop now.

Always bet more on this flop even as played. As played I would bet just under pot to just over pot the pot is small and your not representing a strong range based on your weird preflop bet sizing.

If you raised more preflop I would bet 2/3 - 3/4 pot. Your range is a lot stronger on this flop and your opponents range is a lot weaker.

Turn is a little difficult. It's hard to get value from worse hands now except KK and AK with the K of hearts. Both of these hands will call a river if you improve and would probably call you unimproved as a bluff catcher. So I think checking back and evaluating river is best.

 

[arsenelupin3]

I am a huge alcoholic donk with a tight-weird table image and I think the "make it $35 preflop" statements here vastly understate what you can get away with on a pre-flop 3-bet without giving away too much, especially as early in a session as you said you were. I'm going $50, especially if I sat with green chips as part of my stack. I'm dropping them past the bet line with a fist-thunk, too.

 

[3betChet]

You gave your opponents wayy too good odds to draw out on you, like others said, as well as not realizing the equity advantage of your hand by making their decisions harder with beefier raises. I think Adam Crowley nailed the details here. You have to avoid being results-oriented and think critically about all the ways this could've run out, and how your decisions would have rated across many different run-outs.

 

[RainmanTrail]

Apparently I'm the only one here who likes how you played the hand...

I'm usually going to reraise more pre flop than your $25 bet, but not always. $25 is a perfectly acceptable reraise here as long as it's not your default line (I'd do it maybe 20% of the time in this spot). Either way, once the flop comes, the most important thing to keep in mind is the fact that you've completely smashed this board, and given that you have the Ah in hand, it's not very likely for you to be up against a flush draw, as almost half of the playable flush draws in a 3 bet pot include the Ah. So your removal is pretty huge here. Very rarely are you running into another hand here that is strong enough to pay you off in this spot. This is the most important thing to keep in mind. Your best chance of getting paid off here is by underplaying your hand and hoping someone has a hand like AK/AQ (only 8 combos), or one of the few remaining playable flush draw combos (a loose-ish range might look like 76/87/JT/QJ/KQ/JT/KT/QT/T8, so that's maybe 9 more combos). Add in A9s/A4s maybe (2 more combos), 99 (3 combos) and 44 (3 combos) and you can quickly see there are only about 16 combos that you're almost certainly getting paid from in this spot - although a strong player will be able to get away from the 4 AQ combos if the action gets too crazy, but all those other non flush hands are paying you off as long as another heart doesn't show up on the turn. Plus, this is a great spot for someone to try to steal the pot as a semi bluff if they do have the flush draw. A LOT of players are check raising this flop with a flush draw, myself included. It's just such an obvious spot to make a play at it with the A out there and an otherwise dry board (there are no straight combos or overcard combos to worry about). If you have a hand like TT-KK you're in a pretty shitty spot vs a check raise on this board. And you also are almost forced to c-bet here. Because of this dynamic, I'm sizing my bet as bait to entice the check raise. It works pretty often here. You can usually get a flush draw to commit their entire stack in this spot by tossing out a $30-$35 c-bet, only to have them semi-bluff check raise you to around $90 or $100. Then you smash it in for your remaining $240 and they feel trapped into the hand because of the size of the pot. Next thing you know, you're about a 3.5 to 1 favorite against someone's entire stack IF they call with a flush draw, and you're taking down an already nice pot if they let it go after check raising you. You can also get hands with complete air to bluff you here if your bet is juicy enough to take the bait as this board texture is likely to completely miss a fairly large portion of your pre flop 3-betting range.

If you bet too big on the flop, you just encourage the other players to play their hands straight forwardly in this spot, as a bluff check-raise becomes too risky the larger your c-bet (as an example, if you had bet $70, and they want to check raise 3x, they're effectively shoving against you, which is too risky, but if you bet $30-$35, they're MUCH more likely to find that $90+ check raise). You don't want them playing this hand straight forwardly. You want them making plays at you here. You just flopped Jesus, Mary and Joseph! It's time to gamble! You guys need to pull your balls out from under your skirts, stop playing scared poker and start setting some traps! Quit worrying about the damn flush draws so much! Especially when you've just flopped top set and are blocking half of the playable flush hands!

 

[Anthony Martino]

Was playing 1/2 NLHE at a local venue last night and had this hand. I'll step through it and let everyone opine at each step.

Started with $200, an hour into the session I had worked it up to $289, when I woke up with AA on the button! UTG raised to 12, folded to me, I raise to 25, BB called, UTG called. Pot = $76. Flop: 4h As 9h. Wow, flopped top set. A dream come true, right?

It was checked to me. My action?

Preflop I raise to $30

As played on the flop there are a few options:

1. Check behind. You have a lot of this board locked up, so it's going to be hard for your opponents to continue since you reraised preflop. You want them to make some sort of hand they can continue with, and you want them to think you aren't happy about the Ace out there, and put you on a hand they can blow you off of (KK/QQ)

2. Bet small ($20-30) to induce a check-raise: As RainmanTrail mentioned, this could occur. In your actual scenario your two opponents just happened to have the perfect hands to pay you off. But I don't think you'll encounter that too often.

3. Make a standard bet of $45-55

4. Make a larger bet of around pot size


Generally speaking, 1/2 NL is going to be one where you play fairly straight-forward, because your opponents don't consider pot odds, implied odds, hand ranges, etc. You can take a lot of players to valuetown that will pay you off chasing draws incorrectly or with dominated hands.

The problem you face is that you pretty much own this flop and I'd expect the vast majority of the time it will be extremely difficult to extract much value here since it's so hard for your opponents to have much to continue with. There's only one Ace left in the deck, there's not much in the way of straight draws to be concerned about, so someone really needs to have a flush draw they're willing to continue with.

That being said, we benefit most from spots where calling stations will pay ridiculous amounts to chase their draws. As such, I probably lean towards at least a standard sized bet here, and possibly an oversized one. I want someone to make a mistake for as much $$$ as possible here

 

[thorwilliam]

I don't mind the small flop bet either since we block so many hands that will continue for a large bet on this flop, would raise more pre though.