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One mistake or many? AA from the button.
Okay, okay, I know, never slow play aces. My own fault! But past THAT did I play this hand correctly? $1-$2 NL at the local card room. Total limp fest. People are showing up with 82 off and 45 off from EP and hitting straights and trips etc. 80-90% of hands are going to showdown. One guy will call ANY bet with a draw. He’s down at least $700 (though he doesn’t factor into this hand). Only one guy is playing anything that remotely resembles GTO and he is also not in this hand.
I’ve been playing 4 hours and have been almost completely card dead. When I have had something I’ve been out flopped by trash. I’m in for $400 and am down $239 leaving me a stack of $161, which is the effective stack in this hand.
I’m on the button with Ah Ac. 8 players. All limps to the HJ. He opens $15. He is new at the table and I don’t know how much he will chase things. CO folds. I decide to just flat because I am determined to make more than just $15 plus a few limps. Mistake #1, especially after the descriptions above! Both blinds call. Roughly $60 after the rake. On the other hand, I believe I am quite capable of laying down AA when the play dictates (I had laid down bottom boat a few hands earlier when the play screamed that someone had top boat on a 6767 board. He did show the 7. I was roundly criticized for it!).
2s, 4d, 9d. 3 checks to me. I bet $50 out of my $151 wanting to keep a good size turn bet behind if the next card was not bad for me. SB and HJ both call. $210 to the turn. 2d, 4d, 9s, Jc. Checks around to me and I shove for $101. SB calls, HJ folds. 2s, 4d, 7d, Jc, 2d. SB turns over Qd, 9d for the flush.
Trying not to be results oriented here. Did I overplay my top pair given opponents’ tendencies to be playing ATCs? It was definitely hard to do much range analysis on people. Should I have shoved on the flop? And anything else different other than not slow playing from the start? I felt somewhat handcuffed with my bet sizing due to my stack size.
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5 Replies
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Honestly, I see nothing wrong here. Anyone who says to never slow play aces is someone you shouldn’t be taking too much advice from. There are definitely spots to take where you would slow play aces. And the major thing to consider in those spots is it generally a good idea when you are shorter-stacked or the effective stack sizes make it easy to get all the chips in the middle easily. If this were way deeper stacked, or if it limped to you, or there had been a raise and a call in front — then maybe we should get more aggressive. And even in this hand I’m somewhat torn between getting aggressive pre and just slow playing the aces.
But given the preflop action, and how the board runout –I love the flop and turn actions. Great board for you, and honestly I would have maybe preferred there to be one broadway card out there to increase the likelihood that you would stack a top pair hand. Given all the low cards and each player calling you, you’re likely up against flush draws, pocket pairs, or sets. Time to just run the equity and hope that you hold.
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In this dynamic I prefer getting aggressive pre-flop. I would try to build the pot with strong holdings against these players. As played, on the flop there are no made straights or flushes. We are only behind a random two-pair or set. Your SPR is less than 3 so I would happily shove. The results may have ended up the same, but the over-bet on the flop puts way more pressure on one pair hands and drawing hands. If they all fold you increased you stack by 40%. Which is not a bad result.
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I agree with much of the input here. This feels like just how this plays out once we get postflop. But one thing to consider about slowplaying aces. There are definitely times to flat with AA. Often it is the correct play, especially with table dynamics. But at a table like this one we want to consider our opponent’s incentives rather than our own. We don’t ultimately get to choose whether we only take down a small pot or this continues on to a larger pot, but I very much like a raise with the opponents you describe.
These are players that as described love playing flop bingo. So let’s charge them more to play. The odds that these player types are all going to fold to your raise is rather low. Unless you’ve seen them all fold to raises before. If you have, then I don’t mind your approach. But if this is a table that loves to see flops, let’s lower the SPR even more with the preflop nuts. We can charge them dearly to call with their Tc6c or whatever. And we can clear the field on most flops.
I guess my point is that as described this table doesn’t seem like the one that is going to let you “make…just $15 plus a few limps” if you do raise. So let’s raise. Our incentives to slowplay aces is generally when we have really tight opponent[s] that have already acted (and we want to give them rope to catch up) OR when we have really aggro opponent[s] behind us that have yet to act (and we want them every opportunity to squeeze with garbage). In this case, we have really loose, passive players that have limped and a raiser we know nothing about. I’d rather target flop bingo players I know more about. And my experience is that those type of players are fairly price insensitive. They either want to see a flop or they don’t. Let’s charge them and see if we’re right.
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Yes, as per Chris’ response I think this is exactly the mistake I made. I even consider it a little bit of entitlement tilt. I didn’t think through the table dynamic quite enough. I tried to alter reality do get it to fit what I wanted. If I ended up heads up with the original raiser I might have been better off rather than a 4-way pot. It may have played out the same anyway if the SB called a preflop raise with his Q9 suited, but we will never know.
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Agree with all the comments. The postflop play was fine. You can never tell how ATC hands will interact with any board. But when your opponents have such wide ranges, a vast majority of their range will be misses.
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