Over playing AK?

[MilkShake]

Ok, So i play at gala in Leicester and I'm in a £25+£5+£4 Bounty tournament with a starting stack of 15,000.

The Blinds are 600/1200 100 ante. My stack is about 33,000. 7 handed I pick up in the SB and action folds round to me I raise to 3,600 which is slightly higher then my standard raise and the BB (with more then 50,000 chips) thinks for around 10 seconds and calls the 2,400 more. The flop comes  and I check. The BB bets out 3,600. He is a regular so im pretty sure he has hit that board with that bet and im fairly confident im ahead. I decide to raise to 7,500 total. The BB thinks for a while and calls. My intention was to shove pretty much any turn card now with only about 22,000 left and the pot now over 20,000. The turn falls  which is a pretty bad card for me but i still decide to push. The BB asks for the count and calls showing  for the turned 2 pair. the river comes  and im sent crashing to the rail.

So did i overplay AK or was i just up against a calling station who caught the turn? Let me know i could do with some constructive criticism!

[zerofive]

3x/4x is fine in these comps pre ante because they usually have a terrible structure and a field of soft players that will call off with huge reverse implied and play pretty passively post. With antes though I still like to open a little smaller unless the table is still full of huge stations. Like 2,600-2,800 gives us way more room for manoeuvre. Against an unknown I'm not going to check the flop either. If I am checking I'm raising bigger simply to charge worse hands more because we're not going to achieve a fold very often in a Gala casino. We can also set up better stacks for a shove on most turns. For example if you make it 8,900 the pot is now 26k with 17k stacks behind which makes for an easy all-in.

As played I'm not sure what I'm doing on this turn. Probably check-fold because I would expect a lot of recreational players to play the turn transparently. You said he's a reg so I imagine you have some reads. We can turn our hand into a bluff on this particular river too

In a weird way it looks like you've underplayed AK here, but unless there's something you know about villain that you've not shared here then it looks like you just got unlucky here mate.

[TL900]

As played I'm not sure what I'm doing on this turn. Probably check-fold because I would expect a lot of recreational players to play the turn transparently. You said he's a reg so I imagine you have some reads. We can turn our hand into a bluff on this particular river too

agree with this, and also the point zerofive makes about setting up better stack/pot ratio on the turn by raising a little bigger. I think my standard line is to cbet flop really small to 3bet shove on the flop, or to check/shove the turn.

I think its pretty hard to now get called by worse when we shove the turn, maybe  or  but that seems about all we can get called by and be ahead of.

[SubZERO]

3x/4x is fine in these comps pre ante because they usually have a terrible structure and a field of soft players that will call off with huge reverse implied and play pretty passively post. With antes though I still like to open a little smaller unless the table is still full of huge stations. Like 2,600-2,800 gives us way more room for manoeuvre. Against an unknown I'm not going to check the flop either. If I am checking I'm raising bigger simply to charge worse hands more because we're not going to achieve a fold very often in a Gala casino. We can also set up better stacks for a shove on most turns. For example if you make it 8,900 the pot is now 26k with 17k stacks behind which makes for an easy all-in.

As played I'm not sure what I'm doing on this turn. Probably check-fold because I would expect a lot of recreational players to play the turn transparently. You said he's a reg so I imagine you have some reads. We can turn our hand into a bluff on this particular river too

In a weird way it looks like you've underplayed AK here, but unless there's something you know about villain that you've not shared here then it looks like you just got unlucky here mate.

pretty much this

raise size pre is interesting. if he is going to be peeling a lot here which I assume he will be, I'd want to charge him a little more so a 3x looks good - we will be out of position and it will (or should lol) define his hand a bit better and make it easier for us on future streets

defo bet the flop for value here, he is gonna check behind so much and we'll be lost OOP on the turn

[MilkShake]

Thanks for the feedback, Yeah i probably should have bet on the flop. Then i may have been able to get away from the turn if he check raises me. After he calls the re raise on the flop im assuming he also has a King or a high PP such as QQ or JJ trying to trap blind v blind. Also if i check the turn out of position after check raising and he has missed it gives him a pretty good opportunity to try and take the pot down with a bluff. I definitely now think i should have C bet the flop!

[SuuPRlim]

sean's right you should raise the flop more, just so you are shoving slightly less chips into slightly bigger pot on the turn which is nicer, if we were chk/raising hearts as a semi-bluff on the flop for example then I quite like the size you made it, because then you jam the turn (not if it's a heart ofc) for pretty much pot and get a few more folds, obviously it's quite a see-through strategy to raise go 9k with it and 7500 without it but that obviously won't matter here.

On the turn I agree with Sean's point and can see merit to chk/folding but I still think i marginally prefer you're all in here (think its good actually) if we think about all the hands he is going to call your flop raise with (loads and loads of hands, like 85o for e.g) then the range of hands he has even on a turn card that completes the most obvious draw I think overall they are going to quite easily be weak enough to show a nice profit from jamming here, he might not call these weak hands all the time (quite likely to fold them) but he will call worse plenty (any K) and we win the pot there and then (never under-estimate the huge advantage of just winning the pot without showing your cards, as we don't let our opponent outdraw us or bluff us + it's good for image, to have the whole table wondering if we were bluffing or not)

Certainly got unlucky here, imo. NH

[pleno1]

Meh I disagree, I'd just cbet flop. He's probably a really relly bad player of he's calling 58 pre

[outragous76]

Live at this level I like the way you played it.

I mean if he has 85 he is def doubling you thru with any k any ah xx holding which makes the play fine here.

I'd probs c/r a little more just to make sure he is compounding errors with all his terrible plays

Against better villains there may be better ways of playing it, but you wouldn't be going wrong if you play ak like that in this game.

[Young_gun]

You didnt explain why you bet more then you would usually? although its pretty obvious surely its not balancing your range, or does everyone think this is not important due to the small Buy in?

Personally my standard would be like 3k but if you have stations wouldnt be afraid to 3 x, obv depends on table. Flop i prefer bet/get in, unless you think they are a solid player then check/call.

Turn as played dont hate the shove, just ul that they got there i suppose but i doubt your ever getting called worse here unless they have KQ/KJ and they get attached to top pair. horrible turn really bringing the flush cos as played he has it alot of the time

[leethefish]

Who was the villan Dom?
The only way I play the hand different at gala is to rise to maybe 10200 then if still called shoving any turn!

[MilkShake]

Who was the villan Dom?
The only way I play the hand different at gala is to rise to maybe 10200 then if still called shoving any turn!

It was Minesh Lee. And yeah but in my case he still calls the 10,200 i think and the same result comes round. But its probably better to raise more because if he is calling with middle pair then i may aswell get more value rather then just popping it to 7,500.

You didnt explain why you bet more then you would usually? although its pretty obvious surely its not balancing your range, or does everyone think this is not important due to the small Buy in?

Personally my standard would be like 3k but if you have stations wouldnt be afraid to 3 x, obv depends on table. Flop i prefer bet/get in, unless you think they are a solid player then check/call.

Turn as played dont hate the shove, just ul that they got there i suppose but i doubt your ever getting called worse here unless they have KQ/KJ and they get attached to top pair. horrible turn really bringing the flush cos as played he has it alot of the time

Yeah the reason i made it more then my standard is because the villain was just as likely to call 3x as he was 2.5x and he hadn't of even noticed that this was higher then my normal raise. So pretty much it was for more value.

[Rickie Belfield]

That's so typical, Dom. Haha. You're always one for bad beats. Minesh and the rest of the guys who play the £1/£2 with no max buy-in seem to have a crazy hand ranges. I think that they see it as a deceitful way of playing, meaning they believe that they disguise their hands well.

Pre-flop: I think opening ~2500 is fine in most cases, but I can see why you'd consider 3x. ZeroFive's point is pretty valuable though. Perhaps opening 3/4x here with hands like these could be more beneficial than I first thought.

Flop: I think you always have to be betting flops like this for protection. Realistically, most decent players would be protecting their blinds with some sort of holding, and I wouldn't call Minesh bad, so betting and reevaluating on whatever he does afterwards you would be my most favourite line.

As played though, do you think he's calling or raising you with a set here? It's something that would really cross my mind.

In this case, let's say you decided to bet and he decided to raise. I'd be more than happy to get it in, especially as his image is a relatively loose one and he could be holding a lot of Kx combinations (but very rarely K5 or K3). 

Turn: This is a very tough spot being the player that he is. If he hit his hand then he's checking a lot of the time here because of how aggressive you've been, but then again if he's got a weaker K or hit his set on the flop then he's probably checking too.

I think that you're either shoving or checking back here. I prefer checking because if the river comes a non-heart (or maybe no Q, J or T) then you can usually get value of a weaker K (assuming he checks and you're ahead). If you did check behind then you could definitely call a river bet from him.

It's just a shame that he had that particular hand. Definitely a cooler.