blonde poker forum

Nottingham last night. new 50p/£1 NLHE cash game
it's gone short and there's 4 players.
to my left and right, weak, loose players. easy pickings
across from me, local pro. nice game, tightish but prone to big moves. have some mutual respect
I have built £20 into approx £140 in an hour
my button. player 3 passes, I make it £4 with AJ
SB passes, seat 2 (pro) calls after brief pause
flop A,6,3. he checks
I go £10 (pot £8.50)
he quickly pushes in
he had more than I'd realised because of notes under chips. it's £80 more to me.

to summerise pot is now £108.50, £80 to me and I have AJ ons a A,6,3 board BB has called my 4xBB raise.

what should I have done?

additional info, player is looking directly at me, rather than at a fixed point, which is common for him.
my gut feeling is he doesn't particularly want a call, but the longer I think, the more relaxed he seems (though it's subtle)

Tiny pot, pass.

Unless he is a known maniac.

surely better spots to stick your cash in at with two fish at the table?....he must have some respect for you by now - l wouldn't wanna go all in with my hard earned cash and marginal odds...

I pass....assuming you have confidence in your read.

Surely he would make a move against the easy pickings not against a guy who has mutual respect?

AQ,AK likely?

I'd fold.

If you've been making money all night, then why risk it if you're not sure.

I always look at this way. There are 2 weak players and one pro at the table. Who shall I attack? Easy answer. Target weak players, not the strong. You know you can get their money, so pass and continue to ambush them.

If he's a pro, then he's not stupid. He knows you could easily have a big ace and therefore may call. Would he put so much money at risk for a 10er when he knows he can prise money off the fish?

Assuming that it's a rainbow flop, my best guess is that he has A3 suited. He ought to raise a smaller amount or flatcall with a set so he can get paid if you have an ace (which is very possible). Two pair is much more vulnerable and so may justify a bigger raise.  I doubt he'd make this big a move on a stonecold bluff, unless he's a maniac. Hands such as weaker ace etc would probably see a flatcall or a smaller raise.

You said he did some preflop umming and ahing - so he could also have AK, AQ and was wondering if he should reraise your £4.


What happened?

I agree, I don't think there is any way that you can call this, especially considering the ratio of the amount you have to call to the £18.50 pot. Think of all the hands he could have that have you beat (AA, AK, AQ, A6, A3, 63, 66, 33). Sure, you may expect a pre-flop raise with the premium hands such as AA or AK, but he could quite easily have flat called your raise pre-flop with Ax or a small/medium pair.

Definite lay down in my book, unless you have a superb read on him and are sure you're ahead. Even then...

Easy pass.

Oi! Adam, stop printing shirts, get your tush back here and tell us what happened...  ;) :D

no point dragging this out you're all bang on (except flushy, £100 pots aren't tiny to us all)
AQ, cash game inexperience made me call what I felt was a move. I stand by my felling there was some mutual respct and mis interpreted the over bet. valuable lesson learned.

AQ by the way. first past the post Tightend

if you spend too long playing with people who routunely re raise all in with AQ / AK or AJ A10 for that matter, you stop spotting people playing them with some skill.

CONCENTRATE MAN

Adam, from knowing your posts over the months and played a little with you in blonde tourney's, I am genuinely surprised you called.

You laid down AK to my check raise with AQ on a board of AQrag in that tourney....which I thought was brilliant

Adam, I am by no means a cash game player, but I am striving to improve in this field.

What I have been doing for the last 2 weeks (playing £1 £2 and $2 $4 nlh) is purely targeting very weak players.

By this I mean I will find a table where someone is doing all their money (over betting pots on the flop etc...) and join the game, wait for an oppotunity to take their money.

And so far its going very nicely.

Easy pass m8 - you said it yourself, 2 weak players - target them!

BTW hope the TShirt business is going well :)

i know, terrible play really

this might help beginners actually

when I first started playing live if I raised and was re-raised I'd feel like players would see me as weak if I passed and I'd be paying for it the rest of the night. I've learned that passing to a re raise isn't weak, it's disciplined. In a tourney I'd pass this in a flash. I talked my self into him having a medium pair and him trying to move me off my Ace (which I obviously had) He probably would do that against the amiable fishy fellas we had with us but he wasn't going to shove it all in against me after I'd been dominating the table for an hour.

not a happy drive home, but on the other hand I had 10% of the tourney winner so not a dead loss.

Adam i meant small pot as in, relation to your stack and the blinds, there is 18.50 in there after your bet, he isnt going to stick £80 in with a bag of nails.

I won't rub it in Adam, its an easy pass, far too many hands you are losing too. I must say our local pro is quite brave there its a move of sorts to go all in with aq there, a standard re raise to £30 would have been my move. As i would have been of the belief that you would only call with a better hand than aq (whoops). Oh and this 10% wouldn't have been the lad to your right who you were dealing to all night (joke).

to my left and yes I dealt him some monsters. what ever are you suggesting?

I actually suggested the 10% when he had 12k+ and i was down to around 3K. nice lad eh

I agree with Longy. I think the 'pro' played this fairly bad on the whole, although badly in that the standard move here is a 3x raise of your bet to (in theory) get the weaker aces calling and effectively drawing to three outs on the turn and river (if you decide to get stubborn about it and call him down, though this may have ended with an all in anyhow what with the pot size and all).

Perhaps though, he knew that you had him down as someone who was capable of big moves (had he knocked you off some hands earlier that night?), had read you as maybe ready to call him with what would normally be a routine fold, and thought it worth a gamble. Timing is everthing after all, and maybe he just thought that now is the time for him to mix it up, and not play the ABC game. In which case, fair play to the man....

I think he thought I'd go away. I'm pretty sure he had me roughly on what I had and I think he thought I'd move over and continue to carve up the softer money on the table.

gods I hate making one mistake that ruins all the hard work of the night in one go.

still, live and learn

Any chance of some details of this cash game?

Not had a chance to get to notts in a while...

who's the pro? why was he sitting in this small game?

Because people call off their stack with AJ?  :o

I hate AJ in cash games for this pure reason.  If you raise it up pre flop and someone calls, they usually have you dominated.  Unless I hit my kicker and I am sure they havent (if they need one!) I proceed with extreme caution.

Good thread Adam.  Brave to put yourself up for criticism.

Fold. 100%.

He is announcing his hand to you with the reraise. He wants you out so he has AJ AQ or even AK. Even if he thinks he has you beat he still wants you out so you two can hammer the other two without an awful outdraw happening between you.

By reraising he was actually doing you a favour I think. He obviously did respect you.

The fact that you could easily have an AK makes this an even worse play by our so called pro. Feedback on this has been good, and, in my opinion, pretty accurate.

Agreed. A £20 - £30 raise would have been sufficient enough from the "pro".

Who was it?

as I'm sure most of you know, you don't have to have been on telly to be a pro. I don't know much about the guy, other than that in 18 months I rarely play at the Gala and him not be there. 
I think the barons right, in hindsight the guy was actually doing me a favour by raising so big. should have been obvious to me to pass but, as I may have hinted in other posts, money's still a bit tight for me and, on top of the £140 I already had, a furth £100 clouded my vision as it would of given my limited bankroll a much needed boost.

and maroon, putting myself up for critisism is something I feel comfortable doing here because it's always so constructive. I've earned some respect for my game of my fellow Blondites, but if I don't work at it, my game will never be world class. this place is such a phenominal resource, we'd all be mad not to take advantage of it.

The pro was sat at the game because it's beginners night on a tuesday. It's that or a £5/£5 dealers choice game. oddly I don't recall ever seeing him at that.

game selection is a must to keep going I guess. So who is he

I think its a bit of misconception that all "pros" are playing massive stakes. There are quite few mid/low stake grinders out there who will play all day making quite a reasonable wage over a course of time. Tho i think it would be a bit of step too far for myself to kick the job in, my stats show that over the last year with a few more hours a day put in i could have made a living playing poker. That has been playing .5/1 NL ring games (occasionally moving limits for more juicy games).
Our local pro clearly thought there was a big enough expectation in this game compared to the dealers choice game to justify playing at these limits. By the sounds of things he was probably right.

by 'pro' adam, do you mean one of the many unemployed riff raff spivs that populate gala?  ;D

only joking, they're a lovely bunch really. ;D  :D - me included!