blonde poker forum

Hi All,

Haven't got a specific hand, more a general discussion on playing AA from early position. Playing a £55 casino tourney last night and had AA cracked twice in the fist level after the rebuild ended, both in early position.

First time, I min raised utg and got too much action (4 calls and I doubled up a guy who flopped a set of 2s on a dry king high board). Second time I limp utg+1 in to the table maniac directly to my left (who pics this as the time to go sane, limps in and flops two pair 9s and 4s... sigh).

Especially in casinos, Sheree there tends to be more aggressive players, I have always been a fan of letting other propel generate the action if I have AA of KK in early position but these two hands are making me reconsider. Where is the balance between generating some action and scaring it all off with a big early position raise?

Thanks

I think in the early levels of a live £55 casino game you're making a significant mistake by not opening these hands to 4 or 5x. People love calling. Let them ;)

Im not worried about making it 5x with AA and 2.5x with 89ss because nobody ever notices ;)

Yeah early stages feel free to go crazy. 4x5x is much better than limping or min raising imo

Early levels prob go even bigger than a 6 x raise, you're prob going 2 the flop with atleast 1 player if not more.

If you are going to limp aa and it limps round we re probs going to the flop 6 way, and a good amount of the time we just won't win the hand.

If you limp back raise again probs going 2 kill any value cause it's so obvious what we've got.

Just play your big hands strong with good sized raises pre

Thanks people, I see your points.

What would your opinion be on cash games? Nothing til heavy just 1/1 or 1/2 casino games.

This one time at Broadway I opened AA 20x ....... Because 1st level, and you'll get calls lol. You make chips from other people's mistakes, so just basically saying as others have. Just make is big!

Depends hugely on the game, there are games where you can open to 10x and still have the whole table call :p

Basically, if I was you, I'd try and judge the table a little and size accordingly. Almost always I'll end up making it big though, just because balance doesn't matter at all and we're much better off just piling money in when we have good hands.

I think you're probably worrying too much about scaring people off, you're right that even the most basic of players will see a big raise from an solid EP player and think "ooh, he might have a big hand" but in these comps people are just still not going to fold KQ/AT/any pair even after your show of strength, and then if they flop top pair you'll likely get at least 1, almost always 2 and sometimes 3 decent bets from them.

This isn't a criticism of the play from either side, in very short structured comps like these you really should be getting in and moving some chips around.

I think, at this level you will do great just keeping it simple, play big hands strong.

GL

Wow, balance don't matter isn't something you hear everyday... I can kinda see what your saying though. I've seen and payed in games exactly as you describe....

Thanks for the opinions guys, looks like I'll be going big this weekend with dem aces...

Balance is a wonderful word, the amount of craziness I used to see that people would justify by saying it was "balance" is insane, myself included :p In a live game, for starters, you're not going to play enough hands vs someone for balance to make too much of a difference, and people just aren't paying enough attention to the game for it to matter.