Thursday, December 01, 2005

Smooth-call or re-raise?

I haven't played much since Black Friday. And I probably won't play much this week, save for the weekly Murderer's Row gathering at HDouble's on Friday. Two blogging legends will be putting in a special guest appearance, so I'm up for bleeding away a little cash in their honor.

OK, so I did play a LITTLE on Tuesday night. I won two $11 SNGs on Full Tilt to start, which gave me a nice shot in the arm. Then I blew all that profit trying to grab the $1080.00 brass ring in a couple of $22 180-person SNGs on Stars. These 180s are a thing of beauty and soft, soft, soft. I lost an early race in the first one (AK v. 99) but managed to get a hold of a healthy stack in the second one when this hand came up.

I have 6000 in chips, 13th of the 62 players remaining. It's folded to me in MP, where I pick up KK. I raise 3x the BB to 450. A loose-aggressive player with a similar stack size to mine two to my left re-raises the minimum to 900. I smooth-call the extra 450. At this point, I'm putting him on 99-QQ, AK or AQ. Of course, he could also have AA with that min-raise. The flop is Js 9c 7c. I check my overpair, both wanting and expecting him to bet the flop. He does, throwing out a pot-sized bet of 2200. Seems defensive to me and I re-raise all-in for my remaining 5100. He calls instantly, showing 77 for the set.

OK, I know a lot of that result is simple crap luck, but there are two points in this hand where I think I possibly made a mistake and may have been able to save myself from busting. (1) After the villain's PF min-reraise (that makes Baby Jesus cry), is reraising him a better choice in this spot given his loose-aggro image? (2) Once he bets the 2400 on the flop, is calling the better choice than the all-in reraise?

Or am I just destined to go broke with this hand on this flop? I open it up to the floor.

(Special thanks today to Iggy for the pimpage!)

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I always push and take the decent sized pot. Unfortunately this may be a hole in my tournament play.

If wants to call all-in with 77, so be it, I'll take those odds.

I figure the only hand that would call me after the flop would have me beat. But, that's weak-tight play there.

change100 said...

I think all of you are right about potentially reraising PF, but I think Jason's point about checking the flop is where I fucked up. By checking there, I (a) find out nothing about his hand and (b) seal any escape hatch I might have out of the hand.

If I bet out, say 1/2 to 2/3 of the pot on the flop and he pops me, at least I have a better idea where I'm at.

Hugh Williams said...

What do you think he thought you had?

If you'd been sitting there folding, folding, folding, folding, he might be a good enough of a player to know to only bet into you with a great hand.

Maybe you could have made him lay down his middlin' pair pre-flop with a 4 or 5BB opening? Let him know that had better than mid-pair. He probably wouldn't have re-raised you, but the texture of the flop would have been irresistible (sp?) not to bet.

Other than that, you were destined to lose. Sets are the landmines of poker, you hope to only blow your foot off...

jremotigue said...

I would a have re-raised pre-flop. But it's mostly because I have problems getting away from cowboys, unless an ace hits the flop.

Pauly said...

Can't wait. We'll take frequent smoke breaks.

Joaquin "The Rooster" Ochoa said...

I would have probably done the same thing...but that deep into the tournament...sometimes I would just make a more than 3x the blind...maybe 5x the blind.