AQ advice/thoughts

[waltypies]

Fold AQ pre flop as its ghey

[jjh]

Okay, I think your bet sizing is a little off here throughout the hand although you haven’t included stack sizes so it’s hard to say. When you are raising preflop, or betting on the flop or turn, you should consider the effect your bets are going to have on the pot and the implications that will have on future streets. You should also be thinking about what sort of pot you’d like to play, do you want to play a big pot here against this opponent or try and keep the pot smallish? Against this opponent you are saying you want to keep the pot small, well if so you should have started doing this earlier in the hand. A hand like AQ IS a strong hand, especially at these levels, but I’d be a touch nervous about putting to much money in the pot with it when an ace flops and a competent opponent is hanging about. Not always of course, you don’t want to be believing those ‘don’t play one pair for stacks’ mantra’s or anything.

Lets say you raise to $2 preflop and get called, there is ~$4.50 in the pot on the flop. You bet $3.25 at the pot and get called, now there is $11 in the pot coming in to the turn which should make things a little easier to get to showdown which is really what you want here.

As for the actual hand, what are the stack sizes? I’ll sometimes bet here and sometimes check depending on various things, so I dunno it’s hard to say. Against an unknown I’d be more inclined to bet the turn and check the river.

On a side note, I played a hand very similar to this yesterday and check raised the turn all in and got called by QT. Generally though check raise would be a bad play here of course!

Cheers Woody- I never actaully bet so large, that was just an example.

Here's the hand as best as I can remember it-

In the hand I raised $2.50 pre flop. Stacks were I had $64 and he had $112.

I bet pot amount on the flop of A 10 2 ($5) and his call set the alarm bells ringing because he'd likely let a hand like AQ go in this position with such a strong confident flop bet, he does play that tight.

Pot was $15 on the turn, I bet another $6 (what should I have bet here?) which I felt was reasonable, as AQ is strong in this position, but it's not the greatest idea to be building a monster pot. $6 is still a fairly strong bet, and he flat called again. I wanted to bet to make sure he wasn't just calling the flop bet to see if I was bluffing- but I was sure if he made a call on the turn, then AK was a real possibility.

The river was low, can't remember what it was, but obviously he had called and the fact that he was still around made me feel I was either up against AQ for split pot or AK. My read was he either had these hands- if he had hit a set- from what I know, he would have raised on the turn after my $6 bet. Two pair was very unlikely because he wouldn't call a $2.50 pre flop bet with A 10 or 10 2 etc.

So river left to bet, my take he has either AQ or AK. My fear was AK because he had called confidently enough and he is extremely tight. So I feel although I've got a hand, I'm going to be betting into a split pot or AK. Pot was now $27 and I begrudgingly bet $8 and he called again to show AK. (Should I have checked the river?)

[jjh]

Betting with AQ, hitting the desired ace then losing to AK. Being in situations where I am far behind the whole way, not even unluckily outdrawn to at some point. I do get outdrawn all the time but I'm rarely in situations where I have the worst of it right from the start (like you do when you have AQ vs AK or KK vs AA), but believe I'm way ahead. That's why I said I might be lucky in that regard. If I had KK against a player with AA I would almost certainly be putting all my chips in and losing and I wouldn't really be able to blame myself for it. That's a case of severe bad luck even though you were never ahead (as opposed to AQ losing to AJ where you get unlucky along the way)

I had two bad situations last night which put a dent in this weeks profits.

Was playing two tables at the same time and on both tables had pocket pairs to flop trips on each, only to be beaten by better pocket pairs which had also hit, both hands played pretty much at the same time. Never tilted though, it was almost laughable to have been so unlucky in such a short amount of time.