$200 NLHE Full Ring: AK - fold or not?

Jon Poker

Jon Poker

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Played some live $1/$2 this weekend and just wanted to share a few hands and get some opinions. Always like to be improving and never hurts to have other players analyzing your hands.

Anyhow I am stacked around $350 or so to start- villan has a little less than me to start and is a known LAG player having gotten to showdown with plenty of poor holdings.

Villan opens to $11 utg+2 - mp calls - I am in the co with :ah4::kh4: and 3bet to $35. Villan calls, mp folds we go to a flop of :2h4::2c4::4d4:

Villan checks and I cbet pretty large at $40 - he calls.

Turn comes :4s4: and he checks again. I elect to bet in this spot to put max pressure on small pairs and all other types of A hi combos - I bet $65 into a pot of around $160.

He then thinks it over for a bit, thought he was folding and to my surprise he rips it All In over the top top for $137 on top the $65.

This is a really weird spot and I wasn't sure what to do. I saw him call a $25 raise earlier with A3 off suit so it's totally in his range to have A2 or A4 amongst many other holdings.

After thinking it over for about 2 minutes or so going over the scenarios in my head I elected to reluctantly fold and just get him later.

Did I do something wrong? Should I have just grit my teeth and made the call there? I'm anxious to hear what you all think. Thanks ahead of time.
 
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RakeMyLife

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Preflop raise is fine.

Flop: your c-bets don’t need to be this big. Among other reasons, it bloats the pot and forces you to play big on later streets, unless...

...You double barrell the turn way too small (as you did). Now, villain has good equity on a lot of drawing hands, and you don’t learn much about his range. His shove is not surprising since he has very little left to play with and maximizes his return should he hit/have anything.

You should call. There are too many drawing hands in his range that give you a chance.

Most important takeaway here is bet LAGs for value (when you have a strong hand). Save inflated pots and weak bets for nits and soft TAGs.
 
PaxMundi

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Possibly a decent spot to check the flop to induce some turn bluffs vs this villain type you have the nut no pair but it's only a bluff catcher.
 
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fundiver199

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Its always important to have an idea, why we are betting, and it this spot its clearly to get better hands to fold ie. we are bluffing. This also mean, that when we get check-raised all in on the turn, we got caught, and it should be a very easy decision to fold.

So the real question is, was this a good spot to bluff? And I will say, that in a vacuum its fine. But of course it require an opponent, who is actually able to get away from his smallest pocket pairs on a board like this.

And from the description of the Villain, maybe he was not really the kind of guy, you want to run a lot of bluffs against. If he like to get to showdown with a lot of holdings, is he then really folding his 77 on a board like this, probably not. So against him specifically you might have been better off checking back the flop and using your hand as a bluff catcher.
 
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