$1.1 NLHE MTT: Only a pair? How should this have been played?

Small Stakes MTT with 24 players left. In the $$$!

$2500/$5000+$500, 7 players
UTG+1 (Hero) A♥A♠: $162,611. (32.5BB)
BB (Villain): $108,331 (21.6BB)
$11,000 in the pot...
All other players folded in this hand....

Hero raises to $12,500 (2.5BB). There is $23,000 in the pot
Villain calls for $7,500.
$31,000 in the pot...

Did I raise enough, or did I let the BB in too cheap?

At the stack size of 32.5BB I would not open raise any larger than 2.5BB and I usually go smaller than that. We don't want to go huge here since we want action for our aces. I think this raise size is just fine and just about where you want to be. Going bigger depending on opponents can make sense if they are players who notice nothing but that is rarer and rarer now then it was a long time ago. The last thing you want is to raise large and everyone fold.

I think, its a shame, you did not include postflop, since it might have been a lot more interesting than the simple preflop decision of picking an open size. Which really as 300HPGOD say should not depend on your hand but on the effective stack size and a little bit on table dynamics. Since you did not even share this information, its difficult to give usefull input.

I sense, you might want to know, if you could have gotten him to fold and avoid having your AA cracked, but as 300HPGOD also say, you want to get action, when you have the nuts, so its not the right question to ask. Ideally you dont want to play AA with a very deep SPR, but 3 is certainly not deep, so this hand should mostly almost play itself postflop, and if you happened to lose it, it was probably just bad luck.

Continuing...
Flop 7D,8S,6C
Villain bets $36,000..

Should I call or raise?

Really nasty flop and action. With so little stack behind I dont see any point in taking a turn, so its either jam or fold, and its pretty close. I probably jam, but I also really hate it, because so often he is either ahead, or he has a lot of equity with some sort of straightdraw.

mblmusic said:

Continuing...
Flop 7D,8S,6C
Villain bets $36,000..

Should I call or raise?

Click to expand...

Thank U 4 Posting

This is where notes are important. If you have been playing with this Villain you could know if they lead only big hands here. Many low stakes players will lead A8 A7 87 86 76 for this size but bet smaller with stronger hands.

Hope this helps

or did I let


mainly at a final table! the villain will only pay to see the flop, for him the flop and turn is more profitable

Got it all-in on the flop. Villain had 9STS for a flopped str8.
Figured a str8 was only a small part of Villain’s range.