Q&A #122: A Top Pair Facing Pressure On The River

Thinking about it I would have stayed showing strong after the flop and bet cause he wasn’t raising, just calling. when you checked twice he most likely was trying to play the ace and forced you to fold.If he raised after you bet the flop then he probably did have the ace. but than again you were playing with em for five hours.

Poker Villain

Thanks for the comments Ed… it looks like your approach was similar to the line I took, with the exception of favoring a blocking bet on the river assuming a check on the turn. My other approach playing the hand would be to bet small on turn and river. Sometimes might even check-raise the flop to let the button bet at it if he chose.

Seems that TPTK is rarely good in live games getting called by a tight player post-flop and then getting bet into. Anyway, in reality this is what happened:

After some thought I folded to his river bet with my AQ face up, and said “I guess you have me beat” and he looked sheepish and thought for a minute and floored the table when he turned up TT. That sure got everybody excited! I gave him credit for a great bet at the end, it was completely out of character for him based on how he had been playing. So chalk one up for the opponent, he made a good play. Everyone was quite surprised. Maybe he’d been playing us for 5 hours, who knows? Or maybe he just had bad cards when I was paying attention this session, or maybe he was just bored. ;) Oh well, I’ll get him next time.

Despite the results in this particular case, I like the idea to bet a little smaller on the flop here, but only negligibly so – about $40 instead as you indicate. This gives me a little more flexibility for the next 2 streets, and I could easily get value from KQ, QJ, QT, or – usually – TT. ;)

This hand started to scare me as soon as he made it $20 to go under the gun. In my B&M 1/3 game I’ve found myself limping in with AK. Am I giving up too much value limping with hands like these UTG?

Skipatore,

Probably. People will tend to call big raises with dominated aces in games like this.

On another note… I’ve recently been taking lines like betting 1/3 the pot and such on the turn and river more frequently against opponents like Ed is suggesting. Nice to see that backed up.

wahoointexas,

i am curious as to whether anything in your recent play leading up to this hand could have accounted for villain’s “out of character” line?

I’m a little confused by some of the hands that you seem to include as part of the MP player’s range. The MP player is described as a “tight” player and so it would stand to reason that he would need a fairly strong hand to call a (fairly large) UTG raise in a 9-handed game. Yet you seem to think that he would make this call with some very weak (and likely dominated) hands, such as A5, Q9, etc.

Admittedly, I’ve never played live, and so I’m not sure exactly how “tight” live players play. But if tight live players will cold call an UTG raise with A5, what would it take for them to be considered loose? Cold calling raises with 72? If live games are really that good, why waste time with game selection? Just find a game full of “tight” players who cold call raises with garbage.

I just got done reading Ed’s article on Limiting Turn Calls. Is this not a fair approximation of that article?

IMO, your first mistake, was playing AQo from UTG.

But, since you did play it, I’d go $40 on the flop, then 100 on the turn.

Chimera,

Where do you play and what’s your username? I’d love to play you ;)

Eric,

If you really fold AQ from UTG and cold call UTG raises with A5, I doubt you have much money left, so you should just donate the rest of it to charity. There are other people who need it more than I do.