Analyze this poker hand; did I screw up?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I played this hand this morning. Today is the first day that I’ve played for money online since I posted a while back in the Pit about the lucky bastard who started lecturing me on poker. I decided to take a break, play some offline tournaments (which I’ve moneyed in ever time, either 1st or 2nd) and slum at the online play money tables (Omaha hi-lo is fun but damn can it be brutal). I decided to get back into the ring games today, still playing my usual low limit. I was up and down right around what I started with but ended up losing two big pots and going broke. The first hand I held AK suited. K came on the flop and the remaining four cards ended up as two pairs. I got beat by pocket AA. I mention that only because, while I don’t think I was steaming and the two hands were separated in time by at least 30 minutes, it was a big hit and if you think it was a factor in how I played this hand I wanted to include the information. Take a look at the hand. I’ll post comments at each stage to let you know my thinking and you tell me if you think my reasoning was sound, or if I should give up poker forever and take up competetive solitaire instead.

11.16 AM(ET: 12.16 PMGMT: 4.16 PM)

Texas Hold’em $0.25-$0.50 NL (real money), hand #337,657,320
Table Randers, 19 Sep 2004 11:15 AM

Seat 1: FLSTC2002 ($11.15 in chips)
Seat 2: azn_13 ($22.65 in chips)
Seat 3: Moose513 ($6.45 in chips)
Seat 4: Otto [ AC,AD ] ($13.85 in chips)
Seat 6: Bear Slims ($27.95 in chips)
Seat 7: notindie ($9.05 in chips)
Seat 8: bruno46 ($24.85 in chips)
Seat 9: ryanlloyd ($6.80 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS
bruno46 posts blind ($0.10), ryanlloyd posts blind ($0.25).

PRE-FLOP
FLSTC2002 folds, azn_13 folds, Moose513 folds, Otto bets $0.50, Bear Slims folds, notindie folds, bruno46 calls $0.40, ryanlloyd calls $0.25.

I doubled the BB to try to push out anyone who was thinking “it’s only a quarter, what the hell.” I thought about raising to $1 but I didn’t want everyone to fold.

FLOP [board cards 4H,8C,AH ]
bruno46 bets $1, ryanlloyd folds, Otto calls $1.

I’ve hit three aces on the flop. My feeling was that Bruno had a heart flush draw. I thought about raising to $2 here.

TURN [board cards 4H,8C,AH,5D ]
bruno46 bets $2, Otto bets $4, bruno46 calls $2.

I think he’s either paired his 5 or has four to the straight.

RIVER [board cards 4H,8C,AH,5D,KS ]
bruno46 bets $10, Otto calls $8.35 and is all-in.

I think he has K-5 of hearts and has hit two pair on the river.

SHOWDOWN
bruno46 shows [ 7H,6H ]
Otto mucks cards [ AC,AD ]
bruno46 wins $1.65, bruno46 wins $26.80.

In reviewing it, the only thing I can see doing differently is making him pay more on the flop for his draw. If I’d have bumped it to, say, $5 he might have laid it down. But I really didn’t want him to lay it down at that point.

So, go ahead, tell me how bad I suck. But be gentle.

2

Here’s where you fold. That too much money on a 3 of a kind. He’s bluffing or could have either a flush or straight going and you can’t beat either without another Ace. That’s the hard part of online play, though, you can’t read body language to know whether he’s bluffing, taking a chance on the next card or already sitting pretty.

3

He can’t have a flush. There are only two hearts on the board. Had the river been a heart I definitely would have folded because I had him on a flush draw already.

4

If you mean I should have folded on the turn, what’s your reasoning? Once the river came there weren’t any more cards for him to be waiting for so I don’t understand what you’re saying there. And even if he hit a flush on the turn I still win if the board pairs on the river to give me a full house, but since I put him on the flush draw on the flop I would’ve folded at any time if another heart hit.

5

I don’t think you did that bad. It was a tough break. The only think that could beat you was a straight and he had it. When someone bets that much he either has the nutz or is bluffing. Unfortunately for you he was chasing 2 hands and both are able to beat. All i can say is be wary when there are possible straight or flush draws and someone on the blinds is betting big. Since they do the forced bet, most end up playing hands they normally wouldn’t, which can surprise you, as it did here.

6

I snipped the wrong part. But on review I had the river and turn bets backwards in my head. At only a $2 bet, you did right to stay in. For some reason I thought the $10 bet was on the turn would have been a sign to fold. Sorry for the mix-up.

For my money, though, I would never go all in on a three-of-a-kind. Let him buy the hand if you think that’s what he’s doing and get your $5 back later. IMHO.

7

Okay, here goes…

With AA before the flop, you want to get as much money in as you can. In a NL game, being first to act, I think you’re okay.

You don’t want to get people out with AA. You want them to put as much money in as you can get. Sometimes in a NL game it’s worth just smooth calling with AA, hoping that someone raises in late position. Then when it comes back to you, raise with a large bet and now you can get some real dead money in the pot. You were in a tough spot to build a big pot, though.

You made a mistake here. Your bet in a NL game should be enough to ensure that anyone who calls you is not getting the odds they need for their draw. Since the major draw here is a flush, the players are a little worse than 5:1 to hit it with one card to come (and no cards that pair the board). There’s $2.25 in the pot. I’d have raised probably $12 or so.

In your case, with the chip stack you had, you should have pushed it all in on the flop when he bet.

Another mistake. Bruno led the betting on the flop, so it’s unlikely that he hit a gut-shot straight on the turn (unless he had a flush draw to go with it). So you probably have a better hand than the bettor, and now there’s $4.25 in the pot. With top set, you have to put the heat on. I’d raise $25. Of course, you didn’t have that much, so assuming you didn’t go all-in on the flop, you should have pushed it all in on the turn.

More likely he’s betting a paired ace or a set of 8’s, since he called a raise before the flop and bet out on the flop into the raiser. My guess at this point would be either 88 or AK/AQ.

7H6H is the only other hand he could have had. He had a gutshot and a flush draw, and hit his straight.

There was no point in this hand where you could lay down your AA. Your primary problem was playing it too weakly. Sure, you lost, and would have lost regardless, since he probably doesn’t fold his straight draw/flush draw on the flop. But of all the most likely hands he had, you were the big favorite to win.

In no limit poker, you need to know how to protect your hand. It’s not a game for the timid. When you flop a set of Aces, you should expect to either win a large stack of money or lose a large stack. You aren’t getting off that hand cheaply.

Also, it sounds like you might be playing too passively. No limit poker is a game of aggression. You had about the best hand you can get, and had you won the hand you would have won a small pot. You had much the best of it - heads up against someone with at best a flush draw. Assuming you had a big stack of chips in front of you, that pot should have been about $100 by the time it was won (or lost). You probably would have lost anyway, but in that heads-up matchup you were about a 3-1 favorite to beat that player. If you can’t bet your stack with those kinds of odds, don’t play no limit poker.

Think about your situation: The way you played the hand, he gets to try for his flush cheaply. Had he missed the flush/straight on the river, he might have tried a $2 bluff bet, but if you raise he folds. So you win a minimal amount. If you put the heat on him while he’s still got a hand to draw to, you win more when he misses - enough to make up for the times when he hits it. That’s why you need to be aggressive. And, if you raise enough to not give him the odds to draw, he is not forced to either give up his pot equity on the spot, which cuts down your own variance, or he calls incorrectly, and you profit from incorrect calls.

Fair warning: No limit is not really my game. I’ve played a few hundred hours of it (including a game where bets were measured in the thousands of dollars), but I’ve never been really comfortable with it, except in tournaments. Looking at my stats, I’ve made considerable money playing no-limit, but the tension of knowing my whole stack is always at risk stresses me out.

8

Listen to Sam Stone. It sounds like right now you’re playing scared. You can’t guarantee you won’t lose, nor can you only bet when you have the stone cold nuts. Poker is a probabilitistic game. Your goal is not to win every hand you play, it’s to maximize your odds so that over many many hands you come out ahead.

As long as you’re putting your money into strong hands (i.e. not a pair of sevens with aces and kings on the board), you’ll come out ahead.

9

I can’t add anything to Sam’s breakdown; I had several thoughts, but he expressed them all better than I could. You have to bet high enough early on that his bet on the draw is a mistake. If he calls it and beats you anyway, that’s poker; fortunately, the handy Player Notes feature at most sites will allow you to seek him out again and get it back over time.

AA should not be afraid of ANYTHING preflop–the best situation you could have is ten people putting in four bets each (or, in NL, a pile of money each). AAA on the flop shouldn’t be afraid of anything either; heck, even if the trips aren’t good enough, you have at least seven outs to an unbeatable boat or quads.

A great place to post hands for review, BTW, is Two Plus Two. They’re not too hard on the noobs. :slight_smile:

While we’re talking poker, a question for Sam (or anyone)–in low limit hold’em, over a long series of hands (long enough to approach the mean), about what percentage of flops should one be seeing? I’m consistently seeing about 28-30%, which seems like a lot, but since you’re in the BB and the SB 20% of the time (and see maybe 3/4 of those hands), it’s only an average of 1-2 other hands per orbit. I still feel like I’m playing a lot of hands I shouldn’t be.

10

DoctorJ: I’d say that’s a little high. I think I average something like 17-20% or so. The limt you are playing makes a big difference, though. If you are playing 2-4, or 10-20, the small blind is half a bet. If you’re playing 3-6, the small blind is 1/3 of a bet. In a 3-6 game, you should be playing the small blind a lot tighter than in the other games, which should bring down your average significantly.

Another difference will be how aggressive the games are. If the games you play in have a lot of pre-flop raising, you will be giving up a lot of your blinds.

11

Sam, I don’t know if you read my Pit thread to which I refer in my OP. Normally I would want people in the hand when I have AA but I’ve had a series of outdraws and bad beats lately at the hands of people who play the .25-.50 table with the philosophy that if they can see the flop for a quarter they will, but if they have to put in any more than that without some strong possibilities they’ll fold. I was getting beat by 8-3 os and the like on a regular basis because I was getting outdrawn by chasers. My feeling right now, at that site and at that blind level, is that I want about four people in the hand to see the flop because more than that and someone will outdraw me. I ended up with three, so the way I feel right now I was almost exactly where I wanted to be.

I agree that I’m playing passively. That has been my biggest problem all along. Online I tend to play fairly tight. I am a lot more aggressive in offline games but for whatever reason I have some trouble translating that into online play. Also, I feel like I’m a better tournament player than ring player. I’ve been finishing high in offline tournaments and cleaning up at online play money tournaments (which are a completely different animal and require different skills). Couple that with having been in a bad patch online lately and I think my confidence in online ring play has taken something of a hit. I don’t think I’m playing “scared” as Giraffe put it but I could definitely be playing stronger. I was starting to feel better again about online ring play which is why I went back to it today, and ended up on the losing side of two costly hands.

Plus I was paying bills today and may have unconsciously been thinking about the money that was flowing out of my checking account.

12

Otto: It sounds to me like you might be playing with scared money. If paying the bills is intruding into your poker thinking, perhaps you should be thinking about building a bankroll before playing.

In a limit game, AA is the only hand that is more profitable before the flop as the number of callers increases. The best situation for AA from an EV standpoint is ten callers and a capped pot. Now, obviously you’d rather play against five people paying two bets than ten people paying one, but just keep in mind that your goal with AA is not to ‘get people out’, but to build the biggest pot you can.

In no-limit, if you could get your entire stack into the pot before the flop you’d be way ahead, since AA is by far the best hand you can get (it’s not just a little better than KK or AKs - it’s a LOT better).

If you’re having problems getting drawn out by the fish, don’t look at AA as your problem. Make sure you aren’t playing hands like AT, KJ, QT, etc. These hands play poorly in large multi-way pots. Also, if you are playing timidly you’ll get killed in those games. You have to realize in very loose games that you have to do things like raise for value with draws. If you have a nut flush draw, for instance, don’t be afraid to cap it on the flop if you’re guaranteed at least two or three callers, and cap it again on the turn if you have five callers or more. In loose games, this is often the case.

The way you beat loose games is to A) play premium hands that play well in multi-way pots, like pairs and big suited connectors, and B) making sure that the fish pay the maximum for their thin draws. Sometimes the best hand in a multi-way pot is the best draw. If you’re in there with a nut flush draw, you may be in better shape from an EV standpoint than someone with top pair and no other draws.

Also recognize that variance in loose games is large. You’ll get drawn out a lot, but when you win pots they’ll be bigger than they ‘should be’. It’s your job to make sure the pots you win are as big as possible.

13

You might be better off sticking with online tournaments. I am a MUCH stronger ring player than a tournament player (though I’m learning), and I still turn a consistent profit in the tournaments. You know exactly how much money you could potentially lose, and it’s easier to be aggressive with tournament chips. (I could NEVER play a NL ring game.)

14

Nah, I’m not being serious about that.

I’m not looking at any specific hand as the problem. I think I do a pretty good job of pre-flop hand selection. Typical situation is I’ll be in with QQ and the flop will come Q-8-3. I’ll hit my set and bet and the twit who called a pre-flop raise with 8-3 os will stay in to pick up their boat on the river. It may cost me a little money in the sort-term, but for right now, given the choice of having seven or eight people in the hand and four, I’ll take the four.

15

Did you have any kind of passive/aggressive loose/tight profile on Bruno? I have a hard time helping review a hand if I don’t have your read on someone. If he was an unknown I would have raised (probably all-in) on the flop. Since you were heads-up,
it’s not worth it to give him a flush/straight draw.

16

At which point you collect all of the little bastard’s money, since your Queens full of 8s beats his 8s full of 3s. :smiley:

Sam Stone did a nice analysis of the hand. I’m far less qualified to comment than he is, but I’d agree that the mis-step was not coming in with a large bet on the flop, once you see the heart flush out there.

17

Not much of one. He hadn’t been at the table for more than a few hands and he wasn’t doing much of anything from a pattern stance. I thought I had a better read on the cards than the player, which obviously wasn’t as good as I thought. I had him on the flush draw from the start and I agree now that I should have raised him out of the pot on the flop, but I didn’t get a straight draw on him until the 5 hit the turn. At which time I thought he had either a pair of 5s or four to the straight.

Oops. I mixed up two bad beat hands, one where my trip QQQ went down to a gutshot straight and another where my straight got killed by a boat on the river. Both times I had the best hand until the river and both times I already had most of my money in the pot and donated the rest.

Just to clarify the whole “paying bills” thing, I don’t play with money that I can’t afford to lose. I keep less than a week’s pay in my poker account, and usually less. Choosing between paying the bills and playing poker is not a financial issue. The only reason I even mentioned it was as a sort of joke but with the outside possibility that sitting at the same desk where I’d just written out $1000 worth of checks might have been somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain. I absolutely was not consciously thinking “I’d better only raise this $2 because otherwise I won’t have grocery money” or anything like that. I was watching a show on the history of poker this weekend and Doyle Brunson made a comment along the lines of “the great players have no regard for money.” I spend money like I have no regard for it but I can’t say as I play poker that way.