24 Oct 12 02:53 PM , awf200 wrote:

Ok so I've got one for you from todays morning league game, i'm playing on the app so using old fashioned notes (My Brain! Very Dangerous!!) I have the player UTG as being aggressive and playing a little bit left field

Going to play this out one step at time and soak up your thoughts and then post my thoughts at the end, so lets get this party started

We are on the button with AJ suited facing an UTG raise, what are we doing what are we thinking our opponent is on?

 

Preflop: If you think you can get your opponant to bluff all-in it is worth raising to 750 and calling their shove. This ensures you get maximum value against loose players. It does mean they might call but you have a good hand, in position so you shouldn't be too worried. I think you have too many chips to go all in now even though the opening raise was quite large. If you just go all in you essentially turn your hand into a bluff against many opponants as they will only call if they have a better hand. If you think your opponant is unlikely to be induced to bluff, calling is also fine as we have position and a good hand. Against really tight opponants we can fold especially if they have shown a tendancy to only raise this much preflop with really good hands. However, I would avoid doing this in low stakes games unless I have a really good read as I would expect players to play quite loosely.

Postflop: AcQh3c 2c 4s

When our opponent bets full pot on the flop it is a sign of strength but our hand is too strong to think about folding when we have relatively few chips compared to the pot size. 33, QQ, AA, AQ, A3, AK are the only hands that beat us (we don't expect them to have Q3 and A3 should be unlikely). And frankly it is hard to have those hands when we have one of the aces. Low stakes games will play too loosely in general to fold in this situation.

Calling the bet is going to be better than raising on the flop because we can then hope to induce a bluff on the turn. Considering we don't want to fold all we want to think about is getting value and we don't want to scare off a worse hand be raising. They may pick up a flush draw or something on the turn and bluff off more chips to us.

On the turn we need to shove just because we would have so little chips left if we call and want to make sure we get maximum value. If they have any kind of hand (pair or draw) they can't really fold after committing most of their chips. If we just call it'll be obvious we have a hand and are not folding to a river shove so they are not going to bluff.

If you have any more questions about the hand or my thought process please ask away! :-)