i think 77 is the most likely. he could play a non-boated PP the same way....but then the all-in at the river is kind of crazy. and sometimes i play a flopped boat that same way when OOP. i check...hoping that the raiser will take the lead on the flop. when he doesn't...i feel compelled to build the pot at least slightly...so i generally bet the turn. granted...i usually dont freak out and push all-in at the river...but maybe he wants it to look like a bluff.

waiting eagerly for the results....

jon

Yeah, I'm very interested in the results here, too. If droq wins this one with a call, I may have to seriously rethink my play against LAGs.

I like the idea of letting them hang themselves, but you also have to be able to lay down if you're beat by letting them draw all those free cards by playing the hand passively...

droqqa,

I'm starting to get a sense of where you are going with this, and why you were pretty sure you were ahead and called and won.

Let's say you had AK on this board.

Questions in that case:

(1) Would you EVER play this board the same way you played it with AA?

(2) If somehow you did play the flop & turn this way with AK, can you fold that AK to the all-in on the river?

I'm guessing that the answers are: (1) no, holding AK you would not give someone with a pocket pair the chance to see all five cards and possibly beat you; and (2) yes, if somehow you did slowplay AK, you could fold it on the river given this action.

If that's correct, and if your opponent knows you're a solid player, then your opponent has to feel like his bluff is working most of the time. He is pretty sure you're not on AK, and unless you're on KK you're going to have a hard time calling.

You ... knew he would think this, so you slowplayed your monster and busted him.

Am I right?

If the thinking gets this complicated at 10/20 I'm sure I'm never going to get there.

Great discussion all. I decided to call his all-in on the river. He showed and I won!

I really should have raised the turn, but as I played it, I can see good arguments for calling and folding the river. Truthfully, I went with my gut on this one, but here was my logic...

Whether I call or not depends entirely on what I think he puts me on. I have played a lot with this opponent on 10/20 and I had a feeling he thought I was a weak-tight, set-farming nit. I knew that when I checked behind on the flop, he would fire the turn. Also, I thought that when I called the turn, there was a good chance he would fire the river too on a bluff, which is why I called instead of raising. I would not play a King this way, and I had a feeling that he suspected as much. Thus, I thought that he did not put me on a King when I called the turn. And, his bet on the river seemed too aggressive. Since I felt he did not put me on a King, his bet didn't make sense. But If I thought he put me on a King, then he had to have a boat there, as I would be hard pressed to fold AK in such a scenario.

Believe me, I came very close to folding and in fact it may be the better option in the long term. I just posted this hand because I felt it involved a lot of higher level, "what does he put me on / is he thinking what I'm thinking" kind of logic. It also raises the interesting question: since so many of you advocated fold, would you also be able to fold AK here?

One more thing - my opponent in this hand was not a maniac by any stretch - he had good starting hand requirements - but he played very aggressively post flop. I knew when he called my raise he had to have a PP - he would have raised or re-raised AK coming in, and he wouldnt call a 7xBB raise OOP with suited connectors with no other callers and him closing the action. The fact that I had this info on him did allow me to play the hand more passively against him - I knew he had to have a boat or just 2 pair - no straight or flush draws scared me, nor would he hold K-anything.
Thanks all

D

So you think he would play it differently if he thought you have AK, and he had 77 for a boat? How do you think he would have played it, value bet on the river?

I use this river all in quite often with boats, when I am pretty sure my opponent was on a flush draw and has completed his flush. I'm trying to represent a steal on the 3rd flush card, or a smaller flush, and it's difficult for them to lay down the nut flush. Some people can do it, but if the pot is built to a resonable size so they get 2:1 odds I think it's a hard lay down.

If I had AK and I raised the turn to 800, I probably wouldn't fold the river because of the odds. In this case, with 1500 to call for a 2400 pot, where I invested about 400, I would be about 50/50 on laying it down.