There was an interesting player at the table tonight whose raises I could never really figure out.

For quite a while he was making raises to $35 on SOMETHING (this was a pretty big raise at this table), not exactly sure what, and I never had a truly big hand to test him with a re-raise. Anyhow, if he was making these on truly premium hands, he was catching a lot of those, and no one ended up getting him to show, although once an A flashed. Just guessing, I'd say it occurred about every 20 hands over a period of maybe 2-3 hours, then died down for the last couple of hours. He did show a 55 once, which I'm pretty sure was unraised (one of the guys at the table speculated "any pocket pair," but I'm a bit skeptical of that theory).

The one time I did have a hand to challenge him a bit was a JJ I had in one of the blinds (he had position on me, sitting across the table). I just flat call, and the flop comes T-high. I went ahead and bet $70 into it, and he flat-called. Right or wrong, I somehow put him on QQ at that point (just my intuition). Q hits on the turn. I check to him, and he moves in for $250. I obviously fold, since there's all kinds of stuff out there that beats me (guy next to me, who was a pretty good reader, also put him on QQ).

Anyhow, I don't have any problems with my betting on that hand, but it's interesting to me that he didn't raise the flop if he did have QQ. I wonder if he feared a set from me (I'm sure he read me as tight by that time, although I don't think we'd played together before) on the flop. But it's also possible that he was raising and calling with something like AQ (or even AK and thought that after my check, the Q was a scare-card for me, as it was).

So, now to my real question: Thinking about this hand, this guy is going to be very hard to stack when I do make my set, and $35 is a pretty big raise to deal with (I have to take somewhere around $250 when I hit in order to make drawing to the set profitable). Well, if my QQ assessment was right, I don't think I can do that against this guy. So, my conclusion for the moment was simply: Just lay down little pairs and give him no action on that kind of raise.

I also think he might be a good candidate for an AK re-raise, although I wish someone at the table had hit AA or KK to his $35 raise just to see his response to a re-raise first. Any ideas?

If it's worth anything as point of information, I gathered he had played some big games before out in L.A. He didn't seem like a super-great player (did a lot of calling and turned over a lot of AX hands after limps, too), but it kind of aggravates me trying to figure out this $35 raise thing as well as appropriate counter-strategy. Hopefully I'll see him again and get some more data on what this raise really means...

So he was raising $35 with 5% of his hands? If those just happened to be the top 5% of his hands, that wouldn't be terrible play, would it? I mean, that's something like AA-JJ and AK with maybe 1.5 times the normal frequency. He showed a 55 one time, maybe because he couldn't get any action on his raises and wanted poorer hands to call him. If he seems like a good player, that would be a good dynamic adaptation to make in the circumstances you're describing.

I think he's a guy who wants to sit tight and punish people when he has the cards to back up his bets. He was not getting any action, so he makes an extra raise or two to loosen up his image and maybe overtly advertise.

I think that your counterstrategy isn't much different from normal play against a raiser, except that you tighten up your reraising and calling standards just a little bit because of the raise size. You might just have to wait for a super-premium hand and re-raise him big.

That's a good point, Ais, about bluffing the set. I would tend to agree that you would need much more repetitive of a read to get to that conclusion though, with any degree of certainty.

Looks like you just ran into a genuinely good, tough player who is willing to make some tough folds. Tough to really get money out of that kind of player, so I would focus my attention on other players on the table.

Was he generally opening a pot when raising?
If think you might be able to tell more about this raise given his position and limpers to him. If he is opening the pot, he might be chucking that raise in there with KQo QJs AJo ATs 77 and better. Where as if he has limpers to him, it might step up to AQs AKo JJ and better and limp the previous group.

The size of the raise is fairly steep and I generally see this kind of play with massive stacks extreme squeezers or total yahoos. The yahoos it is invariably is some weak pair or a hand that doesn't really want action and the squeezers it is strength. It doesn't sound like this guy is a yahoo except I would expect him to buy in to closer to $500+ to be making this raise with medium strength hands, instead of putting 10-15% of his stack in on a raise.

Seeing that not much was shown down, it is going to be tough to make a good counter strategy against him, except play premiums until your read is more honed in. I probably wouldn't reraise AK against him out of position and probably flat call in position, and maybe not even AA or KK if limped as first to act and he whacks in that kind of raise. With his stack size if you lead and check the turn he is likely to be commited to a one pair hand if not now then at the river. It sounds like the kind of player that will keep throwing chips in the pot once he has taken iniative to raise the pot. I hate not knowing where I am in a hand with a big pair, but take the good with the bad against a big raiser that is aggressive post flop.

Thanks, guys!

I guess what was really bothering me is that the $35 raise is too much given the field that night. So, why is he making this kind of raise fairly frequently (for a certain phase) when it normally just folds the field?

Then he makes a huge play against my JJ, but if he did have QQ, I don't like his not raising me on the flop. I just think that's the minimum obligation of a big pair. They can fold to my set (when I have it) after that if they want, if they're a good player. But if they fail to raise their raised overpair on the flop when I bet into them, I'm going to start thinking about ways to attack them.

One possibility is that he was running bad lately. Sometimes in NL it can feel like you get no action on your big hands unless someone outflops you. It's painful to have to lay down overpairs time after time, and if you're running bad when you do decide to take a stand with them and your opponent has a set it can leave you wanting to make big raises when you get good cards.

It could also be that he plays in a different game normally, and that game just tends to have bigger pre-flop raises. I've been at some tables where the standard preflop raise is 10xBB, and others where it is 3xBB. Though you think he would adjust after a time if that was the case.

Either way you made a justified lay down in the hand you did play against him. The style he's playing tends to make most pots he plays big pots, and you don't want to get involved in them unless you have a big hand or a great read.

Yeah, I think that's also part of it. He was saying something about these games out near L.A., where everybody's raising all the time and has enormously deep stacks. The guys around here often tend to exaggerate/brag about these things, I think, but there's probably some truth to it.

Oh, just as anecdote: I apparently just missed Amarillo Slim at the casino last night, where he played the Omaha table for a while before I got there... I was wondering if any of the pros would ever show up here, although I'm sure the games are generally way too small for them.