$50NL @ Prima

relevant players:

UTG (no read yet....$32)
MP2 (solid/aggressive...$30)
me in MP3 with $54


UTG minraises to $1. MP2 calls. i reraise to $4 with [Ac] from MP3. UTG + MP2 both call.

flop: [Kd][Jh]
pot size: $12.75

UTG leads for $1. MP2 calls. alarm bells go off. i decide that i certainly can't lay down the rockets for $1...smooth calling is out of the question....i raise to $10. UTG thinks for a while and calls...MP2 folds.

turn:
pot size: $33.75

UTG goes all-in for his remaining $17.60

this doesn't look so good. BUT i've developed this table image where half of the $50NL Prima players seem convinced that i'm always bluffing. BUT i also don't think i've played enough hands with this guy for him to appreciate that.

what should i do?

jon

actually....if the pot is $33....UTG's $17 all-in makes the pot $50. at which point i'd be calling $17 to win $50 and therefore getting approximately 3:1 from the pot. as long as i win more than 1 time in 4, im +EV.

jon

I think you're losing. You are getting great odds though...

but still.. that $1 bet on the flop is a "please don't raise me bet, i'm drawing." Looks like the flush to me. I guess he could have a pair with the but I'm just leaning towards the flush.
His low stack size also points to a calling station, fish like quality. And when fish bet...it's usually a bad thing

i thought about this, and came really close to laying it down. but it just didn't feel like the flush. i couldn't think of a real hand that he would play this way. i hadn't seen him throw out a $1 bet into a $12 pot on any of the other hands. and i was getting 3-1 from the pot. so i called.

he was semi-bluffing w/ the [Ts]. river was a blank and i dragged the pot. why he called my flop raise or my preflop reraise i'll never know

jon

Good job! I was putting him more on AK with Ad, in the optimistic (or pessimistic?) opinion that he might be serious.

I probably would have bet the flop a little harder and made less money here--or who knows, maybe he would have continued anyway... ??

regarding betting harder on the flop....im always a little unsure of what to do when someone vastly underbets the pot and i want to raise. the problem with a pot sized raise IMO is that in addition to offering him 2:1 pot odds on a call.....he's also faced with calling roughly 15x his initial bet....which is pretty huge. i don't want to make AK fold. i dont want to make the draws fold (because i am pretty good at NOT paying off flush-chasers)...and in this situation if im up against QT i have 2 of his straight outs.

i wanted to define my hand....be able to lay it down if he came over the top on the flop...but at the same time provide the possibility for a losing hand to call. i felt like popping it up to $15 would ensure that i wouldnt get called if i was ahead.

jon

Well, surely to God AK won't fold to a pot-sized bet! There's $14.75 by the time it gets to you, and I'd have probably made it something like $15, which is actually still an underbet.

Of course, you REALLY don't want AT to fold here, but whatever. For some strange reason, I often assume that opponents actually have a hand.

I wouldn't even worry about the 15 times original bet. The $1 bet was a joke right from the beginning. All it does is just throw some dead money into your pot. It's just a (slightly) glorified check.