Ice made a post recently about having kings against a guy who he puts on aces on an AKx flop.

i've got one similar to that from two weeks or so ago.

100nl on stars. opponent (BB) and i both have about a $150 stack. i know he's fairly tight aggressive, a little trickey, but not very good in general.however, I assume he's good enough to know i'm not raising utg with junk. . SB has a $50 stack. he's an unknown

I'm utg and find [Qc]. i raise to $4. folds to the SB who calls. BB reraises $8 more $12. i call and SB calls.

pot = $36. three way.

[7h][3s]. ok, i'm done. SB checks, and to my suprise the BB checks. I check behind him. his check terrfies me. i know he's not reraising me with AK out of position - and i don't know if he'd reraising JJ or QQ there either. i'm not happy. i start to hope he's making a weird aces play.

pot = $36. three way.

. ok, this is going to be interesting. SB checks, BB bets $22. I don't like this one bit. i've been worried after his flop check that i'm behind to KK. I flat call the bet. SB folds.

pot = $80. heads up

. check check.


I smooth called his bet on the turn mostly out of frustration. i felt 90% sure that he held KK, but... i mean come on, it's a set. i felt i was really just hoping he held AA. when the last heart fell i thought about trying to take the pot from him on the river, but felt i wasn't sure what size bet i could make to convince him i had the flush and still force him to fold what was likely to be a set.

he showed [Ks] and dragged.

before any of you gives me a hard time for playing the set this passively, to date, this is the only set over set hand that i haven't gone broke on.

that being said. comments? thoughts?

~Dustin

Yuck! I hate this hand as much as mine. At least yours didnt cost as much as mine.
I dont see any good way to play this. Hes almost always going to have KK there. I think you got lucky that the 4th heart hit so it didnt cost you any more to get to showdown.

These situations are really tricky, and I think you were very right to put him on K-K after his flop check. He was slowplaying his set. One discussion that a friend and I have had about limit vs no limit dealt with folding potentially winning hands. In limit you are trying to push every bit of your edge that you can and you can't afford to fold a winner very often and still be a winning limit player, but that isn't true for no limit. When you are on the turn with only $4 invested in the pot and your opponent's play strongly suggests that he has Kings I don't understand what is wrong with making the laydown (the same goes for Iceman's situation, although he had a little more invested in the pot). I keep hearing that NLH is about playing the people, not your cards. If you have a strong read that says your opponent has aces or kings for set over set and you are sitting there with $4 or some other small percentage of your stack invested in the pot why can't you fold? It isn't like limit where the cards and the math force you to go to the river and you aren't pot commited. If you are lucky enough to find out whether you were right or wrong you'll get to either pat yourself on the back for a good laydown or make a note on the player that they will re-raise you preflop with out A-A or K-K. Sure maybe you'll miss out on some strong winners some of the time, but you can afford that as a strong NL player because you'll make that money elsewhere anyways.

Stev
gruesome situation indeed....You played it better than i would have!! But a question for you---you said he was tight-aggressive and tricky, but not that good----TA and tricky sounds pretty good to me...
B

Yes, I agree with bobby. Let's put this as a question.

How can someone be tight-aggressive and tricky but NOT be a good player?

Thanks.

I hate the minraise in general but if there was ever a good time to use it, I think the turn might have been it. He is very likely to reraise with KK and smooth call with anything else. I don't know about you, but when he makes that $22 bet I'm not convinced that he has KK yet.