Thanks for the replies.
Interestingly (at least to me), the issue with the hand as I played it turned out to be my pre-flop play rather than my bet after the flop.
To respond to the question or criticism that several of you posted, my min raise pre-flop was motivated by a few things. First, I had good position on the hand and only decent cards. Obviously, KJ is not a premium holding, but from very late position, with only one limper in front of me, I felt them worth playing.
So then, I had to figure out how much to invest in the hand. My min raise was based upon a desire to weed out the field, but still not invest a bunch in a hand that I might have to get away from if the flop was ugly. For example, a min raise will often force out the small blind and occasionally the big blind. If my min raise got rid of either of the blinds, I would have been happy.
I did not throw in a standard pre-flop raise of 3-4x BB because I did not want to get into the hand too much before the flop. My thought is that on most hands, I won't hit anything and then I am put to the test if I have invested 3-4x BB already. Do I walk away from the hand? Do I play at it again? Those decisions are much tougher if I have invested more in the hand. If I have a min raise into the hand, it is easy to dump the hand if the flop misses me.
Imagine if the flop came up . At that point, I have some interesting draws, but I am also facing a limper in front of me with an Ace on the board. Could he have limped in with Ace + rag? Certainly! At this level, its even probable. So when he bets at the pot, I probably have to walk away from the hand. And that is much harder to do if I have invested 3-4x BB.
I know that there are lots of ways to play every hand. But my thought process was to see the flop, relatively cheaply, and to still weed out the field a bit (pre-flop). I thought the min raise accomplished those goals as best as possible.
Please, please, please let me know if my reasoning is off here.
Thanks again for the input.Statistics: Posted by Tressemy — Sat Jul 29, 2006 12:02 pm
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