Puke - repeatedly.

[Ojingo]

It's been a rough week. I'm running pretty awful and, as usual, making some dubious moves. Your fair criticism please for the following hands.

Hand 1) $100 PLO. Villain is GentleWarrior. He's playing all $100 and $200 tables and is -as usual- up about 3k for the session. He probably views me as weak tight but I've made some adaptations in my play against him and, for this session, am hanging in pretty well. I feel I'm raising him with the right frequency and otherwise I've tightened up a bit, so he's not making much money off me. I have $100, he has a monster stack.

I get AAKJds. EP limps, villain raises, I repot (part of my new strategy, reraising in position with strong hands), EP calls, villain calls.
Flop: 972r. EP checks, Villain checks, I check behind.
Turn: 3, giving me the nut flush draw. EP checks, villain pots ($38 or so), I push.

Pro: villain likes to pick up any pot which others don't seem to want and preys on weakness. He doesn't have a set or a big draw or he wouldve led the flop.
Contra: it's 50 for him to call in a $170 pot so he should call with any two pair or draw, since it's clear I don't have a big hand either.

Outcome: villain had T554, two hearts and hit on the river.

Hand 2) Same opponent, different table.
I have a double stack here, villain covers.
I raise in LP with AAT9ss with Ac. Villain repots from SB. I make it $48 (I realize this is pretty bad given the stack sizes but I did it before I knew it ), he quickly calls.
Flop: 67J two clubs. Villain instantly pots, I shove.

Pro: villain knows I have AA, and will pot any flop since he thinks he has enough FE. I must take a stand against this at some point and can't let him have every pot if I don't hit it hard. He likely has something, but I'm still ahead of his range here.
Contra: I can't make him fold by shoving, and he's getting the correct price to call with almost anything. Thus, I'm always the one making a mistake on this flop while he is always correct to call.

Outcome: villain of course called with 9TJKr and rivered a J.

Part of the problem in both hands is that I don't have any folding equity; once villain makes a bet or raise he will never fold as that would undermine his overall strategy. Therefore he is correct, and even forced, to take on small draws and play huge pots as an underdog.

[pokerzen]

[Aisthesis]

First of all, I just don't like re-raises with very few exceptions. I just don't see the point of getting more than maybe 10% of stack-depth in as a general rule. There's the obvious AA exception if you can get at least 60% in PF, and there are quite a few other hands I'm not releasing regardless of PF action (but I'm not going to push it too hard either).

Also, I particularly don't like re-raising AA under those circumstances. I hope you won't take it as a hijack if I give an example from last night's casino 1/2/5. There was one guy who was raising to $10 at least 95% of the time. I also don't think I ever saw him fold a hand PF in 8 hours, never failed to call a re-raise. My response: I did make a few "adjustment re-raises" to $25 or so in LP just on basica strong hands. And I made it $40 one on KK77, did succeed in isolating him, and took down the pot on a pretty scary board (568ss where I didn't have flush draw and had only the consolation of having blockers to the straight) on the flop.

In general, I just think re-raising pot most of the time decreases your ability to outplay your opponents on the flop and increases the whole "gamble" aspect. Personally, I like having a healthy raise in there when I have a good hand--and I like it even better if there's a healthy raise and 7 players all see the flop. But in order for skill to prevail over gamble, you really need to have enough depth left to outplay them after that.

Ok, so much for my "philosophy of re-raises."

Hand 1: In a 3-way pot, I think you need to bet AA. It's easier to bet if you've just called rather than re-raised, but then it may not be a 3-way pot, and the hand is imo then unbettable on that flop. Anyhow, aside from all re-raises, in a 3-way pot, that flop is imo a hit for AA and has to be bet. If you'll also re-raise 89TJ and villain knows it, better for you.

Hand 2: Double-stacked, the re-raise is even worse (shorter the stack, better the re-raise on AA), but you know that already. Post-flop, I like your play against this opponent and after that action. Sets are extremely unlikely here, the hand he has very likely. The strongest hands he can have are 89TJ or 789T, to which you're probably in fairly bad shape, but I don't think he has them so often that you can't play it as you did.

I'll tell you, though, I'd much rather re-raise a good ss big wrap or a strong KK than AA against a clever LAG like this guy, although in this case, you have no stack-depth left to capitalize on it, really.

Anyhow, a solution I'm quite happy with against aggro opponents is just to decide what I want to play my good hands for. Like at the 1/2/5 with $300 or even $600 in front of me, I'm quite happy playing a bunch of premium hands for $25 with or without position, so I strive for that. If it's $10 PF and I have a good ss wrap in LP, I'll just bump it to $25. They almost never re-raise, and if they do, I'm calling, and I'm the one with the advantage here, because they don't know what I have.

I suppose these re-raise battles can serve to throw your opponents off, but I have the experience that they end up throwing me off and revealing more than I care to. I'm quite happy with just staying calm, being reasonably aggro PF without going crazy about it, then just seeing the flop and taking it from there. I think the trick to beating this guy (or at least not letting him run over you, since it sounds like he's quite good at what he does) is just staying calm and objective and playing the flops as they come. If you miss, let him have it. OOP, trap him a bit when you hit big (which can also mean betting out if you bet out on mediocre hands short-handed and are being forced to fold to raises), stuff like that.