Had my biggest loss in a hand yesterday - QQ

[Soul]

Hi,

Been lurking a bit after first coming here for excessions PT articles(which are great!). I started playing poker 7 months ago, been playing mostly SNG's with a ROI of about 20%. After playing some NL waiting for a tourney start I got totally bitten by the bug and have been playing NL since then. So only been playing NL cash a good month.

So far I've mostly played on a crypto site, full table ($0.5-1), here's my stats:
Hands: 1,187
VP$IP: 25
PFR%: 6.5
WtSD: 24
BB/100 (PT): 12.42

Here's the hand:

I got dealt in the BB. I have villain covered.

4 limpers then LP raises to 3$ (he's LAP so I don't take his raise too seriously)
SB calls, I raise to 5$ (which I realize now probably was a mistake, how big raise here?)

Goes to the flop with 4 (!) calling my reraise. Flop:

I make it $10 (pot $23-too weak?) , villain (UTG+1) calls. LP calls, BB folds.

Pot is now $53 and 2 people calling me. At this point I can't figure out what they have, should this make me step on the brakes? The Turn is a Still thinking I'm ahead I make a half pot bet of $25. Villain reraises to $50 (going allin) LP folds. And I'm left with the decision to call his allin laying down another $25 in the pot. At this point I'm smelling a set, but I have a really hard time folding after putting so much in the pot and still having a hand. And the way some people play here I wouldn't be too surprised to see him holding AJ.

Well, I call ... River is helping neither of us as he is already holding and made his set on the flop.

Bring it on

[iceman5]

What put you in the bad situation that you were in th entire hand was your perflop play.
I would either just call the raise (depending on the player), or reraise much bigger to isolate him.
If I wanted to isolate him, or just win it now, I would raise to about $10.

[kennyg]

Yeah that small reraise isn't going to do much for you, as you saw. You have to put in a bigger reraise, epecsially in this spot, because you are out of position. Position is such a huge thing in NL, I can't stress that enough.

How the hand happened, your bet on the flop should have been more in the $15 range...If you still had two callers it's time to slow down. It's hard not to lose all your money against a set though, it takes a lot of experience. I do believe a bigger preflop raise might have saved you.

Also...why are you only buying in for around $50? I always recommend going in for a big stack to take full advantage of the other players. That $25 dollar raise would be a lot easier to get away from if you had more money in front of you. I promise, it's true! I'm sure Ice would back me up on these two points.

Better luck man!

[Mad Genius]

[Rhound50]

[Soul]

Getting so much response on a hand from a new poster really testifies to the exceptionally good forum you got going here.

>Also...why are you only buying in for around $50?
I buy in for the maximum, which is $100. Just lost a hand, and had not rebought any chips yet.

>Every hand is gonna call for $2 more preflop after investing $3 already
Only the player before me had raised to $3, the other ones had only $1 invested, so I thought $5 was enough for them to fold.

On a sidenote, I had upped my preflop aggressiveness today which earned me a bald eagle icon, but still ended up beeing my worst day yet loosing just below $200. It was a combination of alot of bad cards, very very rarely hitting anything on the flop. And called basically every time I tried a pot sized bluff (or semibluff if you will). Lost about $100 when I was called on a allin by a guy drawing to the flush on the turn, and I had a set. You know what he said to me after he hit his flush? 'It's all in the timing' .... I was fuming for an hour after that.

Anyway, thanks for the response so far.

[Rhound50]

Soul, a couple of things to keep in mind. First while poker tracker is a great tool, how good a player you are does not neccisarily come from what icon yout are rated. You dont have to be an eagle to be a winning player. There are eagles that are good players and win a lot, and there are eagles that lose a lot of money too. I am TPA and it has proven sucessfull for me. So dont think that you have to be an eagle to win. In my database, TPA actaully have a higher win % than TAA.

[Soul]