Cooler or Bad Play?

[Ryan]

I’m curious to hear if this was a bad play by me, or if it was a bit of a cooler.

2-2 NLH, pretty new to the table, only one reg who is not in the hand.

Straddle pot, utg makes a weird raise to 7. Player to my right folds, I raise to 20 with AQo(in hind sight, probably should’ve raised to 25 with the straddle)

Three people behind me call and we go to the flop.(about $110 in the middle)

Flop comes AQTr, UTG jams for about $135, I think and then rejam for about $150, players around fold.

He flips over KJ and we don’t improve.

Here’s my thought process… I’m putting him on a lot of AK. He is not a strong player and in hind sight it’s not likely, but he could make this play with AK to try and take it down. I recognize that KJ is an option but don’t think he’s raising that utg in a straddle pot very often. We block two of the three sets so come to a call. With the straddle, the dead money makes it basically equivalent to a standard 3-5 so I felt a little less apt to fold with it only being about 55 big blinded relative to the game with the straddle. Curious to hear others thoughts on it. Looking to improve so show no mercy.

[Anonymous]

Feels like a cooler. K10 beats you, sets beat you (you block two). He could also jam A10, Q10 (which you also block) and AK.

[David Wibel]

So the quality of play really depends on the strength of the player. Most of the time with lower stake players they jam in this situation to try to prevent people from catching up. I’ve seen it a lot when people have a middle flush or nut straights and they pray the board doesn’t pair up.

Against stronger players, it’s a much more reasonable call. Although I would guess most of those players would try to get a pot commiting bet and then shove over top.

[Author]

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