Isolate the short stack shove, or just call?

[Heath]

Had one of those hands that I thought about after and I’m not sure if I like the way I played it. I’ve been wondering if given the players involved anybody would have preferred my play or taken a different action.

Harrah’s Cherokee 1/2NL. In this hand, I’m in middle position and look down at AA. The action has folded to me and I make it $12 to go. The CO and BTN are somewhere between loose passive and calling stations (leaning toward calling stations preflop) so I knew I was getting some action, and as predicted they both called. SB folds, BB slides his short stack in for a total of $25. This point there is $62 in the pot, and as the action has opened back up to me I raised it another $60. CO and BTN fold, board came out low, I think it was 22634 or similar. BB didn’t looked thrilled, I turn my cards over and he mucked.

My question is do you like the isolation getting late positions out of the way, or would you just flat BB to get them to come along and hope they don’t flop two pair playing ATC? Not complaining about the outcome, but that hand left me curious as to how others would have played it.

[John S]

This is kind of close. Normally I would say this is a mandatory 4-bet to isolate, but considering how short the BB is you end up playing for such a small pot.

I’m not saying that raising here is bad, it’s always fine to do this pre-flop with AA, but in an instance like this I might call and try to entice the other players in rather than play for a 25BB pot.

[allin67]

I don’t think we have enough info to answer this question (stack sizes matter here). I generally favor raising here. Let’s assume that Hero and the two remaining Villains all have $200 stacks to start this hand. If you flat, you are giving villians great odds to call. If they have small pocket pairs, suited connectors, and suited one gapers, their calls would be very likely correct. You don’t want these hands in because you are out of position and won’t see these hands hit those times that they do hit. And unless you opponents are so bad that they will stack off with something like middle pair, your opponents with these holdings don’t represent a ton of potential profit. You want to be up against Broadway hands that flop top pair. Not knowing what your opponents have, I raise here as a default play. If my opponents are short stacked (maybe anything under $100) and loose and/or aggressive (ideally both), I like flatting more.

[Author]

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