Should I find a tight flop fold with my aces?

[Cam Law]

1-2 at Chasers Poker Room
Starting Stack:300

Preflop: In this hand I’m in the big blind and look down at a very nice looking AhAd. The action opens up with the villain limping in from utg+2 followed by the small blind completing. I bump it up to 12 and they both call.

Pot Size: 36

Flop: 2h6h7h

After seeing this monotone flop the villain leads out for 10 and the small blind calls. I hadn’t seen either of these two get out of line up through this point and kind of tagged them both as fairly straightforward bet when they had something players. I put them both on pair plus flush draw hands or combo draws, with weird hands like Kh2x certainly within their ranges. For this reason I decide there’s value to be had in raising, though in hindsight I’m not sure about this play. Anyway, I bump it up to 50 and the villain utg+2 snap shoves for 150 on top of my raise. The small blind folds and at this point I think he’d only make this play with a flush but I level myself into a call thinking I still have equity with my Ah. The board bricks out and he shows 3h5h and we lose.

What do you guys think of my play here? Should I have just flatted the flop bet and reevaluate on the turn? Should I have found a fold to the jam?

Thanks for reading guys and look forward to hearing what you all think!

[Dave Thompson]

This is a tough spot which is very hard to get away from. My first comment would be that as the PFR, I would almost certainly lead out on this flop, since I have the overpair with a redraw to the nut flush. As played, I don’t fault your check/raise on the flop, since there are lots of worse hands that could be betting the flop and will call a raise (mostly hands containing the Kh/Qh/Jh). Unfortunately V is very unlikely to have KhKx/QhQx/JhJx since he didn’t 3-bet you preflop. When he shoves, it’s basically just a math problem. If I’m counting correctly, you need to call 150 to win 296. So you’re getting just under 2 to 1. That means you need to have the best hand or draw to the best hand 1/3 of the time in order for a call to be profitable. You have 2 chances to hit your flush (you have 6 clean outs twice since 4h makes him a straight flush). Against the exact hand V had (or pretty much any made flush), you have about 27% equity (according to the Poker Cruncher app). That’s almost the 1/3 you need right there. So basically if you ever have the best hand here (i.e. don’t need to hit your flush), then this is a clear call. If you think you always need to hit the flush to win, then it’s close but it looks like a fold.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Dave Thompson.

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