A Response to Fwalgman

FWALG says in a comment to this post: "I got an honest question and it is more because I do not play a very aggressive game and it interests me because I know you are aggressive and successfull[sic]. Please do not think this is questioning your play at all I am just trying to explore an interesting facit[sic] of the cash games.

Are hands like 55 and AK worth going all in with? Is it because of the fold equity where a good player will laydown to you? Any hand that called your 55 bet is going to be a 46% dog or something around that? Are these the margins I should be chasing in a n NL game? The AK hand you had him dominated but assuming he had QJ lets say and called your still on a coinflipish situation.

Help me understand why I should not be trying to see flops and outplaying the morons on the table instead of taking razor thin edges to the extreme. It is ok if you call me a woos. I am used to it."

I'm not sure what 55 hand you're talking about. With the TT, I'm 90% positive I have the best hand, and I'd like to take the pot down now with the $70 or so that's in there without having to see a flop, because once I see a flop, I'm going to see overcards and I don't like my TT that much. I can't really justify calling a PFR with 3 other people in with a pair of tens - I need to at least isolate because while it's the best hand now, it's probably not later. Also, if the initial raiser comes over the top of me, I can lay my hand down because I'm pretty sure I'm beat; I'm also sure with most of the table that I do have a lot of fold equity.

In fact, I limp with TT here where a lot of people raise. I often treat TT as a pair of 8s or 5s in EP, and go with the no set no bet rule.

With the AK hand, I have $96, the PFR makes it $15 so I have two options: a) call and hope for an A or K on the flop and fold if I don't get that or b) re-raise and take the aggression away from the PFR. I'm not terribly fond of a) because it induces the blinds to come in for the flop and makes my hand more vulnerable to a wacky 2 pair from the blinds, or a draw, so that leaves me with b).

Well, I have $96. Take $15 out for the call, and that leaves me with $81. I'm not minimum raising because that's just moronic, IMO. My smallest possible raise would be to $40. This leaves me with $56 left, and if I get even one caller, I'm pretty much pot committed to any bed except on an extremely scary flop. There won't be any possibility of "outplaying" anyone on the flop, because I won't have enough money to push him off a pot, and the only way I'm going to have enough money to push someone off the pot is preflop, so that's why I pushed all in.

Also, as a NB, in order to "outplay" people post flop, they actually have to know something about poker besides what they see on TV. Good luck finding that!

Note to Jim: yes, this is at Magestic, and the difference is, 6 months ago, you saw fish but even the fish would generally lay down both of these hands, although they would hate doing it. Or you'd find ONE person at the table who would do this, not 4 or 5.

Kurt and I talked about it and we figured out what the difference is - All the college kids are home from school now and they're taking their internet style of play to the casino. It's really the only explanation.