[Robk]

This hand was played fine imo. My two main criticisms of the replies in this thread are: 1) people underestimating the chances the bb holds AA and 2) people underestimating the chances the bb checks on the flop.

I read the preflop situation this way, and maybe I don’t understand the nature of these games. But with QQ or less it seems to me that the BB is much better off calling preflop than reraising with these stack sizes, him being out of position, and 2 opponents who could have big hands. (Right or not, I see many players who play this way.) I think that weights his preflop range almost exclusively toward AA and bluffs. With some opponents maybe there is a chance of a sort of semibluff with AK but again with the BB being out of position it seems very unlikely to me.

Samo is getting about 1800:350 to flop a set. That gives playing for set value alone an ev of about 1800/8.5 – 350*7.5/8.5 = -90 dollars. A significant error to be sure, but one mitigated by image factors, and by the possibility of tilting the bb.

But with the pot so large, even a small chance of the BB giving up gives Samo +ev on the hand. If the BB checks and folds 10% of the time on the flop, Samo’s ev is .1*715 +.9*(-90) which is roughly -$10. While people keep repeating that the BB will “never” check the flop, he will do it sometimes and even if its only a very small % of the time it easily gives samo +ev. If the BB did in fact reraise with garbage, does he really have a profitable bluff here? Wouldn’t he expect samo to go with the hand almost every time after calling the reraise preflop and with a 9 high board? One other possibility is that some players will give away their hand with a small bet size here, so he doesn’t have to check the flop.

So under what I think are very reasonable assumptions this is the best way to play the hand. The last thing I want to point out is how bad the BBs flop bet was was (based on Sams strategy.) I think checking is clearly correct here with AA. Depending on what we know about BB that can change the hand entirely. But samo’s logic is consistent here: if BB would push this flop with AA then he must think there is no way samo is getting away from any kind of hand. And if he believes that then he wont be continuing on his bluffs.