Flop Play in a Steal Situation

[Nate.]

$75 MTT on Full Tilt. I haven't been at the table long, but my image should be aggressive. Villain in this hand has already played several pots and has been aggressive postflop. I just ran TT through AA all-in preflop for 40 or so big blinds.

200-400/50. I have 15K and Villain has 6.5K. I open the cutoff for 1300 with ATo. Villain calls out of the SB.

Heads-up to the J99r flop. Villain has 5.2K behind and there's 3.4K or so in the pot. He checks and I move all in.

--Nate

[Bond18]

Hmm, what are you hoping to fold out? KQ/AQ?

[nath]

i don't mind. i think his range for calling and not reraising is largely underpairs to the board. so even if he calls with one of those you have nine outs and a backdoor straight draw.

[Nate.]

Bond, Nath --

If he CRAIs I have a very hard time with the price I'd be getting. He might fold a small pair or gutshot. Especially given that there's at least some solid fractional possibility that he's making that preflop call too loosely, I'm pretty sure that moving in is better than making any smaller bet, because I want basically everything to fold. Checking seems terrible.

Another thing is that given his previous aggression he might have stuck it in already with some of his better draws etc.

--Nate

[blankoblanco]

What's so bad about checking behind here?

[Nate.]

Blanko --

It gives him a free card and lets him take the pot away on the turn. When he's ahead, it also lets him protect his hand in a way that he can't on the flop (well, at least with the hands I'm drawing pretty robustly against). Of particular concern is the way in which unsophisticated/standard/whatever thought processes will "accidentally" put me in bad spots.

--Nate

[woohoo88]

I'm curious what the stacks were for BTN/BB. I don't know that it matters, but I tend to play more cautiously vs a bunch of ~15BB stacks.

Granted, ATo is probably good enough anyway. Would you call a push pf?

As played wouldn't a 3/4 or so bet (calling a push) be less transparent vs a good player? It seems like a good player would look you up w/ a lot of smaller pairs here. Of course vs an unkown the term "good" doesn't tend to apply.

[hamnegger]

i think you got trapped its a stop n go that changed gears when he hit the flop

[Nate.]

Woohoo --

The button had something like 7K and the big blind had something like 11K. I was calling a push from the SB and probably not from the button.

If I think I'm in a situation where big bets are "transparently" bad hands, then I happily just make big bets with big hands and "fishy" bets with bad ones. I don't think this was the case. This guy seemed a little too loose preflop and a notch and a half too aggro postflop.

Hamnegger --

That's a definite possibility. But over an admittedly small sample this didn't exactly seem to be the sort of guy to have pored over the Anthology of Wisdom on MTTs or carefully weighed a preflop push vs. SNG or have installed an top-secret underground Citanul-designed ICM mod-chip on his TI-93 calculator, etc.

--Nate