Laak and Esfandiari fold AQ UTG

[Ron Burgundy]

Laak and Esfandiari were guests on Loveline (it was the Sept 19th show if you want to listen to the whole thing.)

A guy calls in and asks if he should quit his job and turn pro. He'd been beating his local 5/10NL game for a while. So Antonio says "if you're UTG with AQo, what do you do?" The guy says he'd usually raise 3x. Antonio says "wrong, don't turn pro. You have to fold that." I guess that's his litmus test for turning pro.

I've been raising AQ UTG my whole life and it's worked pretty well for me. I know most of you would raise AQ UTG as well.

So either:

a) Laak and Esfandiari suck at poker
b) Live games are so much different than online that folding AQ is correct in a live game
c) All of the above

[SABR42]

Antonio is kinda being a nit about this.

[jack frost]

[ QUOTE ]
Laak and Esfandiari were guests on Loveline (it was the Sept 19th show if you want to listen to the whole thing.)

A guy calls in and asks if he should quit his job and turn pro. He'd been beating his local 5/10NL game for a while. So Antonio says "if you're UTG with AQo, what do you do?" The guy says he'd usually raise 3x. Antonio says "wrong, don't turn pro. You have to fold that." I guess that's his litmus test for turning pro.

I've been raising AQ UTG my whole life and it's worked pretty well for me. I know most of you would raise AQ UTG as well.

So either:

a) Laak and Esfandiari suck at poker
b) Live games are so much different than online that folding AQ is correct in a live game
c) All of the above

[/ QUOTE ]

I have seen both play allot worse UTG.

[diebitter]

I'll fold AQo UTG a lot if the table suits me playing a TAG game or the table doesn't suit a shortball game (AQ=good hand for shortballing table, bad hand for a tough table).

[traxamillion]

open shove obv.

[Sounded Simple]

I usually fold AQ UTG online, exceptions would be
- Where there are a couple of players who stack off light with TPWK
- The table is generally passive enough to let me play a small pot to showdown.
- The table is very tight except the blinds who are very loose.

Im something of a nit but when multitabling AQ OOP can be tricky.

Seems strange though to judge an entire player on a single question.

[soah]

In very aggressive games I'd probably muck it utg... but there aren't a whole lot of full ring games which are that aggressive.

[QTip]

It might have been the fact that he gave no specifics to the question, and the person answering it didn't probe and didn't provide a "because"...thereby Antonio might be thinking that he's just giving straight values to hole cards without considering the table dynamics?

[16710Pepsi]

[ QUOTE ]
It might have been the fact that he gave no specifics to the question, and the person answering it didn't probe and didn't provide a "because"...thereby Antonio might be thinking that he's just giving straight values to hole cards without considering the table dynamics?

[/ QUOTE ]

That may be the probably best answer.
I am far from being anywhere close to running with the big dogs like those, but wouldn'd it depend on the table and opponents a little anyway?
Also (keeping in mind that televised poker does only show a fraction of hands played and probably only "interesting" ones) doesn't it appear that the top pros play the opponents first and the cards only second most of the time or is the notion of raising junk preflop due to mixing it up?

good day
timo

[soah]

[ QUOTE ]
It might have been the fact that he gave no specifics to the question, and the person answering it didn't probe and didn't provide a "because"...thereby Antonio might be thinking that he's just giving straight values to hole cards without considering the table dynamics?

[/ QUOTE ]

if that's what he meant then why did he say "wrong, you have to fold that" ??