1st hand post: AJo BB at $40 NL live 9 handed

[John49]

Hi. This is my first hand post. I've been playing about twice a week at the $40 NL w/ 1/2 blinds at Commerce. I was at a brand new table, so everyone had about $40 in front of them. A few hands in, I got AJo. I have a question on the flop.

UTG fold, UTG+1 (villain) raises to 7 total, fold, one call, rest fold to BB (hero) w/ AJo. I call.

Flop comes J35 rainbow.

I feel way ahead and I check. Villain bets 7, other guy folds. What's the play?

[keikiwai]

I don't think that's a good pf. You have a possibly dominated hand out of position vs a raise that's basically ~20% of your stack in a multiway pot. You should fold pf.

Since you hit your pair, you want to get it all in.

You have $33 left, potting it would make it $42 whic you don't even have, so just poosh.

Considering the range villain calls, it may be better to rr smaller... say to $20, but then you have to push any river. The large pfr compared to stacks makes this weird for me.

[goofyballer]

I'm not sure if that structure sounds horrible or if it sounds awesome. The $2/$3 $100-cap NL there was pretty bad.

I assume everyone in this game is horrible; so, shove and laugh as they call you with AK or AQ or 77.

Preflop though, you're getting horrible implied odds on a call because stacks are so small. This almost seems like a push-fold game; you can't even call with pocket pairs for implied odds, unless you're closing the action and there's about a billion callers ahead of you.

[John49]

Yeah, after the first buy in, this is basically a fold or push game. At most, two moves... pf and flop. Read some Miller and been reading the new Sklansky book and some of the Harrington on Hold Em I.

[imzadim]

I know this is an old thread, but I'm playing the same game these days: what would be a good range of cards to play in this game since the implied odds are usually so bad? (asumming I have $40)<br>

[JohnAndersen]

hands with more showdown value. In this game suited connectors go down in value substantially