Top Pair Second Kicker

[brett1985]

Context here is $1 sngs. Usually with AK I am doing a preflop raise and if I hit A or K I'm building the pot til the river where if my opponent/s are still with me I will be putting them all in in the belief that they will normally have an inferior hand. Sometimes I take my medicine if they hit a set which I accept is 'poker'.

Now the tricky bit comes regarding the slippery slope that starts with top pair second kicker. AQ, hitting an A on the flop tonight the person who called my raise preflop had AK. Had the flop been Qxx I would clearly have been in a far superior position. So now I would just like to know anyones thoughts about AQ/J/x when you hit an A on the flop. In particular

1/ At micro stakes is the intention to take AK to the wire on an A high flop vs average opponents standard?

2/ With AQ on an A high flop do you aim to stack the opponent?

3/ What kicker is your threshold for slowing up in these situations?

Sorry if this question is abstract, I hope it is understood. Thanks.

[Zorkion]

sounds like you should play your big slicks a little more carefully. although TPTK is going to be good a lot of the time, especially in the micro stakes, you will still come across people who play crap hands, and catch 2pair with j+3 or some such. but really, the people you should be watching out for are the people who play reasonably. if you catch TPTK, then obviously you have value, but if a tight player calls your sizeable bet on the flop, you want to consider slowing it down a little and controlling the pot size. i know a lot of people have rules for themselves that they wont go broke, unless theyre holding at least 2pair. Now while im not a big fan of generalized rules like those, there is logic in them. for example, with AA, youre either going to win a small pot, or lose a big one. basically, if someone is willing to put their entire tournament life on the line for a single hand, chances are they can beat a single pair.

what youre doing by looking to go all in any time you hit tptk is giving all of your competition a blank cheque, and telling them that if they ever hit a 2pair/flush/str8/set/boat/etc to your tptk, you will be more than happy to pay them off

while im not saying you should play AK soft, you need to be aware of your opponents' ranges and the board.


As far as AQ goes, it might be a leak of mine, but I dont actually worry about facing off against AK too much, unless im in a position where im mid/late position, and there has already been a 3-4xbb raise preflop. This is especially expounded if someone else reraises, meaning youll generally see someone with a mid/high pocket pair, or yeah, AK. at micro youll occasionally see people go crazy with hands like a9s, but 1) thats a little read dependant and 2) theyre not going to be in the game very long.

moving on, when the flop hits A high, youre going to see another broadway card in there a LOT of the time, and people at these stakes LOVE playing broadway draws. eg, flop- AT7, you can expect people to stay in with JQ/JK/QK easily. like i said, you just have to be aware of your opponents, and the board.

in general when you hit top pair with a strong kicker, youre looking to take down a decent pot, but if anyone shows that they want to put their entire stack on the line, that should be warning bells for you.

as far as your last question goes, it depends on a lot. stack sizes, position, actions, reads, etc. a lot of it comes down to your own opening range, and such. either way, theres no easy way to answer that question.

hope that helped

[brett1985]

Interesting.

I tend to play 4 tables which does make the handreading a little tricky and I don't use software. So I am in the habit of assuming that the average opponent is usually bad enough to call down with a weaker A. I guess the fairness or accuracy of that assumption is as much the question in this topic as any other.

As you appear to indicate playing against a solid opponent (where I to be aware of his ability and him mine) I'd likely be a lot more thoughtful, if not careful, if not slowing down with AK. After all if anyone actually observed me at the tables in the first few rounds of blinds they would assign me JJ+, AQ+ very easily. Plus I know that my own game is to in part at least set mine so whenever I hold 66 and have called a pf raise and an A comes down V is not getting any more of my chips.

I suppose an interesting experiment would be to see how profitable my style has been considering that I have mostly been playing AK in a vacuum- assuming a slightly stupid donk opponent. It's at times like these I regret not using poker tracker.

edit:

I've actually looked through my hand history of about 50 games to see how often my strategy works based on no reads. I am very tight which I suppose goes hand in hand with not having many reads as I could only play loose if I know my opponents. Anyway I looked at hands which went to the flop and which I took the the wire such as KK/AK. Well in my small sample I showed down the best hand 8/10 times. Obviously I'm talking about the specific situation where I get to the flop with say 200 chips in the pot and a stack of 1500 and either an opponent who calls me down or fights back.

Whether my success rate based on this approach would hold true over a longer sample is a different matter. I can see though that from the holdings of my opponents, they were usually making bad mistakes preflop like calling ATo to my raise and then willing to go all the way with it.

Sorry if this is a bit long winded but my conclusion is that a/ most players at this level are donks who will pay me off in these situations b/ even some good players with tp/tk will payoff my overcards.

So when do I start to slowdown. It's hard to envisage a time.

[dneureiter]

Top pair with top/2nd kicker is a very strong hand in a 1$ sng. However what you post lacks is further description re blind levels (and opponent tendency but there are few "solid" opps playing the 1$ buyins).

If blinds are 10/20 and you raise AK in ep I would avoid stacking off without reads 75 big blinds deep on Axx. I just type a quick Arag note on opponents when i see them call big raises with weak aces or stack of with top pair - no kicker. Then I push AK and other strong aces very hard v. them.

Be especially wary if:
1: you get min-raised on the flop "hmmh.. I have a set but I don't want to scare him so i minraise"
2: on flops like AJT you have to realize you are behind alot of inferior aces that he calls raises with since he made 2 pair (as well as JT and KQ).

I would say once blinds hit 25/50 and you are in a raised pot it's quite safe to stack AK/AQ v. almost anyone 30 big blinds deep in a 1$ buyin if you hit an A,K,Q.

you say this yourself here
"Obviously I'm talking about the specific situation where I get to the flop with say 200 chips in the pot and a stack of 1500 and either an opponent who calls me down or fights back."
that's an easy bet/bet/bet to get it in @ 1$ buyin.

Obviously you can't win them all and you'll lose some pots to ace-rag that made 2 pair and such but overall you should push hard once you pair AK/AQ.

[Fielmann]

Avoid flat-calling pre with hands like AQ, AJ, ..., especially when out of position.

Other than that I'm convinced that posting actual hand examples will help you much more than vague and general queries about how to play some holdings. The hands you're dealt, you see, are just a very small portion of all the aspects that you should take into consideration when making a decision. Flop texture, position, opponents' tendencies, etc. matter so much that a question such as "how should I play TPTK as compared to TPGK?" is almost pointless without concrete examples.

[taipan168]

Avoid flat-calling pre with hands like AQ, AJ, ..., especially when out of position.

Other than that I'm convinced that posting actual hand examples will help you much more than vague and general queries about how to play some holdings. The hands you're dealt, you see, are just a very small portion of all the aspects that you should take into consideration when making a decision. Flop texture, position, opponents' tendencies, etc. matter so much that a question such as "how should I play TPTK as compared to TPGK?" is almost pointless without concrete examples.

This. It's very difficult for us to give advice in a vacuum without all the relevant factors that feed into decision making.

There must be a way to post hand examples. If not, you need to find a different site as hand analysis is a really important way to improve your game.

[brett1985]

I'll find another site then.