Good fold? bad fold?

Poker Strategy Hand Review
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Couple of disciplined laydowns in quick succession that cost me 3 player’s stacks that I didn’t win because I would have if I’d stayed in.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/500609375

A9s, I limp from UTG, the BB raised a little too big for my taste, from 40 to 260, 6.5BB. I lay down, flop would have give me trip 9s, turn would have given me a full house 999AA, and I would have knocked out the player who raised me off the hand. Here, I think I screwed up. I should have come in for the flop. But I was thinking A9 early was too weak, and I could let the hand go cheaply, losing just 40 chips. So many it was the right call, even though I missed out on a perfect board.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/500610168

A4, I flop a pair of 4s, opponent shoves, I would have made AA44 on the turn and knocked out two players, the one who shoved was on KK. I think this was a good fold, as well, calling with just a pair of 4s would have been suicide.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/500609375

AQ I re-raise the player ahead of me, he jams and I lay down, he’s gets another player all-in and wins, AQ outkicking A9 on a board pair. If I stayed in, I would have chopped. I think this was a good laydown, despite the outcome. I had put my opponent on a pocket pair when they shoved, and didn’t want to risk AQ vs any pair this early in the game. But seeing the AQ, it sucks to know I could have had half of that pot.

What do you think?

From here, I played poorly, had a good healthy stack close to 6000 chips, but got killed on a hand I shouldn’t have played, top pair Jacks vs. pocket Kings. I somehow had a feeling based on how my villain called here that I’d end up seeing the cowboys, and I was right. Maybe I’m starting to get better at reading.

I blame my regret for letting go 9s full of Aces and feeling like I needed to “make up for it”, and overplayed this hand, and went too far with it. The beat left me with 90 chips, then got lucky and doubled up multiple times, getting back up to 1000 chips, then went bust on another bad hand that I shouldn’t have played, but felt committed to due to the pot size vs. my stack – Ran another A9s into trip 7s, and that was that. I’ve largely cured myself of the knack of bluffing the wrong flops, but in desperate situations… Lesson here is don’t let go of your discipline if you’re playing too tight and miss an opportunity, don’t start taking risks playing marginal hands because you .

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#1 A9s UTG should probably just fold pre, it’s a little loose to have in an UTG opening range. Also limping UTG (especially) with hands you can’t call a raise with is pretty bad and lighting chips on fire. AP (as played) good fold. We don’t care about results, only correct decisions that are +EV at the time we make them.

#2 Cold calling A4o is too weak/passive. Don’t mind a 3! bluff with intentions of folding to a 4!. AP good fold on the flop. You’re not doing well at all equity wise vs a shove and a call.

#3 You can do either of the 3 choices here. I prefer a fold with AQo to his sizing off 55 bb’s. You could call and see a flop though and evaluate flops. If you’re choosing to raise make the 3! bigger. With AQo you want and need some fold equity. AQ is tough to play OOP since we’ll miss flops 65% of the time. Plus a bigger raise lowers SPR (stack to pot ratio) and minimizes the mistakes that we make going further. If I 3!, which again I’m probably just folding unless I’ve had experience with this player and know him to get OOL (out of line), I would go to something like 1100 and call it off if he shoves. Folding to the shove was a mistake that we don’t make if we had sized our 3! larger.

Thanks for posting @puggywug, always enjoy them. Cheers

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Great answer, especially for the third hand.
3-bet larger, between 3-4x in general. Still a call afterwards like you say dayman ; also, theking4’s 5x raise there to 220 is weird : he doesn’t really represent QQ+ like hands, maybe some big pocket-pairs though like TT or JJ.
And you shouldn’t fear captk on your left, who limped and called the raise, he represents some weak Ax and KJs, KQs+ hands…
Cheers.

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  1. Agreed with Dayman. Only thing I would add is that on Replay, you can usually just limp with the intention of not calling a raise, because pre-flop raises rarely happen. Of course, you do so at your own peril, because hands that are not good enough to stand a raise pre-flop will usually be very hard to play post-flop, and could get you in a lot of trouble.

  2. A4o is a terrible hand. I wouldn’t mind seeing a flop if they were suited, otherwise it’s an insta-fold for me. Your fold, although late, was good even if you’re being a bit results-oriented. They had you beat at the time of the fold, so you had a good read on them.

  3. Villain raised to 5.5 times the big blind. When you re-raise with A-Q, which isn’t the best hand ever, even though it’s good, you’re risking having to face an all-in. In fact, from my experience, when you 3-bet a large bet on Replay, you see a pre-flop shove most of the time. Most people don’t feel like playing their hands past that point,and say: “Let Lady Luck decide!”. For that reason, I think your biggest mistake here was not calling the raise, especially when they had position on you (in fact, you were on the small blind, so everyone else had position on you too).

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