Winners or Losers???

[Zybomb]

well since I wrote about my good session how about my bad one

1st hand at the table when i sit down theres is PFR by a late position player, I called with AK from the BB as does the SB. Flop comes AK5. the SB and I check, the PFR bets rather large, I raise he pushes I reluctantly call hoping hes making some dumb move with AQ or trying to bully since he was the original raiser -- no its what I figured it would be 55.

Rebuy , about 20 min later make a raise with QQ have two callers. Flop comes Q,10,9. I bet, someone raises, I push he calls....yup KJ...nope board doesnt pair.

Ok maybe I should of layed the AK down and maybe my push was a little aggressive..... you know what thats how I win many hands too, so what can you do.

-$811

[Talking Poker]

I think NOT getting all your chips in with either of those hands would be a mistake. The number of times you get paid off in those exact situations greatly outweighs the number of times you run into that monster hand that beats you and you don't improve your hand (you had 4 outs twice on the AK hand and 7+10 outs on the QQ).

That's poker, as they say.

[Zybomb]

Yea you're right....I definately have no regrets about the Queens, I may not of needed to push so hard, but regardless by the end all of the chips would of ended up in the middle, nothing much you can do there.

With the AK, my thinking was this though. Nothing but 55 makes sense for him to push with. Any pair is scared of the A and K, and would he really push AQ or AJ that hard? Assuming AA and KK are out due to the low chance of all 4 A's or K's being out, I think what my best chance was he was putting me on a bluff raise of an apparent continuation bet and had a decent but not great hand -- or I saw what I kind of expected to see... 55

Which brings up a point Im now thinking about. Not talking about this instance, but in general, In a cash game, How do you react to an opponents showing of strength when u hit ur AK (we'll say just TPTK not even 2 pair here). Ok you make your raise preflop (or call a raise preflop), then you hit your TPTK. You bet out assuming u were the raiser, or check raise assuming you were the caller and you're raised/reraised,,,,with no unusual read on the player, this is one situation I have not been able to grasp.

Tournament Id reraise preflop with AK 75% of the time, in a cash game however Id say its as low as 20%.... and the way I play becomes very different......

any input about these situations and ways of dealing with them?

Edit: (Im thinking I should of maybe started a new thread so more people will check it out, and because its gotten way off the original topic.....oh well)

[Talking Poker]

Yeah, go ahead and start a new thread with your question.

My quick response is I struggle with that too. It's tough to lay down TPTK when you are playing AK and hit the flop, but when someone is showing you that much strength, it's usually for a reason.