Archive Pick: Aces in position on the river, major online tournament

What we said then: I think you’re quite unlikely to be up against a made hand here given the action on the turn and the board. It’s also very unlikely that the river helped your opponent - if anything, it might have counterfeited the couple of made hands your opponent might have taken this line with.

I think you’re very likely to be up against a weak pair that has gone into call-down mode and hopes that you’re on AK, AQ or a smaller pair. You can extract a good amount of value from those hands with a bet that they feel compelled to call, but a bet that’s still big enough that they can imagine you might be bluffing. I think shooting for about 480,000 or so will do the trick - it will be hard for a JT or T9 kind of hand to bail in the hands of an average player.

What actually happened: You checked behind and the BB showed J2 for top pair.

We have to assume that we are way ahead here. Given that, what play gets us the most chips? I voted bet over half pot (which surely means shove) as to me that would appear weaker then betting over half my remaining chips, plus opp would still have a playable stack after the call.

Im with Richard. You have about 3/4 of the pot left in your stack, you have the best hand, theres pretty much nothing left to think about. Jam. Its scarier to any opponent worth his shoes if you bet less than that.

Definitely have to bet here. Villain has check-called all the way down. In my mind, he either has A) top pair with weak kicker; B) middle pair with big kicker, or; C) busted draw.

We’re beating all three of those hands, so we have to figure out how much money we can extract. Here, hand C doesn’t matter; no matter how much or how little we bet, we aren’t getting a call. So ignore hand C and focus on the other two. With either A or B, we have to make it comfortable enough for him to call. If we bet under half the pot, we give him very tempting odds. However, we also pretty much broadcast a made hand, meaning he might not call. A bet of over half the pot or an overbet gives worse odds, but implies we’re just taking one last stab to win the hand.

This depends on what you’ve seen out of BB. If he calls bigger bets to pick off a bluff (or if you’ve been caught bluffing recently), the bigger bet is optimal. If he’s playing by pot odds most of the time, the small bet is best. Against an unknown opponent, though, I’d bet between half and 3/4 of the pot.

well, we limped with aces. this is the ideal situation to be in. The guy obviously hit the board. Even better than him being deceived by the strength of top pair, your most likely fear here is running into 2 pair, a scenario that just got counterfitted on the river. get the rest of your chips in there, if he’s got a 6 or a set (so unlikely), then more power to him.

Hero’s passive play pre-flop has developed a nice pot. I voted less than half, but did not note the villain’s stack size. I think a shove is in order.

Definite shove. Villain is expecting a jam from pretty much any pair here, and betting less than your stack just looks like you are trying to extract more value.

I voted check, although I likely would not do that in this situation. If villain played his top pair this badly, it’s possible he’d badly misplay trips.