Call or Fold to a River Bet With Pocket Aces?
This week I want to share with you another hand from the same $5,000 no-limit hold'em tournament we've been discussing the last few articles. In this one I pick up A♥A♦, a hand that of course looked great at the start, but by the river seemed less obviously so.
We were at the 150/300/50 level and with a stack of about 200 big blinds I raised from under the gun to 750. Looking back, I could have raised more (say, to 900) with my whole range here. The tight-aggressive player to my left called the raise as did the short-stacked big blind, and the flop came Q♦5♦2♣.
The big blind checked and I continued for 1,200. Only the player on my left called, and with pot up to 5,200 the turn was the K♣.
As I discuss in the video below, my opponent's actions have indicated a pretty strong range that has narrowed even further. I ended up checking and my opponent bet 2,750. My aces have become a marginal made hand by this point and I just call.
The river then brought the 7♠ and when I checked my opponent bet large — 7,800 into the 10,700 pot. Would you call or fold? Take a look below to see what I did and hear me explain my reasoning for doing so.
The video's title gives away how things ended up in this hand. As I say in the video, my opponent's river bet was just "screaming value," but I couldn't resist calling. Could you have avoided calling the river?
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,800,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. Sign up to learn poker from Jonathan for free at PokerCoaching.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
