Middle Pocket Pairs OOP on A/K-high Boards

These have always been troublesome hands for me. I never feel comfortable withstanding two or three barrels from aggressive players nor do I feel comfortable immediately folding the flop against tighter players (actually, I don't have a huge problem with this). I figured I'd create a thread about this type of situation and get some feedback from other players.

Let's use this hand as an example:

$0.10/$0.25 No Limit Holdem
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG ($10.90)
UTG+1 ($31.70)
CO ($25)
BTN ($34.63)
Hero ($26.83)
BB ($26.70)

Pre-Flop: ($0.35, 6 players) Hero is SB
2 folds, CO raises to $0.85, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.75, 1 fold

Flop: ($1.95, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $1.72, $1.72 to Hero ($25.98)?

I didn't include stats because it isn't this specific hand I'm worried about, it's the entire situation. I chose to lay this thread out as a series of questions. I then write my answers and leave myself open for any flaming. Hopefully, better regs can fix my posts and provide better insight.

1) How would you play a hand like this against a positionally-aware loose/tight-aggressive opponent? Obviously, we want to know how many barrels villain is capable of firing. It's very common to see villain fire one barrel and give up on the turn. These opponents often find it fit to fire again on the river as a bluff which makes for a nice c/c (on the river).

Of course, there are other villains that may fire two barrels often which puts us in a tougher spot where we will be calling two barrels with second pair (sometimes third pair if a T, J, Q, or K hits the turn).

2) How would you play this hand against a positionally-aware passive opponent? Villain being passive makes a hand like this a lot easier to play. I personally have no shame in c/f here against an opponent that does not cbet much.

3) What if, instead the 7 of hearts, a J (or K) of hearts were to flop? I find this situation to a lot more stressful. Of course, it is harder to find a c/c on an AKx board than it is against a AJx board. I still find it rather difficult to play these types of flops against aggressive opponents and would like more insight here from better regs. I'm assuming the reasoning I listed in 1) still rings true with more caution to be taken. A bad turn card can turn a possible c/c into a c/f.

I believe sizing plays a large part in making the decision to c/c or c/f here. Obviously, cheap bets (half-pot) may indicate a villain looking to bluff cheaply while larger bets (3/4-pot) may indicate a villain looking to value bet.

Thoughts? Any other questions concerning this hand? Regs: answers? Ideas?

Disclaimer: Please do not take anything I wrote here as any sort of truth. I simply hate starting a thread without posting thoughts of my own to be flamed/start discussion. My thoughts are most likely wrong and should not be used when playing poker.

Bumpaments because I struggle in spots like this as well.

Regarding 2) if the guy is super passive on later streets - i.e he never barrel's the turn without Ax but he auto cbet's most flop's then I think you can c/c flop c/f turn and value bet river profitably. Vs someone who cbet's like 30% I'd just c/f.

I think a big key (but obviously not the whole answer, just trying to get discussion going) is to consider villain's tenancies, not just in general but in that SPECIFIC spot on that specific board, and derive which line allows you to get exploited the least.

this can actually be pretty simple for BC'ers since regs at 10nl- are usually very straight forward, single-street bluffers. so let's say we're at 10nl and villain is 20/16 w/ a 75% cbet, this spot will usually be very very easy to play on this board. since villain's range is like QTo+, 22+, 54s+, 86s+, etc. we can obv profitably c/c the flop, knowing that a second barrel from him will likely mean he either has TP+, or a very good draw that has sick equity against our hand anyway (note, many 10nl regs don't even double barrel very good draws here), and just fold.

in other words, we're not getting exploited by this particular opponent on this particular board with his particular PF range by c/c'ing the flop only to c/f the turn because villain's flop betting range is like {everything}, where as his turn betting range is very strong and consists of zero hands that we dominate and few hands that we're ahead of at all.

let's say similar scenario, different opponent. let's say villain opens in the CO, who is very very aggressive in position and mindlessly barrels with any hand that has equity against TP and hardly even has a concept of SD value 'cause second pair has 5 outs to two pair+ amirite? anyway, you flat and flop comes K76dd. just to make shit tougher, let's say he cbets like 62% and has some vague concept of checking back flops with air. you check and he cbets.

realize that any card from 4-A (in other words, anything but a 2 or a 3) and any diamond are going to improve some portion of his range to a draw good enough to justify barrelling for this player type. this is without mentioning the fact that he might pick up a bottom pair that he thinks is worth barrelling 'cause it has 5 outs against Kx and might auto barrel an A turn 'cause he saw it in a redline video somewhere (50nl 6m regs FTW!).

clearly c/c'ing the flop only to auto c/f just about any turn is the best way to make his over-aggressive play +EV, which is what we want to avoid. we want to exploit this opponent by flopping strong and value owning him, or by having a relatively wide c/c flop, c/r turn range, etc. we do not want to get into a calling war with a hand that we're forced to fold to multiple barrels.

this doesn't necessarily mean that call preflop, c/f most flops is the best answer. this means that we have a lot of thinking to do (probably the reason why you started this thread). we have to think from the second that villain opens on the CO, how are we going to play this hand +EV? is our hand strong enough/villain's tendancies predictable enough so that we can call multiple streets on many flops postflop? is villain's range strong enough, or is he really THAT crazy with a super weak range to get stacked often enough for us to profitable play this hand for pure set mining value? does our hand flop strong enough to rebluff with a reasonable frequency? it seems tough for 99 to be a fold to a single raise against a weak range preflop, but it's not as retarded of a plan as calling only to c/c one street and auto-pilot c/f to just about any double barrel.

as for the flop, is this a spot where villain is going to barrel a lot (he may be less likely on an A72r board)? is he barrelling infrequently enough/cbetting enough to where we can c/c the flop profitably and comfortably c/f to another barrel? is he barrelling FREQUENTLY enough to where we can exploit him by c/c'ing multiple streets, including maybe even c/c'ing all the way down if all obvious draws miss (doing this often is not advisable, btw)?

you gotsta plan out how many streets you and on which cards you can call.

those are just some introductory thoughts. thread has some real good potential if people are motivated enough to post a lot of hands itt that we can breakdown with ABCD exploitative play shiite.

oh, and leading out isn't never an option. if you can some worse hands to call, and other worse hands to play more predictably (either fold or opt not to barrel your pants off), then it can be a viable option, especially on boards where we find him less likely to cbet

Thank you Surviva. Please let's try to focus on one hand at a time though. It's tough to focus on and discuss hands if everybody is selfish and posts their hands without the previous getting any love.

As you play sessions (whoever is reading this), mark hands with similar situations. Try analyzing them yourself first, write your thoughts down, THEN post. Please don't post a hand with just "what about this hand?" Kbai.

Good post, if I ever get time to play poker again I'll try and put something up (he says, dreaming about neglecting family and gambling the night away, sigh).

May get an hour tonight if I'm lucky.

bump, before this gets to page 2.

@ BooG, yeah posting hands would only be good if it followed my criteria of "being thoroughly broken down with ABCD theory exploitative play shiite"

You could come to IRC and I could teach you how lidogzzzzzzzzzz