Quote Originally Posted by uscheese
Quote Originally Posted by Jishu
Quote Originally Posted by uscheese
Also...

The worst thing that can happen when you're holding AA is for 5 people to call your minraise....Bye bye stack.

I don't think 5 people calling if I've got pocket Aces is the worst thing that can happen by any stretch of the imagination.
What could possibly worse than not beating any one person by more than 10% of the time with the best hand in hold'em? Your obviously still ahead, but when 4 people go to the flop your aces are no longer as good as they were. Youve KILLED the power of your cards. You allow 87 to two pair, 45 to hit their wheel. Enjoy the slaughter.
What could be worse is betting 4 times the BB and having everyone fold which is often what happens in these rooms. I understand what you are saying about letting someone catch a straight, a flush, 2 pair etc and I'm not saying to limp in with pocket A's or K's but in cheap rooms IN MY OPINION sometimes you have to play it a little differently than textbook

Oh no no no. If you win the blinds, you've still won something, and you haven't risked a large part of your stack in the dark with one pair.

If you are up against five people holding any two cards and you have aces, the problem is this. Someone holding 68 on a 48K board is unlikely to pay off big bets to the river; someone with 55 on a TQA board is folding to any strength. You're not going to make any more money out of these guys (unless they're terrible, and I grant you at 10NL this is a distinct possibility) - they limped in, saw a cheap flop, didn't hit and now they're folding.

Of course, if 68 limps in and the flop is 68Q you are, potentially, screwed by a hand you can't predict and which your lack of aggression let play.

The hands you can win big off when you are holding AK are, by and large, other strong hands which aren't quite as strong as you. Say JJ on a 239 flop, or AQ on a QT6 flop. And these are the hand which will be calling your pre-flop raises.

uscheese, this isn't just "playing by the book". It's a fundamental point of NL strategy, and you must at the very least demonstrate a full understanding of it before you can start thinking outside the box. The reason Picasso could paint those fucked-up shapes is because he had an excellent, fundamental understanding of the classic tenets of art and wanted to push beyond them, not because he felt he knew best.