Congratulations

As first reported by Ugarte, hearty congratulations go out to Joaquin on his win of a 42" plasma flat panel television at a freeroll last night celebrating the re-opening of the Near Chinatown card club.

Yours truly went out on the last hand of Level 2, when I got all my chips in as a 4.5-to-1 favorite after the flop and promptly got clusterfucked on the turn. I redeemed myself with one hand (for quick discussion) in the $1/$2 $100-$500 NLHE cash game.

My hand was nearly killed as I had been in the bathroom and the action was just getting to me when I returned to the table. I quickly sat down and did the ol' corner peek: QQ. Nice. Then I took stock of the action:

A LAG in EP had raised to $15.
A player who tended to overplay his hands, immediately to the LAG's left, had reraised to $50.
I had $450 and the button was two seats to my left.

"How much do you have behind?" I asked the reraiser. It was about $85.
"Reraise. $150."

The guy to my immediate left blurted out "Why'd you do that? I was going to do that!" He considered for a moment longer before regretfully folding. Action folded back to the LAG, who also regretfully folded. Even LAGs have a tipping point, I guess.

Back to the reraiser. "I think you have me beat. But I call."

We kept our cards hidden until the flop came out A-Q-3, at which point I flipped my set. He showed TT, and although he caught one of his tens on the turn, the case ten was MIA on the river.

Now, what makes the hand at all noteworthy was what the LAG said after it was all over: "$150? Why would you raise so high?"

It should be obvious, I think.

A) I don't want any weak suited aces (basically, anything below AQ) being at all tempted to come into this pot. In fact, the button claimed that he had AJ and the LAG said he had a weak suited ace in diamonds, two of which flopped.

B) I'd really like to be heads up with the reraiser. As mentioned earlier, he had exhibited a tendency to overplay his hands, so I was reasonably confident that I was way ahead. You can't win every time you're a 4.5-to-1 favorite (see above), but you can't go wrong by getting all your chips in as a 4.5-to-1 favorite every time.

C) On the off-chance that the reraiser decided to fold, I still stood to pick up a net $68 pot. Nothing wrong with that.

What were my other choices on this hand? Either:

1) smooth call. Given the "call any raise" nature of the table, that was not a scenario I wanted to see, because we easily could have been 4 or 5 to the flop. Big pairs don't play well in multi-way pots, especially a hand like QQ, which is going to be "overflopped" by a king or an ace over 40% of the time.

2) raise a smaller amount -- $100 or $125. This would have effectively put the reraiser all-in if he called, while still making it difficult for anyone else to call without a hand. I don't like minimum-raising, however, and given the "call any raise" nature of the table, it felt like a better move to make a significant reraise, such that really only one person would be tempted to call.

A little footnote to the hand is that the player on my left folded JJ.