Hijacked Aces

[DaDragonLady]

Normally if I play a hand, I raise 3-4 times the big blind and am consistent about it. Last night I am in a 1-3 cash game – I have been card dead most of the night and am down a bit in chips. The table is 11 full and playing somewhat loose-most of the players are friends of mine. In the small blind I am dealt AA and consider limping but finally opt to raise it to $12. About 7 of the players call my raise and the flop comes 10-10-3. I check to see if/where the 10 is and it is checked around to the hijack position who bets $30. The next 2 fold and I hesitate thinking he probably has a 10, but I go all in, which is another $40 on top. The table folds except hijack (who I have never played with) – I show my AA and after the turn he rolls over 10-6os. I thought it would be an interesting discussion as to what the rest of you would do to eliminate the 10-6os. I did raise 4X’s the bb, but figure I should have raised more. I was sort of hoping for callers tho, in order to recoup some of my losses… Anyway, your comments are appreciated.

[PokerBroker]

The problem here is that you didn't adjust your raise to the current size of the pot... If 7 people were able to call your preflop raise then at least six of them had limped into the pot in front of you making the pot roughly $20 by the time you raise it to $12... this means each limper gets the following odds to call...

BB must call $9 to win $32 = 3.6:1
1st limper must call $9 to win $41 = 4.6:1
2nd = 5.6:1
3rd = 6.6:1
4th = 7.6:1
5th = 8.6:1
6th = 9.6:1

With these types of odds people will start calling with ANY TWO CARDS.

I probably would have raised this pot to roughly $22-28 (= 8-9x) depending on the players at the table... you will more than likely get someone to come along at this price but T6 has been given a good reason to fold It is nice to get callers when you have AA but I don't generally like to have more than two!

It is pretty standard to adjust your raises to more than 3-4x when there has been action in front of you.

[wreaks]

How many people had limped before it got to you?

If I assume it was 7 people, since that's how many saw the flop, I would have raised it to ~$30-$40, depending on how the table had been playing. That will get rid of most of the hands. If you get no callers, you still win $21. AA will usually either win a small pot or lose a big one. Take that win and be happy.

[CW Buckeye]

I had the same post as Ryan, but I got sidetracked and didn't hit submit reply.

So'll I'll just change mine to:

+1 on Ryans post.

[wreaks]

I was typing mine as Ryan was typing his, he hit submit first.

The other thing you might think about too is just moving all-in, depending on the size of your stack and the size of some of the other people in the pot. It might look like a steal or AK/AQ, so you might get called by mid pairs.