Hijacked Aces

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.