Some Hands I Played Last Night

Here I am in the BB with K8o.
One Early Position (EP) limper, One MP Limper, One LP limper, AND the SB completes.
Normally if I am in the BB and it comes back to me with limpers, I loosen up my calling ranges and put in a raise.

I don't always play this way. This is a once in a while play in my little poker playbook.

In this case, however, I chose to just check all those limpers. In retrospect, that was probably not the best play.

With so many big stacks in this hand and limping in I should have put in a raise and chased most of them out. The one or two that might have stayed tells me a little about what hole cards they have. Just checking here gives me no information on the other 4 players and I would be better off folding if I don't raise. Plus - you never want to more than 1-2 other people in a pot with you unless you are trying to set for trips or draw to OESD/Flush's - which I wasn't.

But here is what happened.

4 Players saw the flop plus myself - so that is 5.

I am pretty lousy position here with no information about my opponents calling ranges. I am second to bet. Luckily my opponents also have no information on my hole cards either. I just hit Middle and Low pair. There is an A on the board. In this case I am very glad to see that A because chances are someone here played Ax Rags and thinks they have a decent hand here.

I open raise $1 - 3 folds.
Then MP1 re-reraises me to $2.75.

There is our Ax rags my friends. If he had AK, he would not have limped in.
The gamble here is that he might also have A8.

I choose to 3-bet re-raise the raiser (a little over 3-bet actually). Remember, in this situation aggression can make a winning hand fold.

If he has A8 by some chance, now he would definetely call me or go all-in - in which case I would fold.

If he just had the A pair, then he now has to wonder if I was trip setting him.

He folds.

I think this opponent was a good player because after the hand he asked me if I had K8. That means he was capable of putting me on a range. I did tell him I had the K8.

This also means I was probably correct in putting him on Ax rags.