Gap concept, AQ preflop

I was analyzing my play today and found I was unexpectedly bad in one of the middle positions. It turned out that the culprit was mostly getting stacked (-96BB) with AQo. Sample size is about 20,000 hands, so one good stacking was enough to move the needle when looking at details.

Anyway, I looked at the hand, and here's basically what played out. I don't still have the actual HH, this is just from the PokerTracker DB.

Villain is in EP and raises 3.5 BB. His stats look TAGish to me, something like 17/11 or so over 180 hands. At the time, I had 120 or so on him, so enough that I should have figured he wasn't a complete nut.

I have AQo, and call. The flop is something like 4QJ, giving me TPTK. Flop, turn, and river, villain pots it and I call, probably thinking something like he could have any Q and do the same. Turn and river were blanks.

Obviously, he didn't, he had JJ and I was drawing close to dead the whole time.

Lessons: Don't be a calling station. I should have either raised the guy, in which case I probably would have learned something, or folded PF. I hear about those who can't let go of TPTK, and obviously, I am sometimes one of them.

Anyway, I looked over my DB, and I had AQ around 300 times. About 30 of them I called, and over those 30 it was a losing play. I'd win more if I just folded AQ every time to a preflop raise, which made a light bulb go off. Pretty sure I've read that yes, folding AQ to a preflop raise isn't a bad idea.

Just looking for a sanity check out there. It's a little hard to see the crap people play (just watched a hand go to showdown with someone playing Q3s on the button, total miss all the way) and not feel like AQ is a decent hand, yet obviously it can be in bad shape against a tight player's early position raising range.

So what's the standard response to an EP TAG standard raise with AQo? Fold? Reraise, but get out of Dodge if they play back? I know it's a noob question, but I'd like to hear how the regs play this.

RF

You can get your HH from PT3 database. Just click on the hand, and there should be two tabs-- one that says "hand history", and the other (the one that comes up by default) says "hand details".

Anyway, you don't always have to fold AQ to a pre-flop raise. I would think about folding it if I were out of position and my opponent was pretty nitty. In position, I think we're good with it almost all the time. We just need to be very careful against an TAG player raising from EP.

Overplaying TPTK is a flaw of mine (and getting married to hands in general), as I'm sure it is off a lot of people. We just need to be more aware in those spots. For example, in your hand, we can call the flop and probably the turn since we're in position, but we really ought to fold to a bet on the river. What will he have that we beat? KQ? Not often.

You're right in saying that AQ is not a premium hand-- however, it is definitely still playable. As with all hands, we just need to be aware of the action, and recognize when we're beat. Good question, btw.

With AQ for me it's definitely about the opponent. As you had a moderate sample size against the villain and you can see he's a TAG I would have folded. Against somene with no history I would probably have folded too. With someone who's looser and with a decent history against them (I play typically at 2NL levels where PFR's don't always mean what they say) I'll probably call and take it from there.

I've been burnt with AQ too often myself recently not to treat it with some caution!

17/11 raising from EP, unless he was donk bluffing with AK, you were practically drawing dead. If a looser "non-position" player makes that raise in EP I am 3betting and then folding to any major resistance post flop.