AK MIDDLE POSITION

I had AK in middle position and I mid raised. The small blind reraised me. This player had been very fishy and loose. I had chip lead and could put him in tough spot with a reraise or just flat call to see flop? What would you do?

(I ended up shoving to put this player in a tough spot to call with all his chips. Turns out he had 77, and the board came out dry and he won with a pair)

So much of this is situational. We need more info.

What are the blinds? What are the stacks? What reads do you have on your villain? What is your table image?

I had 8750, and he had 6100. blinds were 25/50. The villain at this point had vp of 50 and played very fishy. I was playing Tight aggressive with vp of 16.

You have 175 Big Blinds. Really, you shove on a fishy player with a vpip of 50, without having really good hand preflop? You can't take these risks of losing 80% of your stack by choosing the coin-flip preflop with AK, even if your opponent has vpip of 50.

Ace King is a extremely strong hand to fold from any position in a tournament but when some one Re-Raise you you can call and draw if you think your opponent is strong or hes holding strong cards. You can also bluff them out of the pot when you are in chip lead. He could have played ace jack or ace queen that way but most of the time its 99 jacks or other pair. If they are holding a pair they would like anyone who is holding over cards to fold or go all in blind. I think 77 are slightly favorite over Ace King Pre flop.

Would like to know more on the bet sizing. But just seeing the stack size alone I dont see me shoving preflop. Just calling and seeing flop.

Thanks guys. Im going to play it different and pay attention to position and chip stack and bet sizing next time

rytciaq said:

You have 175 Big Blinds. Really, you shove on a fishy player with a vpip of 50, without having really good hand preflop? You can't take these risks of losing 80% of your stack by choosing the coin-flip preflop with AK, even if your opponent has vpip of 50.

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Agreed, and even the bet sizing here is generally irrelevant. Even assuming you get lucky and he is super weak aggro AK is just a big drawing hand.

id call see flop.been burned with ak too many times.its a strong hand to get but if the flop is isnt in your favor its just ace high

4Betting dosn't really make any sense and 4Bet jamming is insane.

So....

1. You have position
2. You are 175bb deep
3. You have skill edge
4. Jamming folds all the hands you beat unless he loves his AQ AJs too much in which case a 70/30 flip for 175bb is the best you're getting.

The best way to beat bad players with deeps stacks is to force them to make big mistakes so with a hand like AK that would generally be post flop. If you had AA then given the outcome of the hand that would be preflop.

But in general bad players make bigger mistake post flop. (A mistake involving ICM and bubble might be an exception)

Flat in position and go from there, pot control is key IMO. Overplaying AK is a losing strategy.

GeoJake said:

4Betting dosn't really make any sense and 4Bet jamming is insane.

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I agree that 4Bet jamming is a bad play with stacks that deep. That said, I would occasionally throw in a 4Bet to maintain a position of strength. The vast majority of the time, villain here will fold or call. Should he 5Bet, then his range most of the time is Polarized.

Anyhow, back to the 4Bet, if he calls, you can lead out almost 100% of the time on most boards. If he has a pair, like a mid pair even up to 10's, overcards will almost always hit and you can push him off the pot enough of the time to profit in the long run because any overcard, especially paint will be a scare card for him. If he's a Station though, slow down. But know that a Station will pay you off when you hit and you will use your skill advantage to your benefit. Force him to make the mistakes.

I would make re raise and if he calls, you need to see the flop, and if he moved all INN, fold because he bad position will not play with bad hand

You can go two ways with AK OOP I believe.

For pot control we can always just check back no point being risky at this stage of a tournament. We in deep so I think we shouldn't be in a rush to put ourselves in an awkward spot.

The other way is retake control of the hand and show him who's boss.. we need to reraise quite steep because we don't want weaker hands drawing us out and protect our hands... Plus it's still value betting since we have a strong preflop hand.

We should roughly hit the flop 1/3 times and our opponent miss the flop 60% of the time. We have fold equity reraising preflop but that's dependant on our opponent.

I think we need to be aggressive but shoving turns our Ak into a bluff... And against the callers it's bad play. we should keep it to a value bet.

Flat his 3 bet because you're in position in a heads up pot with 100+bb effective stacks.

missjacki said:

Flat his 3 bet because you're in position in a heads up pot with 100+bb effective stacks.

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But don't we lose value of our hand??? We want to put more chips in being in the hot seat... with a premium hand, because flatting we are letting trashy hands come out and there won't be too many good boards for us if we miss.


Plus we lose Fold equity...


What if we Flat and the board goes JT2 and our opponent leads out for a pot size bet? He prolly would've checked to us if we had 3betted and we'd have control of the hand?...



Also if we just flat we are giving our opponent information that we don't have AA KK QQ... So a lot of boards we can't represent it and we are turning into a bluff and it'll look obvious as well.

Aces2w1n said:

But don't we lose value of our hand??? We want to put more chips in being in the hot seat... with a premium hand, because flatting we are letting trashy hands come out and there won't be too many good boards for us if we miss.


Plus we lose Fold equity...


What if we Flat and the board goes JT2 and our opponent leads out for a pot size bet? He prolly would've checked to us if we had 3betted and we'd have control of the hand?...



Also if we just flat we are giving our opponent information that we don't have AA KK QQ... So a lot of boards we can't represent it and we are turning into a bluff and it'll look obvious as well.

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175bbs deep hands have very little preflop intrinsic value. We need a lot more information before we find out how much we want to commit to this pot. It's very easy to overplay AK preflop with deep stacks, but it is not necessary.

By flatting you keep his whole range on the hook while playing an underrepresented hand in position. When you 4bet you're folding out his AJ KQ type hands and leaving yourself facing a stronger range when he calls.

There's a lot of different ways to play AK when you are deep stacked. Arguments can be made for and against all lines.

I recommend to flat the 3bet because I'll be in position in a heads up pot and I'm confident in my post flop skills. And I don't have to hit the flop to win the pot.

But if he leads out pot sized on a JT2 board then I just fold. Easy. We don't have to win every pot we play and we don't have to push every small edge (real or imagined) to the limit.

If the OP had flatted and the flop came JT2 he might have won a smallish pot with a simple Cbet instead of losing most his stack in an unnecessary flip.

I honestly dont mind it. Yes we are deep. Yes there are more profitable ways to play it. But facing a guy who has vpip of 50 hes gonna call wayy too wide here so I think its ok but not the best way to play the hand.

It would be better to have big pairs on this spot. But bad players will still call sometimes as wide as ax kjs qjs etc. He calls with 77 which is completely horrible.

So while there are more profitable ways to play it I dont think its nessesarily that bad or as bad as its made out to be.

Jacki were never folding those hands out to a single 4bet preflop so we still keep alot of his range on hy 4betting small(which I think is the best play here).. so we keep his dominated ranges in and we put max pressure postflop against stuff he also wont fold like small pairs. We might fold some stuff like qj or whatever out but overall it doesnt seem likely that this player knows what the fold button actually does.

Aces-stop overthinkking things. We dont have to rep anything postflop bc this player clearly does not think. So all we have to do is play what we think he has he aint thinking about us or what hands we might have. When the flop comes down he does not know we cant have aa there usually bad players will just assume we have a hnad and fold or they will just think were full of it and raise us. But they never think about our range or anything like that so just keep it simple against simple people overthinking in these spots is going to cost you money.

Can you just call since you have an effective stack and see the flop.

After which you can evaluate if proceed or not.

JHAWKW I know you already not back in CC forum,,, But what say what do here , need know buy-in MTT or this freeroll..

In freeroll easy 4bet , in micro limits easy call , more highe buy-in this 4bet and fold vs 5bet...