$10 NLHE 6-max: Gross spot with AA when Q high board pairs

full tilt poker $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 1145803
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Hero (SB): $13.79
BB: $22.26
UTG: $4.97
CO: $7.00
BTN: $11.64

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is SB with A A
UTG calls $0.10, 2 folds, Hero raises to $0.40, BB calls $0.30, 1 fold

Flop: ($0.90) Q 3 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.70, BB calls $0.70

Turn: ($2.30) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $2.10, BB calls $2.10

River: ($6.50) Q (2 players)
Hero ???

villain is a 45/19/50afq over 127 hands. While villain may seem like a maniac, he never really got out of line at least with me. I honestly didn't him make any moves that would make me label him a maniac. His fold to cbet is 62%(only over 8 hands though)

Long-winded response here...

Stats are all good and fine, but where those stats lead us with respect to what hands villain holds (ie his range) is what's important.

Your thought process should be something along the lines of:

-What worse hands got to the river?

-What better hands got to the river?

-What is the ratio of worse:better?

If you want to get it down to an exact science, you can count combos and compare those numbers. In general though, if the ratio of worse:better is >1:1, or they have worse hands at least %50 of the time, you usually want to value bet. This doesn't apply if the worse hands are busted draws of course since they won't call, nor does it apply if villain is unlikely to call with some of the worse hands (or turn them into bluffs, in which case if we're b/f that's bad for us).

EV is what's important and I'm gonna practice my maths here, so if anyone finds something incorrect let me know:

First assumption: villain is as loose as his pf stats suggest, and as such gets to river with Q9s+/QTo+/33/88, probably 3bets AQ/KK, so those are discounted, and also calls with any 8x hand and any 99-JJ. We'll assume he plays %100 straightforward and calls his worse hands, and calls/raises his better, in which case we're b/folding.

Worse hands:

89s, A8s: 4 combos total (clubs and spades; hearts aren't possible and diamonds now have us beat).

99-JJ: 6 combos each for 18 combos

Total: 22 combos

Better hands:

Q9s-KQs: 2 combos of each, given spades/diamonds aren't possible. 8 combos total

QTo-KQo: 8 combos each, 24 combos.

33/88: 3 of each, 6 combos.

Total: 38 combos.

So if these ranges and assumptions are correct, value betting would likely be bad given there are almost twice as many better hands as worse. 24/(24+38) = %39.

To demonstrate the EV, assume we bet like $4:

EV(called by worse) - EV(called/raised by better) = EV(total)

($4)(24/(24+38)) - ($4)(38/(24+38)) = EV(total)

$4*.38 - $4-.62 = EV(total)

EV(total) = $-3.1

So we'd lose an average of just over 3 bucks by betting if my calcs are right.

You can mess with the numbers to suit more applicable ranges (maybe you think he's more likely to call pairs OOP and less likely to call with Qx, who knows).

My purely non-mathematical, feel-based play here would be to valuebet small and fold to a raise. The bet size affects his calling range considerably, and the smaller we bet the more calls we get. I'd say his range can occasionally include 66- and random ace-highs, and that some of his Qx and sets are likely to have raised by now, so that may shift our EV into the positive.

Wow, nice going Chuck. I'll learn how to do that someday

Just want to comment about the range you gave him, first any Ax diam / Kx diam / maybe some other 2 diamonds are likely to float the flop, and they get there on river.

Secondly I kind of doubt a 45 vpip plays the top 45% of hands, it's more like a random distribution of whatever they feel like, discounting the bottom 20-30% I guess. Therefor your range with Q's is too narrow, Q2s falls into the top 48% of hands btw, I doubt he would fold it tbh. He will play more offsuit queens too but I guess not all the time, hard to say.

So you were conservative in the better hands estimate.

I am not sure about him raising the Qs, when he's bet heavily into. He may be smart enough to play cautiously if he has a low kicker and just calll down, or doesn't want to scare gomez away

Messed up part of my calculation there, I knew the -$3 didn't sound right:

ChuckTs said:

To demonstrate the EV, assume we bet like $4:

EV(called by worse) - EV(called/raised by better) = EV(total)

($4)(24/(24+38)) - ($4)(38/(24+38)) = EV(total)

$4*.38 - $4-.62 = EV(total)

EV(total) = $-3.1

Click to expand...

EV(called by worse) only included his call of my bet, not the money that's already in the pot, which is obviously very important.

I also ****ed up the combos for the Qx hands. I first did Qxs, then Qx total, which of course would include Qxs. So there are actually 24 combos total of Qx, and only 30 total of hands that call that have us beat.

I also added a negative sign in my last line instead of a multiply, big mistake lol.

Corrected:

EV(called by worse) - EV(called/raised by better) = EV(total)

(4+6.50)(24/(24+30)) - (4)(30/(24+30)) = EV(total)

10.50*.44 - 4*(.55) = EV(total)

EV(total) = $2.42

I feel like I could still have some really ****ed up numbers somewhere, somebody's gonna have to read this over for me

Also just a quick change just to demonstrate how having a 1:1 worse:better ratio will do for us:

EV(called by worse) - EV(called/raised by better) = EV(total)

($4+$6.50)(50/(100)) - ($4)(50/100)) = EV(total)

$10.50*.5 - $4*.5 = EV(total)

EV(total) = $0.75

ComplexPlaya said:

Wow, nice going Chuck. I'll learn how to do that someday

Just want to comment about the range you gave him, first any Ax diam / Kx diam / maybe some other 2 diamonds are likely to float the flop, and they get there on river.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Sure, we could include backdoor diamonds, but if that's the case then we can likely factor in a bunch of shittier pairs too. 66- may call down as well, which would even out the combos a little bit.

We're also not considering the times villain has hands like 9T/J9/JT which may have called flop/turn, but will fold river (which makes betting better, but also makes c/c more attractive).

Another thing to consider is that he doesn't always float the flop with AXd/KXd, so those have to be discounted.

This is why I don't do EV calcs often - they can very quickly get VERY complicated when we move our assumptions out of the realm of stupid-simple.

I prefer to lazily use my 'feel'

ComplexPlaya said:

Secondly I kind of doubt a 45 vpip plays the top 45% of hands, it's more like a random distribution of whatever they feel like, discounting the bottom 20-30% I guess. Therefor your range with Q's is too narrow, Q2s falls into the top 48% of hands btw, I doubt he would fold it tbh. He will play more offsuit queens too but I guess not all the time, hard to say.

Click to expand...

errr, your wording is confusing me here. My range was likely too narrow, but you're going against what you're saying by pointing out his vpip likely isn't his actual range to get to the flop with. I agree, I'm probably being conservative there though.

Anyway, you can just mess with the ranges/combos yourself and see how it changes our resulting EV.

ComplexPlaya said:

I am not sure about him raising the Qs, when he's bet heavily into. He may be smart enough to play cautiously if he has a low kicker and just calll down, or doesn't want to scare gomez away

Click to expand...

Valid point, but it has no effect on our EV calc. When he calls with a better hand, we see a showdown, but we lose the amount we put in on the river. When he raises, we fold, and we lose that same amount.

ChuckTs said:

errr, your wording is confusing me here. My range was likely too narrow, but you're going against what you're saying by pointing out his vpip likely isn't his actual range to get to the flop with. I agree, I'm probably being conservative there though.

Anyway, you can just mess with the ranges/combos yourself and see how it changes our resulting EV.

Click to expand...

Yeah it was a bit confusing. What I meant is even if this type of player may fold hands that fall within his VPIP and play hands that are worse, Qxs seems like something they'd always play because hey it's soooted. I guess I managed to be even more confusing now lol

I can't mess with those, need to learn more about combos and I suck at assigning ranges unfortunately. But I'll get there eventually