$10 NLHE Full Ring: QQ out of position vs 5 bet shove

$10 NL HE Full Ring: QQ out of position vs 5 bet shove

Villian Stats (VPIP/PFR/AF): 13/9/2

poker stars full ring, 45 hands on villian. This is the second time in the last two orbits he has 3bet my raise (I folded to first one).
Villian has 130bb and I have 115bb

Other Stats on villian 3bet - 10%



Hand is in hijack position. Hand is folded to me.

Hero: raise to $.45
Villian: raise to $1.60
Hero: raise to $4.30 (really expecting a fold here)
Villian: after 10 or so seconds shoves remaining stack
Hero:??????????

Not sure how to proceed here (other than I know it is either fold or call)
Any input would be appreciated.

Also my stats over the 45 hands 17/11/1.5

uhh snap call? or fistpump...not sure
Villain is 3betting 10% of hand witch is like 77+,A8s+,QJo+.
His range obvs. narrows alot when he 5bet but its still pretty wide.
Theres way to much money in the pot to fold,you need to call 7,2$ to win 23$ and your pot odds are a little better then 3-1,even if his range is AK,KK,AA your still geting the right price and i seriously doubt his range is this strong considering his 10% 3bet.

For the most part, if you 4-bet, you're committed to call any 5-bet. It's just very unusual to have enough left to make folding a good option, and I don't think this hand is an exception. You're getting better than 2:1, so you need about 30% chance to win overall to call. Since you have 20% against even KK or AA, I don't think you can lay it down. I'm sure he'll show up with AK, JJ or even the other QQ enough to make it a call.

I wouldn't read too much into his poker tracker stats with such a small sample size. In addition, although 9% is kind of small, he may be willing to get it all in with the majority of that. Just because he's tight with his initial selection doesn't mean he can let go of a big hand. In fact, he'd probably be justified in stacking off with AK and JJ at 10NL as a general rule.

Question about the 3-bet stat: Does that mean he 3-bets 10% of all hands that are raised to him, or does that mean that he 3-bets 10% of the hands he plays that are raised to him (he 3-bets once for every 9 flat calls)? I'm assuming the latter, because the former would mean that he 3-bets more than he open raises, which is crazy.

After you 4bet, you have to call. I doubt he's doing this too lightly actually but there's just too much money in the middle to do anything else. I call and pray for him to have AK. The 10% 3bet stat is meaningless over 45 hands so I wouldn't assign it any worth.

Are you OOP here (your HH doesn't make this clear)?

Yes, I am OOP in this hand. IIRC from popping up his stats (know sample size is incredibly small and 3bet 4bet etc take a while to converge) he had 3 bet three hands during the session (45 hands) and two of them were against me. Metagame.....I figured he was 3 betting because I folded to his last 3 bet....just wasn't expecting his shove (which shows a lack of thought by me cause a shove was the only thing I should have planned for since if he calls/folds I have no more decisions pre-flop.

eagle jim said:

Yes, I am OOP in this hand. IIRC from popping up his stats (know sample size is incredibly small and 3bet 4bet etc take a while to converge) he had 3 bet three hands during the session (45 hands) and two of them were against me. Metagame.....I figured he was 3 betting because I folded to his last 3 bet....just wasn't expecting his shove (which shows a lack of thought by me cause a shove was the only thing I should have planned for since if he calls/folds I have no more decisions pre-flop.

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Exactly. In Elements of Poker, Tommy Angelo calls this an anticipation mistake and in this case it's the only anticipation mistake you can make because it's his only action that requires you to do something before the flop.

It's great that you at least recognize this now. Now just use this knowledge the next time you're in the same situation and 4bet/flat/fold based on what you'll do if raised.

eagle jim said:

Yes, I am OOP in this hand. IIRC from popping up his stats (know sample size is incredibly small and 3bet 4bet etc take a while to converge) he had 3 bet three hands during the session (45 hands) and two of them were against me. Metagame.....I figured he was 3 betting because I folded to his last 3 bet....just wasn't expecting his shove (which shows a lack of thought by me cause a shove was the only thing I should have planned for since if he calls/folds I have no more decisions pre-flop.

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Yep this is exactly right. That many 3bets in so few hands means one of two things. He either has caught a very unusually high number of premium hands (possible, but unlikely) or he 3bets very light (much more likely). I'm not going to be surprised to see anything 77+ or AQ+ from someone with those numbers here.

As played this is a snapcall. You are getting 5.7:14.3 roughly, meaning you need to be good ~29% of the time (roughly). True, if he has KK or AA you are a 20/80 dog you can and should be assuming a far wider range than that easily giving you the necessary odds. But the only way you could possibly fold this is if he turned over AA/KK when he made his bet (which of course he can't/won't do).


WV hit on it already but the bolded part of your quote is key here. You always have to be asking yourself "what if he 3bs/4bs/shoves on me here? what will I do?". You have to be asking yourself what you will do BEFORE you put in the bet that gives him the opportunity to do so.

WV hit on it already but the bolded part of your quote is key here. You always have to be asking yourself "what if he 3bs/4bs/shoves on me here? what will I do?". You have to be asking yourself what you will do BEFORE you put in the bet that gives him the opportunity to do so.

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This is why I tend not to like 4-betting QQ and JJ. You're letting lower pairs get away with just the 3-bet, and you're committed to putting in a huge amount versus the big pairs. Anyone using PT will immediately realize that their TT- and AQ are never good. The only good reason to 4-bet is to extract more with your small edge against AK. Not that I'm never 4-betting, but I mix a lot of flat calls in there. At 10NL and out of position, I can understand pushing it because your implied odds of flatting are less and people will just do stupid things with those lower pairs.

viking999 said:

This is why I tend not to like 4-betting QQ and JJ. You're letting lower pairs get away with just the 3-bet, and you're committed to putting in a huge amount versus the big pairs. Anyone using PT will immediately realize that their TT- and AQ are never good. The only good reason to 4-bet is to extract more with your small edge against AK. Not that I'm never 4-betting, but I mix a lot of flat calls in there. At 10NL and out of position, I can understand pushing it because your implied odds of flatting are less and people will just do stupid things with those lower pairs.

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Bolded part is too general. And what do you mean "you're letting lower pairs get away with the 3bet?". I generally find, esp at $10 NL, that if someone is 3betting 88 for example, they are more than likely calling a shove preflop (or shoving themselves if 4bet). That's great for us. We bet against ranges, not against specific hands. The only hands we really fear here are AA and KK, which given the info at hand I put as only a part of his range.

I don't like 4 betting and folding, pretty much ever. I don't really advocate shoving TT or AQ either for the record.

At $10 NL I think you are just fine against many opponents pushing QQ all in preflop. I'd say you can do it more profitably at $10 than at $25 or $50 for that matter as well.

The big problem with flatting the queens oop in this spot is... what do you do when an A or K flops as one will quite often? check/fold? That sucks, especially since if he's willing to shove 99 for example pre, he's going to shove it in on any flop most likely. What if the flops comes all low cards, you check and he shoves? You either decide you think his range is wider than KK/AA pre or you don't and you act accordingly.

If you are reasonably sure your opponent is only 3bet/shoving KK+ and AK well then ok, that's one thing. If you have reasonable to strong evidence that your opponent will 4b/shove wider then I'm putting it in with QQ here every time.

So..it's extremely opponent dependent.

Anyone else feel that 4-betting here is a mistake?

Unless this guy has shown that he's 5-bet shoving fairly wide, calling the 3-bet and CRAI on any non-A/K flop is a far better line, imo.

(Also, 45 hands is pointless when looking at a 3-bet stat. 10% could easily be 1/10 over 45 hands.)

dsvw56 said:

Anyone else feel that 4-betting here is a mistake?

Unless this guy has shown that he's 5-bet shoving fairly wide, calling the 3-bet and CRAI on any non-A/K flop is a far better line, imo.

(Also, 45 hands is pointless when looking at a 3-bet stat. 10% could easily be 1/10 over 45 hands.)

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Personally I would have called the reraise and played the flop.

Is this a mistake?

insta snap call and pump fist.

Stu_Ungar said:

Personally I would have called the reraise and played the flop.

Is this a mistake?

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Given the info at hand? not really no...although see below for discussion of his 45 hand sample and it's reliability.

I don't think anyone has made any comments on that yet. Generally speaking the point at which you start to become committed is when 10% of the smaller stack goes in. $1.60 is ~14% of the smaller stack. This basically puts you at or just over the point where you need to decide if you are committed or not. You need to know right now if you are going all the way with QQ as an overpair basically. If the flop comes with an ace or a king, and you check fold... that might be a minor mistake but not a horribly huge one. If the flop and turn come with relatively dry undercards and you decide to c/c flop and c/f turn to pressure that would be horrible for example.

Regardless though you need to know what flops you will commit on and what flops you will give up on if you decide to flat. I think flatting has more merit in position than out though for what it's worth.



Regarding the comments about 45 hands being useless... I disagree somewhat. OP said that this was his 2nd 3bet in the last 2 orbits (18 hands) if he's 3bet even once in the first 27 hands prior to those 18 I'm going to start pegging him as a probable light 3 better. It isn't absolutely conclusive sure, but it does mark him as more likely.


The chances someone is going to get dealt AA, KK or AK 3 times in 45 hands is as follows :

p = 28/1361 = ~.02

(3 C 45)(.02)^3(.98)^42 = .0417 = ~4.2%

The odds of someone being dealt AA, KK or AK 4 times in 45 hands is a WHOPPING: 0.77% (as in less than 1%)

If this is only his 2nd 3bet in those hands, the probability jumps to: ~16%


So...if he's 3 bet 3 times in that sample it's highly unlikely he's doing it with AA/KK/AK only (little less than 5% chance) if he's done it 4 times, there's a less than 1% chance. Food for thought.

/edited to fix numbers cause I can't type them in right apparently

Can you tell I'm in a strange mood tonight?

Just as an addendum to the above... here's a 95% confidence interval for 3 3bets over 45 hands: 0.01% to 8.3%

Meaning that I'm 95% confident the chances he is 3betting ONLY AA/KK/AK are no higher than 8.3% after 45 hands after he 3bets 3 times.

/// The 1361 in the above calculation was simply a typo, should be 1326 (the total number of possible starting hold em hands). was simply a type in the post, the correct number was used in the calculation

Hero: raise to $4.30 (really expecting a fold here)

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This is the bit I see as flawed.

QQ has just about 0 fold equity.. you will never fold out higher hands by betting because there is only (AA,KK.. maybe AK)

So the reraise will often drive out a ton of handswhich you beat.

If the flop is dry than you are ahead and will likely win a ton of money..

So my confusion (and this is genuine confusion a I am still learning poker myself) is why place a bet, with the intention of folding out the opponent when you very likely have the best hand?

Good rule of thumb with QQ at the micros....
If you raise and are then 3 bet, flat and get it in on a non A,K flop
If you 3 bet and are then 4 bet, fold

If you have a read on a specific player, these guidelines can be tweaked accordingly. Basically, you'll never be giving up too much but playing like this, and you'll avoid a lot of tough spots.

I actually think that may be the best line, flat and shove on a non A,K board......the way I played it, 4 bet folding was obviously horrible. Any thanks for all the input.