10NL, AQ OOP

Villain is 14/11/3.5 through ~220 hands and I haven't really seen him step out of line yet.

pokerstars Game #16067845131: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/03/18 - 12:14:20 (ET)
Table 'Anius V' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: phatjose ($10.85 in chips)
Seat 2: k1ng_of_polo ($1.80 in chips)
Seat 3: Fratzenpoker ($7.30 in chips)
Seat 4: Casper23xx ($9.85 in chips)
Seat 5: cubix1337 ($3 in chips)
Seat 6: zokki123 ($10.45 in chips)
Seat 7: vanderlei ($11 in chips)
Seat 8: geralrock ($2.55 in chips)
Seat 9: Jonny1410 ($2.75 in chips)
Jonny1410: posts small blind $0.05
phatjose: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to phatjose [As Qd]
k1ng_of_polo: calls $0.10
Fratzenpoker: folds
Casper23xx: raises $0.40 to $0.50
cubix1337: folds
zokki123: folds
vanderlei: folds
geralrock: folds
Jonny1410: folds
phatjose: ??

Going to be OOP for the rest of the hand here if I stay in the pot, which I don't really like against someone who has been throwing cbets fairly regularly. What's my move here?

Call to see a flop. The OOP is the only thing I think that tempers a raise here. A raise is certainly not a bad move here. You don't fold this.

He's tight, and has something, and I would think a pp above 10, or big ace, probably suited. He could be sharp enough to attempt to capitalize on that tight image. Give him Harrington's 10% bald ass bluff factor.

So because you will be OOP, and villain is so tight, I prefer the call, with the right of first refusal to continue.

I raise here. There is a huge range he could have here and if an A comes on this flop you are in danger of giving chips away to an AK. A lot of hands that raise would fold to your 3-bet. Since you're OOP (in position, first to bluff I've heard people say ) you can then cbet this if he flat calls. It's an easy fold if he comes over the top preflop and postflop if he calls your cbet you shut down if you missed. Now the one exception I would make is if you hit the A and he flat called your cbet. AK is now a large part of his range. At this point I would check-call, trying to keep the pot small. The problem with AQ at this point is that although AK is a lot of the range, at 10nl people will overplay AJ-A8 and even hands like A2 and A3 thinking that top pair is the nuts.

I also think that based on his stats he's folding to the 3-bet a lot of the time. He's raising almost all the hands he plays, and he had position. I can see a typical TAG doing this with a pretty wide range of hands (in relation to yours, basically a lot of hands that you have beat, such as A9-AJ, some suited connectors, and then of course you can fold out the 88-JJ type hands that you're flipping with as well).


So that's how I would play it.

I agree with Zach. 3 betting is the way to go in this spot, it not only gives
you control of the pot, but allows you a much easier decision on the flop.
A 14/11/3.5 type of player wants to either win pots cheaply when thier opponent shows weakness, or have a excellent hand to play a big pot. When you make a cbet on the flop you can count on him folding
more than enough times to turn a profit, not to mention the times that he will fold preflop. And if he reraises you, you can easily throw your hand away. If he just flat calls you on the flop then you should probably just check it down unless you have 2 pair or better.