$20 NLHE 6-max: AKs PF - Being nitty vs making money?

Villian Stats (VPIP/PFR/AF): 40/31/3.7

Hi all - appreciate some thoughts on our goals when playing cash and how that feeds into how you approach hands. To my mind, if you're looking to make meaningful returns you need to be looking to stack off with strong hands, however by doing so you risk high volatility and downswings. You can play well for 2-3 hours picking up small pots, but the returns come from getting your chips in good.

Clearly you should always be looking to get the money in ahead, but how does that translate to AKs pre-flop? Are we only shoving pre with AA/KK (and maybe QQ if you think a particularly weak villain)? Feels nitty to me but also likely to be the only profitable approach?

AKs is always a coinflip / marginally behind vs any pocket pair and isn't likely getting called by worse (maybe AKo but most of the time you're chopping with high rake).

Example below - Villain stats were (VPIP/PF/3bet) 40/33/17 so felt he was playing too wide and was exploitable however when reviewing the hand cold he's only realistically calling with AK+ and pocket pairs, meaning i'm always getting in behind even if he's playing 22.....

I had ranged him correctly, but even so I'm left feeling AKs wasn't the hand to attack him with?


pokerstars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.08/$0.16 - 6 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG: $16.13 (101 bb)
MP: $19.71 (123 bb)
CO: $15.61 (98 bb)
BU: $9.27 (58 bb)
SB (Hero): $19.24 (120 bb)
BB: $16.00 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.24) Hero is SB with A♠ K♠
1 fold, MP raises to $0.48, 2 players fold, Hero 3-bets to $1.76, 1 fold, MP 4-bets to $4.48, Hero 5-bets to $19.24 (all-in), MP calls $14.76

Flop: ($38.64) 6♦ 6♥ J♥ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($38.64) J♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($38.64) 8♦ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $38.64 (Rake: $1.50)

Showdown:
SB (Hero) shows A♠ K♠ (two pair, Jacks and Sixes)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 46%, Flop: 24%, Turn: 16%, River: 0%)

MP shows T♠ T♣ (two pair, Jacks and Tens)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 54%, Flop: 76%, Turn: 84%, River: 100%)

MP wins $37.14

Against some crazy LAG like this, I am also shipping AKs all day long. Yes he will mostly call you with a pocket pair or another AK, but if he is 4-betting as relatively wide, as he is 3-betting, that means, he has to fold a ton to your jam. And each time, that happen, you pick up almost a third of a stack uncontested.

Line: Pushing All-in Preflop OOP polarizing for value

Mercurius said:

Villian Stats (VPIP/PFR/AF): 40/31/3.7

Hi all - appreciate some thoughts on our goals when playing cash and how that feeds into how you approach hands. To my mind, if you're looking to make meaningful returns you need to be looking to stack off with strong hands, however by doing so you risk high volatility and downswings. You can play well for 2-3 hours picking up small pots, but the returns come from getting your chips in good.

Clearly you should always be looking to get the money in ahead, but how does that translate to AKs pre-flop? Are we only shoving pre with AA/KK (and maybe QQ if you think a particularly weak villain)? Feels nitty to me but also likely to be the only profitable approach?

AKs is always a coinflip / marginally behind vs any pocket pair and isn't likely getting called by worse (maybe AKo but most of the time you're chopping with high rake).

Example below - Villain stats were (VPIP/PF/3bet) 40/33/17 so felt he was playing too wide and was exploitable however when reviewing the hand cold he's only realistically calling with AK+ and pocket pairs, meaning i'm always getting in behind even if he's playing 22.....

I had ranged him correctly, but even so I'm left feeling AKs wasn't the hand to attack him with?


PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.08/$0.16 - 6 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG: $16.13 (101 bb)
MP: $19.71 (123 bb)
CO: $15.61 (98 bb)
BU: $9.27 (58 bb)
SB (Hero): $19.24 (120 bb)
BB: $16.00 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.24) Hero is SB with A♠ K♠
1 fold, MP raises to $0.48, 2 players fold, Hero 3-bets to $1.76, 1 fold, MP 4-bets to $4.48, Hero 5-bets to $19.24 (all-in), MP calls $14.76

Flop: ($38.64) 6♦ 6♥ J♥ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($38.64) J♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($38.64) 8♦ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $38.64 (Rake: $1.50)

Showdown:
SB (Hero) shows A♠ K♠ (two pair, Jacks and Sixes)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 46%, Flop: 24%, Turn: 16%, River: 0%)

MP shows T♠ T♣ (two pair, Jacks and Tens)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 54%, Flop: 76%, Turn: 84%, River: 100%)

MP wins $37.14

Click to expand...

Hello Mercurius, no one, absolutely no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to go all-in preflop with AKs or AKo, this is your own choice, a choice that many players do, to play Cash Games as if it was MTT.

As you said:

" To my mind, if you're looking to make meaningful returns you need to be looking to stack off with strong hands, however by doing so you risk high volatility and downswings. You can play well for 2-3 hours picking up small pots, but the returns come from getting your chips in good. "

Not necessarily truth: actually our winrate comes from the ability of playing thousands of hands, and thousands of small pots, because as smaller the pot, smaller the variance and vice-versa.
If you don't want to tilt, do not go all-in preflop, unless you have no options left.
Our return doesn't come from these big pots we fight for with suspicious equity, because if you consider 22 x AKs, 22 is a small favorite.
I like the postflop game, where I can have a ton of edge versus recreational and weak regulars of the field. When we go all-in preflop we give away the chance of beating our opponent postflop and leave our lucky in the variance's hands.

Plus, consider that just because of the fact that your Villain is way too aggressive, you don't need to put it all-in, you could even call with AKs from the SB and see its actions.
We don't need to be doing anything 100% of times, we can be calling, we can be 3-betting, we have options after all.

Your move is also non-sense. Like many weak regulars, with all due respect, you are going all-in ONLY with AKs, AA and KK, and maybe once in a while you are pushing with QQ, but this is a very strong tell about your game: you have no bluffs at all when you go all-in preflop, thus, reading and hero calling your shoves become very easy work.
I


Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

Thanks - always appreciate your thoughts. Taking your points in turn:

1. Maybe this is where I am going wrong - I want to be playing at a level where the money is meaningful too soon (say 100NL). I'm rushing through the levels (moved from 2NL to 16NL in a couple of months) but each time I step up I get a rude awakening - 16NL has been a persistent barrier having amassed the bankroll for it 3 times and then swiftly been sent back to 10NL!!
   • Is there a good general reading for cash strategy available that can frame the overall goal for me? Clearly the goal is to win money but understanding how a typical grinder is protecting their chips and inching out returns would be interesting to understand.
   • Grinding / inching out returns feels counter-intuitive to the aggressive style which is typically taught which can see over half your stack in the pot by the river - is the trick more having the discipline to know that if their hand withstood the pressure of a double/triple barrel and you don't have the nuts then you're folding to any river bet, protecting the other 25-50% of your stack for another battle?
2. Agree - calling his 4bet and going to the flop would have given me a better chance of coming out a winner or cutting my losses at $4 vs $16
3. You may have misunderstood me, I wasn't suggesting I only go all-in with AA/KK. That was more a question of whether they are the only hands you should continue raising beyond a 4bet with (beyond a 4bet typically being ~50% of stack so becomes shove/fold decision). What I meant was, that my conclusion, having reviewed the hand, is that really without AA/KK you need to be calling a 4bet (rather than re-raising) as you can't afford to get the chips in with less given calling range points you in a coin flip at best.

Think I may take a change in approach and look to stick at 10NL for a while and refine my game rather than trying to push on and getting into these sticky spots I'm not set up to assess but end up frustrating me as you said!

Aballinamion said:

Hello Mercurius, no one, absolutely no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to go all-in preflop with AKs or AKo, this is your own choice, a choice that many players do, to play Cash Games as if it was MTT.

As you said:

" To my mind, if you're looking to make meaningful returns you need to be looking to stack off with strong hands, however by doing so you risk high volatility and downswings. You can play well for 2-3 hours picking up small pots, but the returns come from getting your chips in good. "

Not necessarily truth: actually our winrate comes from the ability of playing thousands of hands, and thousands of small pots, because as smaller the pot, smaller the variance and vice-versa.
If you don't want to tilt, do not go all-in preflop, unless you have no options left.
Our return doesn't come from these big pots we fight for with suspicious equity, because if you consider 22 x AKs, 22 is a small favorite.
I like the postflop game, where I can have a ton of edge versus recreational and weak regulars of the field. When we go all-in preflop we give away the chance of beating our opponent postflop and leave our lucky in the variance's hands.

Plus, consider that just because of the fact that your Villain is way too aggressive, you don't need to put it all-in, you could even call with AKs from the SB and see its actions.
We don't need to be doing anything 100% of times, we can be calling, we can be 3-betting, we have options after all.

Your move is also non-sense. Like many weak regulars, with all due respect, you are going all-in ONLY with AKs, AA and KK, and maybe once in a while you are pushing with QQ, but this is a very strong tell about your game: you have no bluffs at all when you go all-in preflop, thus, reading and hero calling your shoves become very easy work.
I


Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

Click to expand...

fundiver199 said:

Against some crazy LAG like this, I am also shipping AKs all day long. Yes he will mostly call you with a pocket pair or another AK, but if he is 4-betting as relatively wide, as he is 3-betting, that means, he has to fold a ton to your jam. And each time, that happen, you pick up almost a third of a stack uncontested.

Click to expand...

Yeah it's tough right - conceptually AKs is seen as the 4th best hand, however in reality TT has a decent mathematical edge (55/45). The bigger question is whether any pre-flop shove makes sense in cash playing 100BB deep vs other similar stack sizes (can get it in against broken stacks to apply pressure and your risk of loss is lower)?

Getting into coinflips is fine in MTT but in cash you're risking real money every hand and so feels like you want a decent edge (say 60%+) to be risking your stack, which comes back to my question of is there anything you actually want to be shoving pre-flop in cash other than AA/KK and the very occasional bluff which probably has to be lower suited connectors and low suited Aces to give board coverage and best equity vs their range.

To be clear, and linking to Aballinamion's point, I'm not talking about cold shoving, but rather continuing to raise rather than calling down vs their aggression (i.e. 4-bet/5-bet/shove).

It just seems that if we're meant to be aiming for say 10BB/100, risking 100BB on a coinflip (so close to zero EV) doesn't make any sense and could cost us several hour's hard work. Therefore, we should be looking to avoid these spots by very rarely 4-betting and when are using the 4-bet say 5-10% of the time it shouldn't be looking to get all-in. It is being used to try and get the Villain to fold but if they call or re-raise we are folding our bluffs, calling our values and shoving our AA/KK (occasionally calling AA/KK to stay somewhat balanced so they can't make good lay-downs against our shove always).

I start writing a quick response and it becomes an essay...I love the complexities of the game and find writing things out forces me to critically assess my play, so thank you for bearing with me and sharing your thoughts!

Mercurius said:

Getting into coinflips is fine in MTT but in cash you're risking real money every hand and so feels like you want a decent edge (say 60%+) to be risking your stack

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It is just the other way around. In tournaments chips won are less valuable than chips lost because of ICM. In cash games a dollar is a dollar, and even if an edge is small, we still want to take it. It can also have value to decrease variance, but the raw winrate is way more important. Also on Stars getting it in early makes it possible to use all-in cash-out, which reduce variance a lot. This cost a 1% fee, but if the alternative is to give up on any spot, where our edge is less than 60/40, that will cost us way more.

Villain should be folding TT, since it does horrible against your 5bet jam range.
Faced with the shove, in terms of their equity they have to fold JJ and have a tough decision with QQ.
Versus tighter players there is consideration to be made about flatting the 4bet, since their range will rarely be anything less than QQ+.
But versus the particular player and their stats you played the hand very well.

Mercurius said:

Thanks - always appreciate your thoughts. Taking your points in turn:

1. Maybe this is where I am going wrong - I want to be playing at a level where the money is meaningful too soon (say 100NL). I'm rushing through the levels (moved from 2NL to 16NL in a couple of months) but each time I step up I get a rude awakening - 16NL has been a persistent barrier having amassed the bankroll for it 3 times and then swiftly been sent back to 10NL!!
   • Is there a good general reading for cash strategy available that can frame the overall goal for me? Clearly the goal is to win money but understanding how a typical grinder is protecting their chips and inching out returns would be interesting to understand.
   • Grinding / inching out returns feels counter-intuitive to the aggressive style which is typically taught which can see over half your stack in the pot by the river - is the trick more having the discipline to know that if their hand withstood the pressure of a double/triple barrel and you don't have the nuts then you're folding to any river bet, protecting the other 25-50% of your stack for another battle?
2. Agree - calling his 4bet and going to the flop would have given me a better chance of coming out a winner or cutting my losses at $4 vs $16
3. You may have misunderstood me, I wasn't suggesting I only go all-in with AA/KK. That was more a question of whether they are the only hands you should continue raising beyond a 4bet with (beyond a 4bet typically being ~50% of stack so becomes shove/fold decision). What I meant was, that my conclusion, having reviewed the hand, is that really without AA/KK you need to be calling a 4bet (rather than re-raising) as you can't afford to get the chips in with less given calling range points you in a coin flip at best.

Think I may take a change in approach and look to stick at 10NL for a while and refine my game rather than trying to push on and getting into these sticky spots I'm not set up to assess but end up frustrating me as you said!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the input mate. Well, I strongly recommend Polished Poker Vol 1, available here at the forum https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/polished-poker-vol-i-study-group-227214//, professor John Anhalt is very dedicated and respectful.

As you observed in the hand played, players at the micros-mid stakes use to call "level" more than they really should. Your Villain/Opponent should've folded right off the bat its TT, to begin with.
When Hero/You go all-in you are representing at least JJ, QQ, KK and AA, so it is easy to observe that when you go all-in preflop, after 4-bettor, there are 24 combos of pocket pairs that are crushing TT, and you might have at maximum 16 combos of AK, including the suited and off-suited.
And even against AK, TT is not a great favorite, winning only 52% of times. You opponent should've folded, this is my point.

Have a more solid bankroll management and don't be in a hurry to go soon to 50 NLHE or 100 NLHE, be very, very patient because it seems you are in the right path.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

I think it is fine against these players. With 100BB, You can 5bet shove light with TT next time as he likely call with AK,AQ or 99/88.

fundiver199 said:

It is just the other way around. In tournaments chips won are less valuable than chips lost because of ICM. In cash games a dollar is a dollar, and even if an edge is small, we still want to take it. It can also have value to decrease variance, but the raw winrate is way more important. Also on Stars getting it in early makes it possible to use all-in cash-out, which reduce variance a lot. This cost a 1% fee, but if the alternative is to give up on any spot, where our edge is less than 60/40, that will cost us way more.

Click to expand...

Agree on the point for cash games vs MTT, however in an MTT you have to make say 10x starting stack to get to final table so you have to get the chips in several times over if you want to win. As Carlos says, you don't have to get them in at cash tables to make a return.

What I'm saying is that if your edge is marginal (or in this case you're always behind a call unless they're a total moron as the call has to be pockets or AK), why get it all in? You may as well play blackjack where I have a better % than AKs has vs {22+,AK}.

I agree the shove has to be in your arsenal so you don't get exploited, but if you're shoving AA/KK that should be enough to register on someone's HUD and they'd need an absurd volume of hands on you to know that you're only shoving AA/KK so I think it's tough to be exploited here even if you're totally unbalanced.

xrhstos said:

Villain should be folding TT, since it does horrible against your 5bet jam range.
Faced with the shove, in terms of their equity they have to fold JJ and have a tough decision with QQ.
Versus tighter players there is consideration to be made about flatting the 4bet, since their range will rarely be anything less than QQ+.
But versus the particular player and their stats you played the hand very well.

Click to expand...

Thanks - that was my initial feel but don't like to chalk my losses up to "bad beats" or "lucky fish".

I'm generally ok with how the hand played out in this instance, but would I want to repeat it 100 times on the basis that over that sample i'd get enough folds or win enough coinflips to come out a little ahead? Probably not!!

I'm trying to establish a little bit more of a rule of thumb and rather than taking a profitable line, finding the most profitable line. There's more work for me to do but think having a hyper restricted pre-flop shoving range (solely value) is the way to go - particularly in the micros where you'll have fools calling down your KK with 66 etc...

Aballinamion said:

Thanks for the input mate. Well, I strongly recommend Polished Poker Vol 1, available here at the forum https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/polished-poker-vol-i-study-group-227214//, professor John Anhalt is very dedicated and respectful.

As you observed in the hand played, players at the micros-mid stakes use to call "level" more than they really should. Your Villain/Opponent should've folded right off the bat its TT, to begin with.
When Hero/You go all-in you are representing at least JJ, QQ, KK and AA, so it is easy to observe that when you go all-in preflop, after 4-bettor, there are 24 combos of pocket pairs that are crushing TT, and you might have at maximum 16 combos of AK, including the suited and off-suited.
And even against AK, TT is not a great favorite, winning only 52% of times. You opponent should've folded, this is my point.

Have a more solid bankroll management and don't be in a hurry to go soon to 50 NLHE or 100 NLHE, be very, very patient because it seems you are in the right path.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

Click to expand...

Cheers - yeah he should have folded haha! But I'm glad he didn't as it's forced me to spend some time thinking about my game and I'll hopefully learn something useful.

Think my BRM is ok - I use stretchy limits for the number of buy-ins, but i'm religious at moving back down the levels when I need to. Maybe the tight bankroll makes the losses in these scenarios tougher for me to bear however as 3 or 4 of these going against me in what is likely a +EV spot forces me to move back down the levels even if I'm playing correctly.

My approach is move up when I have 20 buy-ins (100BB) at the next stake, then move back if you fall to 15 buy-ins (which should be more than 20 buy-ins at the lower level) which I think is good discipline, but maybe I'll be more resilient and stick at 16NL next time if I wait for 25-30 buy-ins before moving up.

quant1986 said:

I think it is fine against these players. With 100BB, You can 5bet shove light with TT next time as he likely call with AK,AQ or 99/88.

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Hmm maybe - I think I'll tighten up the shoves to AA/KK/[QQ vs poor opponent] and see what results that yields. I'll still be 3-betting a decent range (c.7-10%) and 4-betting 3-5% of range with a mix of value and bluffs. I'll just restrict the 5-bet/shove to the absolute nuts, limiting my downside risk.

Drafting the above got me to review the EV position of the shove. On reflection I think it's +EV and I should continue doing it on that basis, however given my chosen BRM strategy which is pretty tight, I can't afford to play this way unless I sit at levels longer.

For now I'm going to experiment with the tight and strict shoving range and maintain my current BRM strategy, acknowledging that in the future when I get closer to my target stakes I'll have to revert back to my current approach but ensure I'm rolled to survive the variance it causes.

Some quick maths (happy to take comments or corrections as mainly doing this in my head rather than any poker / EV software):

EV of the shove, assuming the player profile above - fishy and betting way too loose.
Say they 4-bet wide (7% of hands) and call the shove with half that range (3.5% of hands - calling range of {TT+, AQs+}). You pick up c.20BBs if they fold and you risk 100BBs if they call with maybe 45-50% equity vs calling range.

EV = (50%*20) + (50%*(47.5%*100)+(52.5%*-100)) = 10 - 2.5 = 7.5BB

The AKs shove has an EV of maybe 7.5BBs based on the above assumptions. This results in 100 shoves in this spot delivering a return of 750BBs, having risked 10,000BBs to achieve. Feels a bad ROI and when variance hits you could be wiped out....

Trimming AKs from my current shove range {QQ+,AKs) and sticking to AA/KK shoves with the odd QQ, your fold equity is largely stable as villain unlikely to realise without 1000s of hand sample but your equity on the call probably goes up to 65-70% (don't have Equilab open so ignore if wrong but my point is you're well ahead).

In that case your EV becomes more like 20BB per shove and you're shoving less often so much better ROI.

Only bit I'm unclear on is how to factor in the increased losses you'll have on hands you call rather than shoving (e.g. the AKs/JJ/TT etc) which could have otherwise folded villain if you'd shoved. Until I figure otherwise i'll assume this is negligible as you're playing very strong hands that have good equity and you're playing against a fishy villain you can hopefully beat post flop

Mercurius said:

Drafting the above got me to review the EV position of the shove. On reflection I think it's +EV and I should continue doing it on that basis, however given my chosen BRM strategy which is pretty tight, I can't afford to play this way unless I sit at levels longer.

For now I'm going to experiment with the tight and strict shoving range and maintain my current BRM strategy, acknowledging that in the future when I get closer to my target stakes I'll have to revert back to my current approach but ensure I'm rolled to survive the variance it causes.

Some quick maths (happy to take comments or corrections as mainly doing this in my head rather than any poker / EV software):

EV of the shove, assuming the player profile above - fishy and betting way too loose.
Say they 4-bet wide (7% of hands) and call the shove with half that range (3.5% of hands - calling range of {TT+, AQs+}). You pick up c.20BBs if they fold and you risk 100BBs if they call with maybe 45-50% equity vs calling range.

EV = (50%*20) + (50%*(47.5%*100)+(52.5%*-100)) = 10 - 2.5 = 7.5BB

The AKs shove has an EV of maybe 7.5BBs based on the above assumptions. This results in 100 shoves in this spot delivering a return of 750BBs, having risked 10,000BBs to achieve. Feels a bad ROI and when variance hits you could be wiped out....

Trimming AKs from my current shove range {QQ+,AKs) and sticking to AA/KK shoves with the odd QQ, your fold equity is largely stable as villain unlikely to realise without 1000s of hand sample but your equity on the call probably goes up to 65-70% (don't have Equilab open so ignore if wrong but my point is you're well ahead).

In that case your EV becomes more like 20BB per shove and you're shoving less often so much better ROI.

Only bit I'm unclear on is how to factor in the increased losses you'll have on hands you call rather than shoving (e.g. the AKs/JJ/TT etc) which could have otherwise folded villain if you'd shoved. Until I figure otherwise i'll assume this is negligible as you're playing very strong hands that have good equity and you're playing against a fishy villain you can hopefully beat post flop

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I think your game is standard if you could observe a strange range in V. Otherwise it is an easy exploitative call, which will generate you a lot of EV + in the long term. The variables you mentioned apply favorably if your reading is correct.
Greetings.