$200 NLHE 6-max: AQ vs 4 bet and aggresion on AKJhh

$200 NL HE 6-max: AQ vs 4 bet and aggresion on AKJhh

Stacks:
* BTN with $390.75
* SB with $213.70
* BB with $76.75
* UTG with $248.20
* MP with $200.00
* CO with $195.00




Blinds: $0.00/$0.00
Site: full tilt poker
* * Dealt to CO:Q♦ A♦
* * Sklansky group 2
Preflop:
* * 1 players fold.
* * MP raises to $7
* * Hero raises to $21
* * 3 players fold.
* * MP raises to $54
* * Hero calls [$33]
* * Total folds this street: 4
* * Potsize: $111
Flop:
* * J♠ K♥ A♥
* * MP bets [$42]
* * Hero calls [$42]
* * Potsize: $195
Turn:
* * 9♠
* * MP bets [$99]

Poker Hand Converter By Cardschat.com Poker Forum

OK, call? fold? raise? Pots big and I do have a redraw. Oh BTW, villain is playing 5 tables and I have about 150 hands on him.

No reads with 150 hands?

Preflop you should only be 3betting if he either calls a lot with worse hands (in which case we'd be 3betting for value) or he 4bets a LOT (in which case we can 5bet shove for value). 3betting someone who isn't calling with worse, especially OOP, and doesn't 4bet too often is pretty much turning your hand into a bluff.

Calling 4bets is barf. We really shouldn't be playing 4bet pots postflop unless our opponent is the type to call 4bets himself, so I won't get into the postflop mess you've found yourself in.

ChuckTs said:

No reads with 150 hands?

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Sorry, I entered all his stats into the converter but it looks like they didnt show. He's a 15/14/inf solid multitabler who will lay down AJ, AT to a 3 bet and flat a decent pair.

ChuckTs said:

Preflop you should only be 3betting if he either calls a lot with worse hands (in which case we'd be 3betting for value) or he 4bets a LOT (in which case we can 5bet shove for value). 3betting someone who isn't calling with worse, especially OOP, and doesn't 4bet too often is pretty much turning your hand into a bluff.

Calling 4bets is barf. We really shouldn't be playing 4bet pots postflop unless our opponent is the type to call 4bets himself, so I won't get into the postflop mess you've found yourself in.

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Okay Chuck I see your point about the 3 bet, but I still think it's the right play here.

His 4 bet pretty much defined his hand as AK orb so I know I'm behind. It's just $33 more with AQs to see the flop and possibly stack him. I really can't see myself losing anything more than the $33 here. You would fold?

Just to expand on what Chuck said about not calling 4bets preflop:

When you call here, you're essentially hoping that he's bluffing or that you're in a coinflip situation. And while JJ might be in his range (far from everyone 4bets that preflop), that's only a small part of his value range and, worse, you don't know whether he has JJ or KK. And not only that, but when you flat the 4-bet with the intention of fit/folding, you'll only pair up one time in three. This puts you in a situation where you call $33 and need to win ~$100 on average the times you flop a pair.

This would be fine, if you know he has JJ. But he's going to have KK as often as JJ, and suddenly half of your pairs are going to cost you your stack, and there's no guarantee that KK (or JJ for that matter) will pay you off if you flop an ace. And I think you'll find that the majority of the times you get stacks in on an ace-high flop, he will have AK.

So why is shoving better if you think he's bluffing often? Because AQ is not that big of a favorite even versus most bluffs, and the fold equity you get from shoving will show a profit. And if he's not bluffing often? Then folding is automatic. You're at best putting in a third of your stack preflop as a 44% dog.

You can flat 4-bets sometimes with aces or kings in position, but you shouldn't with a hand like AQ or AK. I have a really hard time coming up with ways for you to make money postflop. The fact that they're suited is not much of a consolation because with the SPR you'll have on the flop your implied odds (which suited hands thrive on) is going to be virtually nonexistant anyway.

Four Dogs said:

Sorry, I entered all his stats into the converter but it looks like they didnt show. He's a 15/14/inf solid multitabler who will lay down AJ, AT to a 3 bet and flat a decent pair.

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But these are reasons against 3-betting him, not reasons for it. It's great for you if you can play a pot in position versus a likely dominated hand. If he's just going to fold everything that can get him in trouble when you 3-bet him, then 3-betting is a much less attractive option.

Edit: forgot this:

His 4 bet pretty much defined his hand as AK orb so I know I'm behind. It's just $33 more with AQs to see the flop and possibly stack him. I really can't see myself losing anything more than the $33 here.

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... but you call $42 on the flop?

F Paulsson said:

But these are reasons against 3-betting him, not reasons for it. It's great for you if you can play a pot in position versus a likely dominated hand. If he's just going to fold everything that can get him in trouble when you 3-bet him, then 3-betting is a much less attractive option.

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Good point. Thanks FP and Chuck. Still a little green at $200.

F Paulsson said:

Edit: forgot this:


... but you call $42 on the flop?

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With the GS yeah. Certainly could have saved myself that one.
Hey wait a minute! Shouldn't you be meditating or drinking raw eggs or something?
GL

Another thought on this. By 3 betting, maybe I am turning it into a bluff to some degree, but don't you think that this gives me a better chance of taking down the pot post flop should he have AK?

Another thought on this. By 3 betting, maybe I am turning it into a bluff to some degree, but don't you think that this gives me a better chance of taking down the pot post flop should he have AK?

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No decent player is ever, ever flatting AK oop to a 3bet. With AK in his position literally every decent reg at 200NL is 4betting/getting it in.

bw07507 said:

No decent player is ever, ever flatting AK oop to a 3bet. With AK in his position literally every decent reg at 200NL is 4betting/getting it in.

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he did 4bet actually

ChuckTs said:

No reads with 150 hands?

Preflop you should only be 3betting if he either calls a lot with worse hands (in which case we'd be 3betting for value) or he 4bets a LOT (in which case we can 5bet shove for value). 3betting someone who isn't calling with worse, especially OOP, and doesn't 4bet too often is pretty much turning your hand into a bluff.

Calling 4bets is barf. We really shouldn't be playing 4bet pots postflop unless our opponent is the type to call 4bets himself, so I won't get into the postflop mess you've found yourself in.

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why wouldnt you 3bet light especially in position if u know u will get a lot of folds? I dont agree with you about 3betting.

Skidmark said:

why wouldnt you 3bet light especially in position if u know u will get a lot of folds? I dont agree with you about 3betting.

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The problem with 3betting with AQs is that without great reads and a plan for the entire hand, we dont really know why we are doing it. Is it for value because he calls with At, AJ type hands? If he folds to 50% of 3bets then its fine, we are way ahead of his range, however our reads say no, so thats not it. Is it for a bluff to bluff out... No better hands are really folding here so there isnt much of a reason to 3bet this. Also its good for our flatting range, if we are only flatting low to mid PP then it gets obvious to good 200 regs id guess. I guess its too good of a hand to bluff here, 3bet light with weaker hands.

Overall I dont think 3betting is all that big of a mistake though, he will be folding hands that have equity against us and if he calls too much with small PP then we can just take it away on the flop. The huge mistake here(and imo it is huge) is flatting his 4 bet. We are nearly always dominated and I dont expect a very nitty reg to 4 bet and c/f any flop.

Skidmark said:

he did 4bet actually

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That doesn't really change what bw said, though. If we're hoping to take it down postflop from AK, then we must also believe that he wouldn't 4-bet it, because we shouldn't see a flop when we're 4bet.

Skidmark said:

why wouldnt you 3bet light especially in position if u know u will get a lot of folds? I dont agree with you about 3betting.

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The keyword in the above sentence is "light" and I disagree with it applying here.

fold. what hand is he 4betting preflop with that AQ can beat on the turn.

widowmaker89 said:

The problem with 3betting with AQs is that without great reads and a plan for the entire hand, we dont really know why we are doing it. Is it for value because he calls with At, AJ type hands? If he folds to 50% of 3bets then its fine, we are way ahead of his range, however our reads say no, so thats not it. Is it for a bluff to bluff out... No better hands are really folding here so there isnt much of a reason to 3bet this. Also its good for our flatting range, if we are only flatting low to mid PP then it gets obvious to good 200 regs id guess. I guess its too good of a hand to bluff here, 3bet light with weaker hands.

Overall I dont think 3betting is all that big of a mistake though, he will be folding hands that have equity against us and if he calls too much with small PP then we can just take it away on the flop. The huge mistake here(and imo it is huge) is flatting his 4 bet. We are nearly always dominated and I dont expect a very nitty reg to 4 bet and c/f any flop.

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i meant that "in general" in response to his 3betting theory not for especially this case.

F Paulsson said:

That doesn't really change what bw said, though. If we're hoping to take it down postflop from AK, then we must also believe that he wouldn't 4-bet it, because we shouldn't see a flop when we're 4bet.

The keyword in the above sentence is "light" and I disagree with it applying here.

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i didnt give any thoughts on that specific hand, he said that villian would 4bet with AK and i sait he 4betted indeed. its a fold imo too.

So are we saying that AQs isn't strong enough to 3 bet with or just not strong enough vs a solid EP raiser? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. We don't know his exact holding or even a guess as to the nature of his hand until we raise. This is 6 max we're talking about here so open raises are considerably weaker than FR.

In this case the villain is a Super TAG but even so at 15% ViP he could be raising with hands as weak as JTs and pairs down to 99 or even 88. If I CC with AQs I could make it tempting for a speculative hand to come in behind me. By raising I do 3 things.
1) I isolate the original raiser which can't be a bad thing.
2) I take control of the pot which makes it difficult for him to bluff at the flop with a hand like AK, TT etc. For all he knows I could have AA-JJ
3) I could take the pot down right there which wouldn't be a bad outcome.

This has been bothering me all day. Aside from calling the flop bet which was a big Mea Culpa I having a hard time accepting that the raise was a bad idea and might even have some meta game advantages.

Regarding 3-betting with AQs or not:

It's counter-intuitive to think that your hand is "too good" to 3-bet with, but that's what your problem is. You're in that tiny gray area of hands that you don't want to play for stacks with and that aren't going to get called by worse.

In a point-by-point response:

1. I think isolation is neutral for you. Your hand doesn't play considerably worse multiway than it does heads-up.
2. He's not going to be "bluffing" at the flop with AK or TT if he bets, since he has the better hand (unless you pair up and aren't dominated).
3. Most of the time you will, and no, that's not a bad outcome. But it's not the BEST outcome. The better outcome is that you win a medium pot postflop with top pair. You have a strong enough hand that you can play it profitably in position versus his raise, and I think your expectation will be higher than whatever your expectation is for 3-betting, adjusted for the times that you get 4-bet.

I think 3-betting QJo is fine, because its postflop expectation is probably very small. But your opportunity cost for 3-betting AQs is the loss of expectation that your hand has postflop, if that makes sense.

F Paulsson said:

Regarding 3-betting with AQs or not:


In a point-by-point response:

1. I think isolation is neutral for you. Your hand doesn't play considerably worse multiway than it does heads-up.

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In that it's a suited 1 gapper perhaps it might be better to play it as such rather than for high card potential seeing as the Ace may be dead.

F Paulsson said:

2. He's not going to be "bluffing" at the flop with AK or TT if he bets, since he has the better hand (unless you pair up and aren't dominated).

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In a sense he would be bluffing by betting out with a hand like AK or TT even if I flatted. A continuation bet is in itself a sort of bluff. You're betting not because you're sure or, reasonably so, that you have the best hand but because you showed strength pf and your opponent did not. By just calling a pf raise you're admitting to a certain degree of uncertainty as to the strength of your hand.

Reraising, even with a weak hand, tranfers that uncertainty onto the original raiser which is why it is so common to see the flop checked to the last person to show strength pf.

Looking at it from his point of view he could never be comfortable betting out post flop after just calling a 3 bet preflop, unless however the flop somehow improved his hand.

Of course in this case he never relinquished control of the hand preflop or post flop but to me the larger issue here is how one gets the best value out of a hand as ostensibly strong as AQs in the face of an early position raise from a solid player.

F Paulsson said:

3. Most of the time you will, and no, that's not a bad outcome. But it's not the BEST outcome. The better outcome is that you win a medium pot postflop with top pair. You have a strong enough hand that you can play it profitably in position versus his raise, and I think your expectation will be higher than whatever your expectation is for 3-betting, adjusted for the times that you get 4-bet.

I think 3-betting QJo is fine, because its postflop expectation is probably very small. But your opportunity cost for 3-betting AQs is the loss of expectation that your hand has postflop, if that makes sense.

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It makes alot of sense FP even though I need to dig a little deeper into this concept before I own it. In way I have a non empirical feeling that demonstrating the ability to show strength in the face of stength gives me an advantage over a table of nitty multi tablers that generally don't put up too much of a fight in the face of aggression without a real hand. After all they just flopped a set on table 6.

You should have folded when he reraised after you 3bet him..

do you think that AQ is good after you 3bet him and he reraised you??


If you think so.. you should move all in here


I had already folded when he reraised me

ImolAyrton said:

You should have folded when he reraised after you 3bet him..

do you think that AQ is good after you 3bet him and he reraised you??


If you think so.. you should move all in here


I had already folded when he reraised me

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No, I didn't think I was ahead and no I don't think I should have folded despite that. IMO I was getting too good odds, direct and implied to fold AQs. Shoving would be an option if I though I had any fold equity at all which I doubt.

Four Dogs said:

A continuation bet is in itself a sort of bluff. You're betting not because you're sure or, reasonably so, that you have the best hand but because you showed strength pf and your opponent did not. By just calling a pf raise you're admitting to a certain degree of uncertainty as to the strength of your hand.

Reraising, even with a weak hand, tranfers that uncertainty onto the original raiser which is why it is so common to see the flop checked to the last person to show strength pf.

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ok this is a huge leak, thinking in terms of cerrtainty, strength, etc. Instead think about ranges. What range does a person who takes a specific action have? How will he respond to your actions with certain segments of his range? Continuation bets are not bluffs all the time, and a cbet bet with TT is almost always for value. Anyway back to the hand, you're thinking basic level 1 what do I have and what do I want to do with it rather than how it goes up against his range.

He raises in MP. You are 100% correct that he does this with a wide range which you crush. So you say you 3-bet. First off if he's any good at all he's not flatting a 3-bet oop very often. So he'll most likely 4-bet you or fold. What does that do for our hand? His 4-bet range crushes AQ so we should be (although you didn't here, but that's beside the point) folding every time unless he's crazy which the case can be made for jamming over his 4-bet. If we're jamming over his 4-bet it's fine to do this but if you think about the fact that against a competent opponent that we're not stacking we will never see a flop with this hand. So basically if we take the action of 3-betting and folding to a 4-bet, our hand is irrelevant. Why not just do it with 29o? It's the exact same thing aside from card removal. So anyway we aren't 3-betting 100% of our hands there so we can choose the handds to do it with, and we want hands that when we choose call or fold we would choose fold, but we want the top of that range. Hands like QTo, 45s, stuff that can make hands but may be not quite good enough to call with. AQs will play great in position postflop so we should almost always be flatting this. Note also the point that if we know our opponent does flat 3-bets oop we can 3-bet this a lot because we get worse hands to call and getting money in with the best hand is always good.

Anyway his 4-bet is a pretty normal size. He has all the leverage in the hand because he could do it with bluffs or monsters. Most of his range especially in this spot is monsters though and no matter what we won't really feel comfortable stacking unless it's AQx. We do not have odds to draw to 2-pair+. If we hit an A he knows where he's at and we don't. He could be crushing us or have an underpair. It's just a shitty spot to be in and he's going to own us a lot.

So imo first just flat preflop but if you're going to turn it into a bluff just fold to his 4-bet. As played postflop I call flop as you did then just fold turn. You're never ahead here and you don't have odds to draw to 3 outs.

3betting AQ here is bad.
Calling the 4bet is horrific.

As played I fold the flop.
His range is AK AA KK imo.
All of which are still beating us.


When we 3bet AQ it is against fish who will call with A9 or sooted connecters.
Against players who will fold all but their premiums to 3bets we flat AQ and instead choose to 3bet complete air now for the fold equity.

If it helps, you can think of it as a preflop version of WA/WB.