50NL FR: AKs facing 4bet OOP from UTG+1

His 4-bet % is 13%? I'm not even sure I know what that means. What are his 3-bet %'s?

I get it in. There's too much dead money in the pot to go foldy-moldy. Not to mention he may think you're squeezing light.

3bet% is much smaller as are everyone's. His 3bet% is 3. For reference my 3bet% is 5.5 but my 4bet is 10. Basically you have fewer opportunities to 4bet but you should have better hands when you're in a situation to do so on average because you've already bet or cold-called a raise.

What is his ATS? Or even better, do you have his positional vpip/pfr for early position (HEM gives you that stat).

A 10/7 raising UTG+1 is usually super tight. If he steals from the button, it's even much tighter when he plays in EP.

Against a more generic villain, i would love to get it in here as your 3bet looks so much like a squeeze that he may be 4betting a larger range. Against this nit, i think you're way behind of his range. I'm not even sure it's a good spot to 3bet, tbh.

BTW, the reason he 4bets a lot is that he mostly raises premiums, not because he's especially agg.

i think it's a fold, but it's possible pokerstove could convince me otherwise. i don't really fault your 3bet size what with 3 players calling the raise and being OOP (maybe just a tad less?), but now you have put nearly 25% of your stack in and there's some dead money

the reason i think it's still a fold is because this is literally never AQ, and it's probably rarely AK or QQ. a 10/7s UTG+1 raising range at full ring is very nitty, let alone his 4betting range from the same position. also, i kind of find it scary that he made it 3x your raise instead of just cramming it all in since he's obviously pot committed

i really think we're looking at KK/AA a huge (80%+) amount of the time.

if you go on, you'll be playing for stacks, so you need to pay $41 for a $108 pot (after rake). So you need 37% equity against his range. If villain 4bets with JJ or AK, than it's fine to stack here.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 34.586% 34.22% 00.37% 28123620 302808.00 { AKs }
Hand 1: 65.414% 65.05% 00.37% 53461356 302808.00 { QQ+ }


Hand 0: 38.378% 38.06% 00.32% 46925148 389178.00 { AKs }
Hand 1: 61.622% 61.31% 00.32% 75582384 389178.00 { JJ+ }


Hand 0: 40.246% 13.34% 26.91% 13700916 27647358.00 { AKs }
Hand 1: 59.754% 32.84% 26.91% 33742608 27647358.00 { KK+, AKs, AKo }

But i still don't really like your 3bet. It's really asking for trouble, imo.

It's a squeeze, which is a really nice play when the original raiser is a bit loose and the callers are a bit tight. Here the original raiser is a nit and by 3betting you are just building a big pot against a player whose range is ahead of your hand and will play with position if this goes post flop.

This is just about break-even if we think he's just as likely to show up with QQ/AK as he is with KK+ (even after taking card removal effects into account). I think this is one of those rare moments where I'm not happy getting it in with AKs, even with a pot this big.

Hrm, I screwed up in my quick calculation. Our profit is better than break-even if he's just as likely to play QQ/AK this way as KK+. It needs to be QQ/AK 25% of the time for us to break-even.

I'm still leaning towards a fold, but I think it's a lot closer than I first thought. It's close enough that this is one of those spots where you don't have to worry about leaks. It's a good exercise to show that villain needs to really be this nitty for us to even considering laying down AKs preflop, though.

Anybody else thinks this should be a fold preflop?

I think both calling and squeezing have strongly negative implied odds after a super-tight utg+1 raise and a bunch of callers.

I have no idea what the stats mean, but the 4 bet signifies a huge hand, at least QQ, more likely KK, AA. I'd put him on worst hand he would play like this is TT, easy fold for me. He's defo got a pocket pair, imo

Against this villain Belgo I think you may have a point. As played I'm folding here as his range, given his stats, is pretty much defined
to AA/KK. That may be a strict range, but seriously do we think he could have QQ or less here. Arn't we just adding QQ to his range so it makes stacking off more plausible? Even if we do add it to his range then it's still barely b/e.

There may be a + ev side to that though, in the fact that the table sees you prepared to stack off with AK pf, it may help later with meta game.

F Paulsson said:

Hrm, I screwed up in my quick calculation. Our profit is better than break-even if he's just as likely to play QQ/AK this way as KK+. It needs to be QQ/AK 25% of the time for us to break-even.

I'm still leaning towards a fold, but I think it's a lot closer than I first thought. It's close enough that this is one of those spots where you don't have to worry about leaks. It's a good exercise to show that villain needs to really be this nitty for us to even considering laying down AKs preflop, though.

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So you're basically saying it's not a mistake to fold or call?

BelgoSuisse said:

What is his ATS? Or even better, do you have his positional vpip/pfr for early position (HEM gives you that stat).

A 10/7 raising UTG+1 is usually super tight. If he steals from the button, it's even much tighter when he plays in EP.

Against a more generic villain, i would love to get it in here as your 3bet looks so much like a squeeze that he may be 4betting a larger range. Against this nit, i think you're way behind of his range. I'm not even sure it's a good spot to 3bet, tbh.

BTW, the reason he 4bets a lot is that he mostly raises premiums, not because he's especially agg.

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I don't have positional stats on this player but his ATS is 15.

Jagsti said:

Against this villain Belgo I think you may have a point. As played I'm folding here as his range, given his stats, is pretty much defined
to AA/KK. That may be a strict range, but seriously do we think he could have QQ or less here. Arn't we just adding QQ to his range so it makes stacking off more plausible? Even if we do add it to his range then it's still barely b/e.

There may be a + ev side to that though, in the fact that the table sees you prepared to stack off with AK pf, it may help later with meta game.

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I don't think we can say this is always KK+ simply because of the prior action at the table (I've shown that I will lay down a hand in a big pot), the fact that my raise looks so much like a squeeze, and of course the fact that we hold 1 of each. If they've played with me before (and this guy has) they should know I'm willing to stack with AK preflop.

Judging from the responses thus far it seems my mistake in this hand was 3betting with AK in the 1st place?? It just seems like a spot where I don't want to see a flop with so many callers because even if I hit, I still don't want action.

WVHillbilly said:

I don't have positional stats on this player but his ATS is 15.

Judging from the responses thus far it seems my mistake in this hand was 3betting with AK in the 1st place?? It just seems like a spot where I don't want to see a flop with so many callers because even if I hit, I still don't want action.

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ATS of 15% means most of his 7% raises are from late position, so he's exceedingly tight in EP. JJ+,AK would be my guess. Maybe he even dumps JJ.

You are behind or tied with 100% that range with AK, so it's not a great spot to raise, because you probably don't have any fold equity here, so two things can happen when you 3bet.

1. He 4bets and you either fold and play for stacks with at best 40% equity against his range. Either way you loose about $10 to $12 in EV.

2. he cold calls and you have to play out of position against a villain who you know has a better hand than yours on average, who in the best case has AK too which means your chances of hitting the flop are tiny, and where you don't even know if hitting TPTK doesn't let you drawing dead anyway. I guess that you'll loose even more than $12 on average.

I agree that cold calling is not a really nice spot either. Against that many villains TPTK will most likely not be enough, so you'd be mostly playing AKs as any other suited connector, for its straight and flush potential, which is fine. Folding is also a good option, imo.

as played it is a fold imo, as i doubt a 10/7 is doing this with AK so qq+ would probably be a realistic range and KK+ is likely.

cold call is bad as utgs range still crushes you and + you have no idea what sort of flops the other guys are going to hit so you almost never know where you are in the hand on any flop (cept dead on most of them) and oop you are basically never winning this hand. besides, even if you cold call and pop an a/k on the flop, you aren't getting any action from utg unless you are crushed/tied. the only hand you'll beat will be like jj/qq on a axx or kxx board, and villain can get away from those hands, but you probably can't get away form tptk which may very well have you drawing basically dead.

unless villain opens with something like aqo+ tt+ (highly unlikely as that is basically my utg range and i play 16/13) i can't really see a squeeze being profitable and i kinda like a fold pf.

feitr, villain is actually UTG+1 so i think it makes a slight difference. and i'm relatively confident that the large majority of 10/7s are opening AQ and TT from that position, probably 99 as well

WVHillbilly said:

So you're basically saying it's not a mistake to fold or call?

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Well, between folding or shoving. If you're going to go with it, you may as well go with it. And while it may be a mistake either way, it's a small mistake and very unlikely to be a leak of any significance.

F Paulsson said:

Well, between folding or shoving. If you're going to go with it, you may as well go with it. And while it may be a mistake either way, it's a small mistake and very unlikely to be a leak of any significance.

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So then we should obviously shove? While it'll be a tiny mistake if it is one, won't it put our preflop shoving range wider, and allow us to get more action?

F Paulsson said:

Well, between folding or shoving. If you're going to go with it, you may as well go with it. And while it may be a mistake either way, it's a small mistake and very unlikely to be a leak of any significance.

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I mistyped that. I meant folding or shoving, it makes no sense to just call.

And I don't know that I could ever bring myself to fold this to his initial bet instead of 3betting or at least calling. Hell, they're soooooted!

c9h13no3 said:

So then we should obviously shove? While it'll be a tiny mistake if it is one, won't it put our preflop shoving range wider, and allow us to get more action?

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Well, "obvious" is a strong word but there are perhaps some meta game advantages to showing that we're willing to go with it in a situation like this. More important, perhaps, is the fact that while he seems like a huge nit, even huge nits sometimes bluff. Even if there's a tiny chance of him having random crap here, that tiny chance may well put us well in the black with a shove.

Basically, I've tried to internalize a lot of decisions. "Don't fold QQ+,AK preflop" is one of them. It allows me to focus more on decisions that matter a lot, so even while I may lose some profit in marginal spots, I think I can make up for it by allowing myself to pay more attention to the big stuff.

Results:

I pushed.

He called with 88.

Caught an Ace on the river to win his stack.

Only after the session did I really think about if I had played this hand badly. Thanks for all the input.

wow, i'm amazed that a 10/7 can show up with 88 there at FR. who knew

combuboom said:

wow, i'm amazed that a 10/7 can show up with 88 there at FR. who knew

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KerouacsDog said:

I have no idea what the stats mean, but the 4 bet signifies a huge hand, at least QQ, more likely KK, AA. I'd put him on worst hand he would play like this is TT, easy fold for me. He's defo got a pocket pair, imo

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:smile: my range was wrong, put him on at least TT. I dont play 50NL online.