Yeah...I hate my call too. Sort of the frustrated tilt-mistake when I know I should be folding. Should I have sized my 3bet differently? I think it might have been a tad on the large side but there are the two callers in there bloating the pot.
@c9 - you really think someone with 45 VPIP/4 PFR is going to 4bet AK/JJ enough for a shove to show profit? They're obviously never folding anything they put in the 4bet with.
The one plus side of the call is if I do think JJ/AK are in the 4bet range I can basically play the flop easily as villain shoves probably 99% of flops.
This was my thinking too, and I would have played it the same. This is despite the adage "never flat a 3bet OOP". So I started thinking
why it's a bad play.
I start from the assumption that you must 3-bet here. If anyone disagrees with this, I'm interested to hear why. I also think the size of the 3-bet is okay. I make it 2000, but it's not going to change the conclusions below drastically either way.
Now you can either
1. fold to his 4-bet, and you have lost ~15% of your stack.
2. shove, or see a flop where you have an extremely accurate range on villain. I agree that JJ & AK are in this range. You have just under 50%
equity against this range (JJ+,AK).
2a. If you shove, you're flipping pure and simple. You lose 80% of your stack half the time and gain ~87% (80% plus the dead money) the other half.
EV >~ 0
2b. If you call you can shove / c-r any flop without an A,K or J. which comes up only about 55% of the time (!), and fold to any other flop.
So you lose 33% of your stack 45% of the time.
The question is, how often does UTG bet that 55% of the time if you check to him?
Assuming he shoves anyway, you are, somewhat surprisingly, still only ~50% against his range on a "favorable" flop (without a Q). So you lose 80% and win 80% of your stack half the time, as before. If you hit a set, you're ~an 80% favorite.
But your overall EV is -0.33*0.45 + 0.12*(-0.8*0.2 + 0.87*0.8) + 0.43*(-0.80*0.5 + 0.87*0.5) = -0.07. This play loses you 7% of your stack.
What if no J-A flops, you shove and he folds AK (AK consists of 30% of his range) and calls with JJ+, but calls with KK,AA when a Q does hit.
Your EV here is
-0.33*0.45 + 0.12*(0.55*0.45 + 0.45*(-0.8*0.2 + 0.87*0.8)) + 0.43*(0.7*(-0.8*0.66 + 0.87*0.33) + 0.3*0.45) = -0.10. You lose 10% of your stack in the long run.
Conclusion:
So calling is way worse than shoving and not much better than folding.
QED.
If the math is greek to you, the key points here are:
- An overcard or Jack hits the flop 45% of the time.
- A "favourable" flop (one without an A,K or J) still only gives you a coin-flip against villain's range if you don't hit a set.
- Most of your EV from calling comes from spiking a set of the flop, but since it only happens 1/8 times, it's not profitable.
K
