6-Max.
100 BB deep.
No-Limit Hold'em.

Villain open-raises. Do you sometimes flat AA-KK to balance your calling range, deception purposes or other reasons (even though in a vacuum, 3-betting is the standard line)? With what % frequency do you flat?

Would rarely if ever flat with those hands online. Games are too aggressive and you might be sacrificing too much EV. Rare exception might be total aggrodonk or super tight player I would never 3 bet bluff regularly. Would probably take non-standard lines post flop as well like x/raising, 3-betting, etc.

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100bb deep facing a standard open in a 6-max cashgame? Never. I like making money, not burning it.

This is the standard way to play it. You don't want to let a bunch of people into the pot when you're playing aces. The more opponents, the worse shape your aces are in. Against one player your equity is around 80%. Against three random players it's about 33%.

That said, not everyone plays according to the standard poker wisdom. I was rereading the Full Tilt Poker tournament strategy book recently That book makes a point of showing how two pros can react very differently to the same situation.

In that book Gavin Smith said that he rarely 3-bets, even with aces. He likes the deception value of flat-calling with strong hands as well as weaker ones.

See Arty's post for clarification. Online there's just so much aggression you need to be in there stealing blinds and 3 betting so much yourself you can't afford to tank the top of your range just for some potential future payoffs that may never become a reality.

Also it's not a huge deal if your equity drops because more players join the hand because the pot size increases more rapidly than your equity falls so you still make money you just win at showdown less often. I don't know where you're getting your equity numbers but vs 3 truly random hands AA has 63% equity according to my equity calculator.

I thought Gavin was a live tournament pro? That strategy can definitely make more sense in a tournament setting and even more so live, but online cash games it just doesn't make a lot of sense except vs very specific opponents.

Definitely not going to flat AA or KK. I don't want to let any marginal hands see the flop.

FWIW, I flatted a raise with AA in a timbey yesterday, but the stacks were all around <20bb (with some much shorter), and I kind of expected to induce a squeeze/jam by a crazy guy in the blinds. I'm not sure if I made the right play, but tourney situations with short stacks definitely play quite differently to 100bb cashgames.

I'm probably flatting around 5%-10%. Main spot is when the OR is a taggy reg that over-respects 3bets. Sure, there's still plenty of value vs QQ, KK, AA, but you can extract on the flop vs those hands anyway. Usually there would have to be bad or aggressive players behind though. I'm virtually never flatting from the big blind or small blind and rarely button.

I think we all agree that in a vacuum, 3-betting is the most +EV line to take for AA-KK specifically. However, occasionally flatting is beneficial to all the other hands in your other ranges; hence being more balanced.

For instance, CO opens. We call on the BTN with a hand such KTs. If the board comes say K22. We are extremely capped versus Villain, and a lot of our Kx type hands, pocket pairs can be put in extremely difficult situations versus a Villain who realizes our range is completely depleted of strong holdings/capped. Occasionally, having AK, AA-KK can really benefit other hands in our range.

Thinking in range versus range terms is very difficult (as opposed to hand vs range), and I'm still unsure if the aforementioned benefits and other related concepts make occasionally flatting aces worthwhile baring specific Villain reads.

CAVEAT: The gain in EV all of your other hands receive from checks by flatting AA/KK has to compensate for not only your loss in immediate equity for those hands but the loss to your 3 betting range as well.

That's a lot to make up in what will generally be smaller pots when flatting.

I don't know if you can prove there are enough spots that you gain significant showdown equity by preventing bluffing to compensate for the larger pots you win with higher equity. You also forget you may be losing EV from your 3 bet bluffing and barreling as people may have more equity vs that range AND more information that those ranges may not always contain all combos of AA/KK to make lighter calls.

I guess the bottom line for me is I've given up on the idea that sacrificing immediate, tangible EV plays is worth some potential incalculable future pay off.

Exception would be anything that might ruin my chances playing in a good game (rat-holing, hit and run, other rude behavior, etc.) which is very clearly long term negative EV.

No point in arguing either way as both are correct, depending on the situation.

I've recently done a dataanalysis of my past 300k hands, and my winrate with AA when flatting pre is 4,000bb/100 over a small sample. That's compared to average of 1,000/bb/100 on average.

The key is when to flat. I only flat when Btn + blinds squeeze % is very high ( combined >25% or so). It is also very profitable if the PFR barrels like a maniac but shuts down a lot to aggression (i.e. FT3B 95%, CB Flop 85%, CB Turn 75% , CB River 95%)

This is true but I guess another point I'm trying to make is that, like you said, flatting should be a specific adjustment and not a part of a strategy that is absent reads.

You can get the same flop in 3-bet pots, but now villain is the one that's capped (when he called pre). I dunno about you, but if I've got the effective nuts against a capped range, I prefer to be in a juicy 3-bet pot than a little single-raised pot.

I imagine that everyone knows that Mike Caro has opined on this subject in several books over the years. Caro was dealing mostly with LHE. His view was that you should occasionally limp with AA. The EV difference between calling and raising is much less than most people previously believed. Caro's view was that raising can "thin the field" too much.

In today's NLHE games, I imagine that raising AA is much more profitable than in Caro's LHE day.

If you assume Villain has a capped range, then he is 4-betting AA-KK, and hence, you are in a "juicy 3-bet pot" because he can never show up with AA-KK; hence the problem with always taking the most +EV line for your specific hand sometimes.

Obviously for the specific times we hold AA-KK it is more profitable to 3-bet (I already agree that the standard line is to 3-bet), but your calling range suffers from this.

This thread focuses 100BB deep, but if we were playing much deeper, it would be really disastrous for your calling range to never be able to show up with KK+.

I don't think I am saying anything controversial here. Even Bill Chen in the Mathematics of Poker stated: "The ability to threaten to hold the nuts in a particular situation is worth some equity to all the hands in our distribution" (P.262) and "With gigantic stacks (say, one million times the blind), it would indeed be indicated to play 52s under the gun with some positive probability" (P.262).

I'm more concerned about what just_grindin posted of: "The gain in EV all of your other hands receive from checks by flatting AA/KK has to compensate for not only your loss in immediate equity for those hands but the loss to your [ other hands in your] 3 betting range as well." and whether at 100 BB sometimes flatting KK+ is worth enough equity to all the other hands of our distribution to justify this.

I understand that you want to strengthen your flatting ranges. That sounds logical, but you generally maximise your profit in NHL by:
Bloating the pot when you have a range advantage.
Keeping the pot small when you don't.

Ergo: 3-bet with a range that includes the nuts. Flat with a range that doesn't.

By using mixed strategies with some of the more "middle-strength" hands, your flatting range will still be pretty strong. You've got to 3-bet the nuts pre-flop though. By having AA in your 3-bet range, you can also make profitable 3-bet bluffs with weaker hands that can't even call profitably.

I guess it's OK to flat with aces if you're in a movie and you're playing against Matt Damon, because you can get your value by overbetting 3x pot on the river and getting shoved on by worse. When you're not in strange situations like that, do like Doug says and 3-bet pre.

It might be worth looking at some of the bot strategies to see how frequently they flat AA/KK or stuff like piosolver etc.

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I was using the Equilab calculator. I probably didn't let it calculate long enough to come up with good number.

I pretty much always raise AA, but I think there are good situations to flat it.

When you flat a raise with AA other people will ridicule you like crazy, but it might be super profitable. If a loose player in a 200NL 6max game opens for $6 and another loose player calls and you have AA on the button looks like a pretty good spot to raise, but you may notice some overly aggressive Russians in the SB and BB. You decide to call. SB raises to $32 with TT. BB raises to $63 with A6o. Folds to you and you push all-in. SB tanks, but ends up calling. BB folds. You win a huge pot.

There are strict guidelines that are good to follow, but every once in awhile it is good to break the rules if you have a good reason for it.

Just a little while ago I was chip leader in a tourney. I opened KJo UTG and the guy right after me 3-bet. SB cold called and I 4-bet and they both called. I pushed a flop of 732 with a little more than a pot sized bet and the one guy folded 88 but SB had 77 and took a big portion of my stack. After the hand some "poker gods" decided to ridicule me. The guy who folded had 88 and exclaimed how "weak" my play looked.

Other poker players get mad easily when you don't play their conventional way. KJo is "suppose" to be a fold UTG and it is "suppose" to be a fold to a 3-bet. If you have a profitable reason to take an unorthodox line then do it and prepare for the bitching, because lots of poker players like to bitch like spoiled children.

Especially in a 6 max... almost never. The idea is more 3 betting light so youre not narrowed to only AA-QQ or however tight your 3b range is. Balancing a call range doesnt have too much merit imo. Thats saying that sometimes your opponent will put you on AA when you call? That doesnt make much sense.

Only time I think it calling an open with AA has merit is if you are pretty sure a tilty/hyper aggro guy will 3 bet or jam the rest of his shorty after you call. This way you can get the opener to shove over to isolate, or he just calls and you can put in your 4 bet. But def make sure that a shortys stack will allow you to re raise otherwise youll be in a tough spot. Letting him see a relatively cheap flop with an empty side pot.

Overall, this is not something youd want in your general arsenal at all, imo. Just very game specific. A gameith many loose squeezes or 1 tilty opponenet who is highly likely to jam.

Flatting a 4b/5b and maybe even a 3b w/ AA could be OK and part of an optimal strategy at any stack depth and even limping AA in SB could be OK too, but~!!

Flatting an open raise with no additional information is ludicrous (6m nlh, 100bb eff), and I'm assuming we're talking in a vacuum here? There are caveats to everything in poker if you're explicitly exploiting your opponent.

And you being worried about having a capped range is insane. Some boards suck for your range, its true. But the frequency of these boards and the EV lost by not having certain hands in your range is nowhere near enough to compensate for the EV won for playing stupid stuff or strong stuff wayyyy passively. If an awful flop comes up for you it doesn't mean your range sucks, it just means you got "coolered" on the flop.

Agreed. When you're facing a 3-bet or 4-bet, villain's range is already small enough that you might theoretically need to use mixed frequencies with almost every hand you continue with, because otherwise you become a bit too "face up" whether you re-raise or call, and you're pretty capped when you flat, so you can protect your flats - and also get value from c-bet bluffs when villain was 3b/folding a "bluff" - by occasionally calling with aces. When you're just facing a standard open though, villain has enough hands that can continue vs a 3-bet that a value-raise is pretty much mandatory.

That said, could I change my vote in the poll? I exploitatively flatted AA twice in the space of a minute today and induced squeezes and re-squeezes by known players. I tripled up both times.

I'd like to think that the post refers to a situation in which no additional information is known about our opponents. There can be situations where folding 2nd nuts is fine (or even the nuts to be honest). There are completely non-standard plays and extremely exploitative.

Oh god don't start the whole nuts redraw debate again