OK, here's the status on my flop play in position as the preflop aggressor. In my poker career I've gone from a stone nit 'fit or fold only c-bet with a hand' player, to a 'tag that c-bets almost always because I don't have a preflop raising range and now that I've entered the pot I think I'm supposed to play aggressively', to a 'I've read half of a few complicated books and blasted off $200 on a poker training site with nothing to show for it but a blazing headache about what to do with A high on missed flops'.

I've heard from three different poker guru's that A high isn't a great c-bet because you're not getting better hands to fold or worse hands to call. Splitsuits, Brokos, and Polk all have explained this in various ways. They didn't come out and say NEVER bet A high, but they really emphasized that it can be better to check it back and then call down turn/river bets to bluff catch. So I've been trying to do this more often, but the results seem poor.

What seems to happen a lot is that my opponents bet small on the turn, then if I just call (hey, this is my plan, my goal was to bluff catch, MDF vs small bet, easy call, this is such a slick way to play A high, I love life) they bomb the river. Now what? I'm staring at a board and all I can see are hands that got there. And besides, I thought that Janda said that if you were the one facing the river bet with a bluff catch you had already lost the pot!

For example:

100bbs effective, Hero raises Hi-Jack with A-10, folds to BB, BB calls.

[Pot 6.5bbs] Flop: Q87

BB checks, Hero checks back.

[Pot 6.5bbs] Turn: 3

Villain bets 2 bbs, Hero calls.

[Pot 10.5bbs] River J

Villain bets 8bbs, Hero???


I guess I need to get better at building my call down ranges to make sure I have some ideas of what strength hands would call on the river for MDF depending on different bet sizes. As played I tend to fold, but maybe that's a tad exploitative because I think villain's not bluffing here quite often enough for me to be profitable. But maybe that's not true, because that contradicts my feeling that villain takes this line way too often. Who knows, maybe my villain has just been outflopping the daylights out of me for the last 10K hands.

All I know is I feel I'm taking a good hand, in position, as the preflop aggressor, NOT taking the pot down on the flop, and instead am contributing towards a larger pot on the river that I serve up on a silver platter.

Please, can someone shed some light as to how to think about A high on these missed flops? Thank you!

Just need to make sure you protect your x back range so you can call that river bet with your weak TP and sometimes second pair.

Think about your range overall and yes you will be forced to fold A high to two barrels and more than 1/2 psb on river. It's fine as long as you have hands you can call down with. The a high check back is intended to combat the weak turn probe and check through river + hitting your ace on turn allows you to call down two barrels most of the time.

Vs. very aggro polarized ranges you can occasionally call down both streets with a high too but probably never in the example you gave imo.

First of all, I think playing the negative T card is a mistake. I almost never win with it and I think you should reconsider your pre-flop hands.

Secondly, I think playing your A high misses like this will teach you a lot about the game of poker. You'll get a better feel for where you're at without feeling like you have to fire bets all of the time.

Thirdly, and pardon me for asking, but are you really that concerned about saving money by being "a tad exploitative" in a game where people are "attempting" to exploit you by not bluffing enough? You need to exploit people that are attempting to exploit you to make more money than you would playing GTO. Otherwise, you're going to end up making some pretty effing stupid plays.

Not all ace highs are created equal. In some spots, AK/AQ/AJ are very good hands to check back, because they are destroying villain's worse ace highs, of which he often has many combos. It can be very profitable to check back with the best ace highs, because if you bink top pair (a 2-outer if villain also hits it) you can get fat value from hands that are almost drawing dead.
e.g. Suppose the flop is Q63 and you have AK and villain has AJ. If you bet and villain folds, you got no value when you had 87% equity. If you check back, and the turn is an ace, your equity goes up to 93% and you're guaranteed to get at least one street of value. You'll also have over 90% equity (and will probably get action) if the turn is a king or ten. The only cards in the deck that you lose to on the turn are the three jacks.
In short, when you have a lot of villain's range dominated by ace high, seeing a free turn will likely be more +EV than betting the flop and making villain fold a hand with 3 outs.

In other spots, your ace high might have so little going for it that you check back for pot-control and to minimise your losses, because villain has a low folding frequency on the flop. You don't want to bet A5o on Q98tt, because you do so badly against villain's continuance range. In spots like that, an ace on the turn can be good, because you take the lead vs flopped pairs. You could still be behind better aces, however, so being cautious is recommended.

I guess what I'm getting at is sometimes your ace high is high enough in your range that it has enough SDV/equity to check back (it's too good to be used as a "bluff"), and sometimes your Ax is low in your range, but doesn't make for a good bluffing candidate as it's basically "air". In other spots, you have a low Axs that actually flopped a decent draw, and then you're betting as a semi-bluff with robust equity (you don't really mind if villain folds AJ, but calls with top pair if you have A5ss on Q43ss).

The trickier spots are where you have one of the middling aces like AT/A9/A8, since these would like to fold out AQ/AJ, but don't want to fold out A7-A2. Exactly how (relatively) strong each of these combos are will obviously depend on board texture and what villain's folding/continuance ranges look like.

To use your ATdd on Q87r example, that's not an easy one. You can fold out AJ, but villain usually has quite a lot of made hands and draws that don't fold on that flop. Your ten blocks some of his cont-range and you could turn a straight draw, but you have no BDNFD, so you might not want to bloat the pot. If your c-betting strategy for that spot was to bet big with a polarized range, it's probably correct to check back all of your ace highs, since you'd want some more robust equity (frontdoor draws) if you're going to play a big pot.
If you go with a smaller sizing, then AJs/ATs/A9s might make sense as bets because of the blockers/backdoors, and AKs (with BDFD) might be OK as a c-bet as well, just because it has real equity even vs top pair. The lower Axs (A6s-A2s) have so little going for them immediately that checking them back is probably mandatory on that board.

I think as played, you can fold to the small turn bet (it's close though), as you have better hands in your flop checking range to continue with on the turn. (You pick up backdoor hearts with AJhh-A2hh, for example, along with some Qxhh that checked back top pair). On the river, I suppose it's a clear fold vs that sizing, but raising as a bluff occasionally wouldn't be terrible, as you have a straight blocker. I can't immediately think of anything that makes an obvious river bluff-raise given your line, and you've only got JJ and QJ to raise for value, because all combos of T9s are clear c-bets on the flop.

I laugh and smile knowing that they should've got me for more on the turn.

Then I fold.

Also slowplay more vs such a player to exploit his overbets.

But what about the times villain has 29% equity with a random 87-type hand that would fold to a bet? Do we really wanna give away 1/4-1/3 of the pot to random hands when we could easily take it down?

Or what about the times villain will be folding 22-99 on either flop or turn?

Plus AK has almost twice the equity compared to A2 the times villain has Qx.
Plus we block KQ and AQ, so it makes it less likely that villain can call three barrels.

Plus we CAN get called by worse hands like AJ and AT, especially if they've got a bdfd.

So vs players that don't do a lot of bluffraising on the flop with bdcd like 87s/KJs/AJs/ATs/etc
I personally would bet AK on Q63 for protection vs random worse hands, semi-bluff vs better hands, and for potential value vs worse ace highs. I would say AK is probably the best hand we can have here to use as a three barrel bluff.

Super solid thinking, considering opponents whole range and how our hand stacks up against it.

But you haven't considered your range, and how your actions with this hand an affect it.

The play with AK on Q63 very much depends on position and preflop action. As the PFR, if we are UTG vs CO, AK is a very good candidate for a 3 street bluff because you block good top pairs.

As the PFR on the BTN vs BB, you would rather check since AK/AQ are generally 3bet (so you don't have the same blocker effect) and you have so many bad hands to bluff with. Think about what your turn range looks like if you bet AK in this second scenario; you have to do a lot of folding. Obviously you want to bet some Ax so you can rep it when the Ax hits, so why not A4 with the backdoor straight / flush draw.

Yes I want to give away 29% of the pot because that means I'm winning 71% of the pot.

I sense you know something I don't... but still I have to ask: you don't like winning 100% of the pot?

An extreme example:
You have QQ and your opponent has AJ.
The pot is $100 and you move all-in with $10 on 556.
Would you want your opponent to call?

Agreed. I was thinking in very general terms.

Of course I do, but you don't get the whole pot in the long run. You get a fraction of it.

Some quick thoughts on the original hand from just a playing vs human opponents perspective:

1. c-betting flop is meh
2. calling turn (as played) is slightly bad
3. calling river is very bad
4. raising river is mostly bad

The main problem with playing ace high as a bluff catcher when there are multiple streets to go is simply that on most boards ace high really just isn't good enough to call down two streets. We also can't trust our opponents to shut down on bluffs since just as a general tendency, when people start betting they tend to continue betting. Our opponent might bet 55 on the turn and turn it into a bluff on the river, he also might bet J9 on the turn and decide he's value betting river. People hate check-deciding, so they'll come up with reasons not to do it. So it might seem natural to raise river if people have a lot of nonsensical bets in their range, and of course we have a blocker, but there are several problems with that. For one, villain has all his good hands fairly in his range. A significant amount of the time our bluff is just instantly failing. Also as has been said, we can't really credibly rep T9 here. A third and most obvious problem is just simply that bluffing isn't really where you make you're money in poker.

So all that said, why not just cbet then? I don't have a huge problem with a cbet, but my main critique is that there aren't really turn cards we can bluff except for a king. A nine gives gutshots to a lot villain's hands that aren't completed already so IMO its not a great semibluff candidate. Maybe we fold out 33 and AJ and keep garbage from either drawing out or bluffing against us but that's really all we're doing. Also if our opponent being nitty makes a flop bet higher EV, it *usually* also means we can sometimes win a checked back board with just our ace high. I would mainly use cbetting against opponents who play fairly fit or fold on the flop, but also bet turn after a checkback almost automatically. Again, ace high is not a good bluff catcher for multiple streets. We don't want our opponent to be bluffing because we won't be calling.

On Q63r, Don't you think KJ/KT/JT/J9s/T9s make more obvious candidates as c-bets/barrels? They can literally make better hands fold (e.g. Ax), have lower SDV, and better blockers and backdoors than AK does.
Quoted for emphasis. We're not looking at the flop and thinking "Yay! I have ace high. I'm gonna check back and call two bets on every runout". We have more obvious value-bets, more obvious bluffs, and more obvious bluff-catchers. Many of the Ax combos are kind of "meh". That's possibly what makes them harder to play correctly.

When you are too short to defend your equity, someone already fubarred a previous street.

I think you should circle back to both of these quotes and really really understand what purpose(s) a bet serves in poker.

This is crucial. Can not put more emphasis on this.

I made it an extreme/ridiculous example to highlight the point that we don't always want to get called when we have the best hand.

As I understand it, we bet for three reasons:
1) Value: to get called by worse hands.
2) Bluff: to get better hands to fold.
3) Protection: to charge/fold out worse hands with equity vs ours.

Another extreme example:
We've got 22 on a 3367r board and villain reveals that his range consists of one combo of AA and 24 combos of KQ/KJ (and will not be bluffing any rivers). The pot is $100 and we've got $75 left.
If we shove villain will only call with better and fold all worse, yet shoving is still superior to checking.

Checking has an EV of ~$70.
Shoving has an EV of ~$98.

Yes, but one of the crucial aspects of game theory is that your opponent must be a rational agent that is trying to play good poker. So your contrived examples only show us how to play in unrealistic situations. Who benefits from such an example?

You should be putting that time and effort into studying how to beat rational agents with realistic ranges.

So betting for protection has no role whatsoever in GTO? (I don't know the answer)

If unrealistic examples are worthless, why did Bill Chen spend so much time setting up toy games in MoP?

I don't know either, but I believe that betting for only protection in heads up pots is bad poker. Sure, vs some really bad players you absolutely know that they have a bad hand; you can bet and earn a fraction of the pot near (pot). However, vs good players that play solid ranges, there is no such advantage. In fact, betting for protection vs such players will get you raised out of the pot, if such an opportunity presents itself.

Pot is small on the flop . Cbetting might be +ev as in you win enough of this small pot to make it a profitable cbet but that doesn't mean its the best line overall because by checking back you can make more money by winning larger pots

Betting to protect your equity and/or prevent villain from realizing his for free (i.e. you want villain to fold) is a huge part of where your EV comes from. (Janda's second book devotes a chapter to the concept of "Not wanting action" when you have the best hand).
But, as Frogman pointed out, sometimes your hand can maximise its EV by not betting, essentially giving up on the idea of protection, and going into pot-control/free card/get to cheap showdown/bluff-catch mode.
e.g. If you have top set OOP after raising pre-flop, it's obviously +EV to c-bet for value, but in almost every case you have at least as high (or higher) EV by checking.
If you have a weak made hand, you might bet (for protection) in the same spot, and you usually don't want action.
With the ace highs, it's not always clear which line (bet for protection/bluff or check with showdown value) is best (both are profitable, but one action is often slightly more profitable than another), hence the disagreements about what to do with AK-AT on Qxx.

I don't know if this is the correct way to think about betting to buy the pot, but I wanted to share here for other people to comment.

When you bet to buy the pot, you aren't actually buying the whole pot because some of it was yours to begin with because you have equity in the pot.

As your equity approaches 0, risking X% of the pot is a fantastic investment to buy 100% of the pot, though betting can be bad because you need a lot of hands to fold and a lot of hands will have equity vs your bet.

On the other end of the spectrum, when you have say 99% of the pot it doesn't make sense to risk X% of the pot to buy 1%, but the bet makes sense for other reasons this is just an extreme example.

So when you bet to buy the pot you are looking to choose the minimum risk to buy out the maximum amount of equity from the pot.

Often times with AK you aren't purchasing a lot of equity from the pot relative to the risk of the bet.

On the other hand, betting to buy the pot isn't the only reason to bet :-)

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What would be your thoughts with AJ on a board of 238ss when you have the nut backdoor flush draw?

Or

With AJs on a board if 238 with a concealed backdoor nut flush draw?

^ Depends on the positions, and how often you're c-betting with your range. Generally speaking, it's not a slam-dunk c-bet or an obvious check back when you only have a vague connection to the board. It really depends on your overall strategy. If you have many clearer bluffs then you'd pick from those before you start betting Ax or Axs. If you're in a spot where c-betting 95%+ of your range is the best strat, then AJ would likely be in that 95%.

But once AK gets to the river it will always block the best top pairs which will call-call-call, AQ/KQ, make it a useful triple hand. Jx blocks call-call-folds like JJ/QJ.

That was one of the key points in Upswing's Blocker module which contradicts OPs "Polk said..."

You are putting too much emphasis on a sub part of your range (eg. ax).

When you consider your entire range of hands and what you want to do with them, these hands will play themselves in relation to your overall strategy.

In other words it’s like saying “how do I play pocket Jacks?”. It’s a short sighted perspective.