Your own stack size obviously matters in tournaments, but in the hand that OP posted, hero's stack size is irrelevant. All that matters is the effective stack size. Basically, Hero should not be inclined to play the hand any differently if he had anywhere between $25.01 and $1,000,000 at the table. It makes no difference.


Flatting 4bets is in my opinion, generally a bad play with rare spots where it is the right play. Especially true with AKo since we rarely flop well, and especially true when oop.

I'm interested to see what your plan is post flop in a spot like this when you flat a 4bet. Do you plan on calling down A high for value, or check raising all in on certain boards where you miss? You'll have to donk into him imo if you ever want to be able to bluff him successfully, since he's pretty well comitted if he cbets and never folds anything we beat, but theoretically you should be donking some hands for value in this spot too and can't just donk your missed AK.

Figuring out a solid plan for either folding or shipping when facing a 4bet is generally pretty easy. You can start out with the standard default ranges for your stakes and tweak it to account for villain's ranges, your image, history, position and stack sizes as you get more information. Constructing a donking range, check raising range, check call range and check fold range in 4bet pots without turning your hand face up in different spots is going to be really hard to do and difficult to exploit other players without having massive samples on them since stats relevant to post flop play in 4 bet pots take so long to converge, especially since most players know its best not to flat 4bets.

The danger imo, of flatting 4bets with range x and 5bet shipping with range y is ranges start getting so narrow that it gets pretty simple for people to put you on AK/QQ/JJ or so when you flat and AA/KK when you ship which is going to be bad for you.

Its just much better to merge and ship your entire continuance range. You probably lose a bit with AK the times you are called especially due to the rake - dependant ofc on villain's 4bet range and what he continues with but average TAG's are usually 4bet calling something like QQ+/AK for value while 4bet/folding some bluffs. If you go to war with them regularly and they are aggro then the money you lose from getting all-in with 40% equity is made up for by the folds you get and pick up the ~27bb in the pot rake free btw.

Your AA and KK will also benefit from being covered by having a wider preflop shipping range and villains can incorrectly start calling you lighter and you make more money.

Alternatively, you could just flat your entire continuance range in the face of a 4bet, but then you're giving up huge value from hands like JJ-KK where there is an overcard on the board and they shut down or AK that completely misses and c/folds.

Often though, villain's range is so tight that shipping is going to be bad, in which case you should probably just fold to the 4bet.

What is this imaginary value?

there are no semi-competent regs 4bet/folding AQ.

at higher stakes you can def find spots to get it in pre with AK and hope for a call. at 25nl though a lot of regs just aren't that aggro. you pretty much just have to use your judgement against each individual player.

Fair enough points, LazyAce. I think there's room for response though. (Apologies in advance for not having gotten multiple quotes down quite yet.)

I'll start with the ending question, since it's more or less its own thing.

"What is imaginary value?"

What I mean by that is that in a cash game, the value of a given hand changes very little. There are no artificial outside forces that have any effect on the hand. For instance: In a cash game, there is very little reason to open with a shove when you have AQ. You aren't in any immediate danger of an increase in blinds and there isn't a payout ladder in place that might make people tighten and thus let you steal blinds. In a tournament, your hand might have picked up extra value though, for those reasons just stated. I apologize if there's a term for this other than "imaginary value." While I do like to think about poker, I'm admittedly behind the times on terms of that nature.

"Flatting 4bets is in my opinion, generally a bad play with rare spots where it is the right play. Especially true with AKo since we rarely flop well, and especially true when oop."

That's sort of the point I was driving at. I actually never would have re-raised to begin with, tbqh. Why bother? Villain's initial raise already did all your work for you by driving out everybody else. In the example, your AK is now isolated against one hand; this is exactly what you would have been hoping for if you'd raised instead, right?

"I'm interested to see what your plan is post flop in a spot like this when you flat a 4bet."

This, and the entire subsequent paragraph, is interesting because it drives at the concept of floating, which I hate. For the sake of discussion, let's say I do flat Villain's 4bet. (Which, I'll reiterate, I am in agreement with you on as being a poor play.) Obviously I'm hoping to flop Broadway with no flush draw, because then I know I'm all but locked to win save for a paired board later in the hand. If I caught any piece where I'm even remotely comfortable, I'd think I'd be obligated to open with a heavy bet and hope he didn't spike a set.

Bluffing in this spot, or even calling a c-bet to float the turn and hope I get something, seems like a waste of time and money. I suppose you might be able to judge where you are based on Villain's c-bet, but even then that's so player dependent that it seems hardly useful for any kind of real discussion on overall play theory.

"The danger imo, of flatting 4bets with range x and 5bet shipping with range y is ranges start getting so narrow that it gets pretty simple for people to put you on AK/QQ/JJ or so when you flat and AA/KK when you ship which is going to be bad for you."

I think we might be closer in opinion than each of our initial posts let on. Obviously you don't want to make your hand range that easy to figure out, even though other players might dictate that you make one of those plays because of their actions.

"Often though, villain's range is so tight that shipping is going to be bad, in which case you should probably just fold to the 4bet."

Agreed. Unless the player knows something specific about the Villain, there's very little reason to call.
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The larger problem here is that we're being asked to review a situation where Hero has already made a mistake by re-raising Villain to begin with. V's initial raise was pretty standard; you gain nothing from the raise to $2.50 except the possibility to overpay for a flop with a hand that isn't worth it.


Or would you be in the camp that says I am oversimplifying this?

Hey Newbie to the forum....Are you not just hoping that you are flipping here. In my experience, even at a 25 NL game, at best your flipping in this sitsutation given that you have no reads on the villain. No reason villain can't have AA, KK, AKs, or AK also. Is folding AK a bad play. Not a very easy to play oop if you just call. Just my thoughts.

Maybe pushing all in will cause a fold enough to make it a good play..I dont know.

Still confused by what 'imaginary value' is according to you. Obviously we don't need to open shove AQ in a cash game because our stack size is generally very deep compared to the size of the blinds. Shoving 100bb to win 1.5bb would be ridiculous. However, shoving AQ after allowing your stack to dwindle down to say 6bb would most definitely be the correct play since risking 6bb to win 1.5bb with a strong hand is at least reasonable. The reason that players shove in a tournament is because the value from stealing the blinds that keeps you alive. You shouldn't see this kind of thing however, by good players in the early stages of the tournament when stack sizes are still big compared to the blinds.

There's nothing imaginary going on though.

There are times when it is perfectly fine to flat AK against a single raise, but there are a lot more times where it is best to 3bet. We 3bet it for value, because players will call our 3bets with worse hands, we 3bet it to generate and collect dead money like when villains set mine against our 3bets and fold to our flop cbets, we 3bet it to keep the hand from going multiway, we 3bet it for balance because we don't want AA/KK to be the only scary hands in our range.


Not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that 3betting AK is a mistake.

Here comes a sick first post:

No it is not worth flipping for 100bb in a cash game, it's essentially gambling. Take away the rake and if you have AKo or AK suited, you are usually 42-46% in the long run. You have better chances playing blackjack. AK is a good hand for you there too.....

You neglect dead money and fold equity.

People still don't like playing flops I see.

I personally don't enjoy this and just experienced this last night in a local NYC game.

I shoved 100bb to pick up about 75-90$ in dead money in pot with JJ and AJ offsuit tanks for 4min and calls me and spikes ace on river. My immediate thought outside was F*** all caps. Always a good loser at the table though I shook his hand but felt like **** :/

It's not fun.

Problem solved by playing the flop. lol..

This. But flipping when you're getting raked to death isn't than fun.

Or moving up so they'll respect his raises.

move down to where AK is a flip AIPF because at 25nl> you will be crushed the majority of the time

Oh please.

Ha, should have clarified I was referring to the JJ guy immediately above who was disappointed he got all-in vs. AJ.