grunch. he doesn't fold to 3bets pre so dont 3bet weak hands or ace rag. he seems to be stationy pre and post flop so the clear adjustment is to 3bet for value with like 77+, AT+, KJ+. fire cbets but give up when called if he is too stationy. he will only flop a pair 33% of the time with two unpaired holecards and even then alot of the times his pairs will be bottom pair/weak middle pair.
in summary 3bet for wide value but avoid crappy hands like A5 (suited or not), Q9, K9, etc. cbet and give up. take him for two or three streets with top pair+ and sometimes middle pair if he is that stationy.

if he's really stationy pre but folds often even on flop or turn with bottom pair, ace his, etc, you can widen up your 3bet range a lot to include weak aces, all broadways, all PPs, etc. but this can lead to spew if not careful

Do what V2 did. If V1 sucks out, rebuy in full and repeat what V2 did. If V1 sucks out again, rebuy in full and repeat what V2 did.

I agree there is no reason to 3! AK from $7 to $50 when you are OOP. OP didn't give stack sizes, but I am guessing 100-150 BB effective meaning the SPR is going to be 1.5 to 3.0 on the flop. Leaves you no wiggle room to bluff a calling station when you inevitably miss the flop 2/3 of the time.

I would just sit patient and wait to have a decent value hand like others have said ITT and just barrel barrel barrel for value.
You only need one decent hand to get him to lose it all. Just be really patient, usually these types of players can't run that good forever and they love to keep in the game for as long as possible for their ego.

I'm not talking about 3-betting as a bluff. I'm talking about 3-betting to isolate and for value. A2 is a value hand against his 3-bet calling range.

Even if you didn't want to play poker post-flop, you could just open-shove and have it be profitable in this scenario. Hero had about $250 on this AK hand. V had like $800.

So, if you 3-bet AK to $50 and he calls, there's roughly $100 in pot. 2 out 3 times, he's going to miss the flop completely. Even if you open-shoved all flops (which is not a strategy I'm recommending), you'd be risking $200 to win the $100 in the pot.

2 out of 3 flops, he'd completely miss and fold (or put more $$ in behind) and we win $100.
1 out of 3 flops he hits a pair. Of those, maybe he calls half. Even against the majority of his "good" flops, we've probably got 25% equity against his hand. Even shoving flops where he pairs his 75s on a Q95 board is likely profitable. Other than the 5% of the time he flops a monster, our open shove would either have FE or reasonable pot equity.

If we didn't want to play poker post flop, a donkish open shove strategy is profitable if he's calling $50 with garbage against AK. Getting Vs to put lots of money in the pot with an inferior hand is a good thing.

This is what I always do. I'm just looking for more creative, +EV spots.

If you have very little fold equity when you miss, then wouldn't you also have very little fold equity when you hit? Villain is making a huge mistake by calling a $50 raise with worse.

What about when you're playing against other types of villains? Do you raise AK or do you wait until the flop to see what you're going to do?

No reason at all? How about raising for value? The best way to beat a calling station is to bet for value, not to bluff a player that is reluctant to fold.

you should still 3bet pre for value. with a super wide range, he's often drawing to 6 outs at most. i dont agree with the sizing since stacks are really awkward at $200 to $300 when you 3bet huge. however, we can also cbet for about half pot and check fold if he only calls flop with pairs or if he calls wide on flop but doesnt bluff turn. if he floats and/or bluffs too often, then bet call flop with ace high or bet flop and check shove turn even with ace hi on reasonable boards.

I didn't say not to 3!, I just said not to 3! from $7 to $50. 3! to $25 would allow you to get stacks in on turn or river all the same with stacks this shallow, and if V does happen to have a monster, what are you doing when he raises your $50 AI? I would be saving your fat value 3! when you are IP and V is likely to limp/call.

I agree.

Indeed, a 3bet to 25 will allow you to get stacks in as well, that is what I meant. If that is the case, I see no reason to make it fifty with AK. It'll only be more expensive for you when you completely miss the flop (and cbet) and he wants to stick around with his pair. And there's obviously still a chance he will fold pre, which I don't think we'll want this villain to do if we have AK.

If you are going to get calls 3betting to $50 when you have a premium hand, then by all means 3bet to $50.

You're probably trying (and failing) to be funny or smart, but I was talking about this specific villain, so I really don't get why you would want to take that context away.

As others have said, position is a big consideration when widening your 3bet range here, even if villain doesn't consider position in his opening range. If villain opens CO and you're BTN, you can 3bet really wide for value, given you have position on everyone and there are only potentially 2 more players who can come along. If villain opens UTG and you're UTG+1 at a 9 handed table, 3betting mediocre broadways or crappy Ax can get you into a lot of trouble when someone behind you flats the 3b w AQ/KQ/etc, so you want to have a pretty tight/"standard" 3b range here. The fewer players there are left to act after you, the wider your 3b range should be.

Let's say your "standard" 3b range is something like {AA-JJ,AK,AQs}. The first hands you want to start adding to that range against this player are broadway hands. Small Axs hands aren't as good to 3b here, unless stacks are deep. You want to add hands like KJo before hands like A4s, as they they make strong one pair hands you can be happy stacking off with 100ish BB deep against this villain.

grunch

good question and I'm sure that plenty of insightful advice has been given. What I'd say boils down to a few key principles

1. widen your 3bet value range. If your 3betting range is usually tight, which it should be in most 1/2 games, a wider range might look like 77-AA and most high cards combos: QJ, KT, AT. 3betting with A2 is ok, but less good, because you're rarely dominating him and, when you do flop an ace, it's tough to get value. But hands like QJ and KJ go way up in value because he'll be calling with dominated Qx and Kx hands.

1a. kind of goes without saying, but don't 3bet bluff or "polarize your range." Get fat value.

2. bigger sizing. Villain won't fold with crappy hands out of position? Then punish him by reraising bigger with hands that will dominate him.

3. stay tight. don't fall into the trap of playing looser, especially out of position.

In general, the example you gave is a good way to exploit villain. V2, the TAG pro, waited for a premium, built a pot, and got the money in as a 75%+ favorite.

I wasn't. I don't post here to troll or put others down. The reason why I responded the way I did is your reasoning sounds a lot like the way a lot of players think. I do run into players who don't believe in raising AK because they want to see if they hit the flop first. I really had no idea how you think about poker so I was just responding to that post of yours.

The reason I asked the question I did was I wanted to clarify if you were just talking about how to play against this villain, or if you think the same way against other villains. There are people who never raise AK so I really didn't know.

One of the great things about AK is its rarely in bad shape. What's a monster to this villain? Is it only AA and KK? That isn't likely because we have an ace and a king. We have overcards to QQ and JJ. It wouldn't surprise me if this villain thinks AQ is a monster which we dominate. Or AK which doesn't have an edge over us. Or maybe even AJs and KQs. I don't think the situation is nearly as bad as you suggest.

Moreover, there are so many worse hands that villain calls with that I think it's worth making it $50. There are also a lot of hands we dominate that villain calls with.

I'll agree that villain folding more often preflop is a good reason to make the raise smaller if we believe he is folding more often to the $50 raise.

Yes, it will be bad for us when he hits and we miss. But what about when we hit? What about when we both miss? What about when we hit, he hits, and we have him dominated because he sees the flop with a lot of hands that have an ace or king in them?

We will be hitting the flop more often than villain will. We will have at least top pair with top kicker when we hit. When villain calls with Q9 and "hits," he will often have middle or bottom pair when he hits his nine, and even when he hits his queen he will have a weak kicker and be vulnerable to overcards unlike us.

We really do have a big edge with AK after the flop, especially with the initiative. I think the $50 raise makes things tougher for villain because he will be up against a fantastic starting hand and he rarely will have a great hand himself. If he has just a marginal hand like KT then he will like the flop less often than we will. And he will have wasted $50 to see the flop with that.

Since the discussion has drifted to the AK hand, I'll throw in some more information and see if it changes the discussion.

After V called the $50 pre:

Flop came 832
Hero c-bet $65
V thought and folded J7o face up and said "Nah....too much."

He rarely folded to c-bets, so I was relieved. I didn't have a plan for the turn. It was the first or second time I 3-bet him pre, so I figured I looked super strong. As seen in the original post, V will call an absolutely strong flop bet with no pair, no draw.

To villain there is likely to be a big difference between calling a $15 c-bet and a $65 c-bet, even in a bigger lot.

It was kind of a strange discussion because I was thinking of a villain that rarely folds to a $50 pf raise and rarely folds to a large c-bet. But in reality, even loose villains will tighten up against a $50 raise.