I had AQo.

So if we flat AQo, what are we doing with KK AA etc. Like whats our flatting range and shoving range looking like, maybe assuming a villain between my reads and emi's roomate. Do we ever 4bet not all in?

You could have a min 4bet range here, but it would include hands like AA/KK/QQ and be balanced with your bluffs like AT/KQ/KJ. Just having a shoving and folding range is fine too though. At the end of the day you're only 27bb's deep, so just shoving your range there is totally reasonable. Tbh it's kind of hard to justify 4b/folding anything unless you think his 5bet range is AA only (and since I've seen the hand history I can tell you that it's not). Villain is almost always polarized here though, so flatting your range could indeed be optimal in this spot since he's going to have to fold all of his bluffs to a 4bet, regardless of sizing. Having a bluff 4bet range that includes hands that dominate the bluffs in his range is really bad though, because he's just going to gii with all of his value range and fold all of his bluffs. It's fine to polarize your 4bet range here, but when you're playing against a polarized range, it's really bad to raise hands that crush his bluffs and are crushed by his value range.

Very good post. Only thing I'd clarify is that if you are going to construct a non-allin 4bet range in a pure GTO sense, you may have too many bluffs if you pick all the combos mentioned. But because this spot is somewhat rare, being exploitably bluff heavy might not even be a problem.

Personally I'd invest my energies in constructing a 4bet rip range (which can be bluff heavy due to the insane ICM pressure you apply), and a flatting range depending on how polar/balanced we think villains 3bet range is for the reasons emitnulB posted. I.e. the more he bluffs, the more you should flat. AQo is a perfect place to start.

Not sure you're giving seemingly competent opponents enough credit if you're reading them for a merged and somewhat bluffless 3bet range there though.

Given such a wide 3 bet range seems like shoving is better than flatting? like if their range is polar seems like std rip. kinda a big pot to play post flop in an icm spot without a made hand or initiative no?

we are comfortable post but our hands are pretty tied vs a Cbet on xxx no a or q flop. not sure how we feel about bet/raise/calling heavy action on qxx or axx boards either....

rip is fine. I think both flat and rip are significantly better than 4b/fold. Deciphering if rip>flat is pretty complex given the sheer number of variables involved post, but i think we can float a decent amount of flops at this depth, too. The ICM post works against villain more than us given that we cover and are in position.

Lol at saying their 3b range is .... whitout explaining something or giving the range you think they have... I wanne learn something here!

OP is Forboon? really?
everything makes sense now..

why?

I am seeing this thread for the first time, haven't been on 2+2, and I think what the OP did at the table was the best play. After having played so many hands he must have done it intuitively using some inner fuzzy logic or something and it seems optimal, assuming villain would not make much mistakes.

I don't think a flatting range vs. 3bet is profitable there at all. We could 4bet or 4bet all in or 4bet and call 5bet/fold to 5bet our entire opening range there vs a ICM-aware reg, flatting our best hands vs unknown randoms or maniacs only (not that they would make it to the final table).
In my opinion we don't want majority of the villain's bluffs, not even the weakest, to see the flop in an ICM-situation like this with the stacks like this. We don't flop that good and abuse a reg postflop that much, OOP or not. It is better to collect 60k chips preflop vs a bluff/weak hand as well, very +$EV.

The villain's 5bet all in range should be tight, TT+, AJs+, AQ+ optimally (which we can call with QQ+, AKs, AK), if it is not tight then the villain is making actually a mistake ICM-wise. If we know the villain's 5bet range would be too wide and he's not ICM-aware enough 5betting, bad for both, then we'd have 4bet all in range and a bit wider call 5bet range. Preferably 4bet all in range because it is hard to know the villain's 5bet ranges in case we know he's too wide and, although reg, can be ignorant of over-shoving ranges for both.

I didn't really finish my thoughts here, actually I don't think anybody really asked for them.

We really need to look beyond the vacuum that is this hand here to understand why I think there is reason to this line. I wanted to make a vid on it but I don't have the time, and most of my strat I post to the community gets snapped locked/deleted. I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be posting in this forum anyways.

But I did run this through an icm calc the best I knew and I still think it supports my understanding. But we need to look far beyond the simple ev of 4bet folding aq vs villains range.

In today's game players are admitting its getting more and more difficult to find edge since there are so many regs, but we do have some tools in our belts that can help us get edge and I think putting regs in difficult spots is always going to be one of them:
To me this is a very important factor in this discussion. I would argue we WANT our villains to feel this way and that this type of pressure is more +ev than just the chips observed in the vaccuum. Being known for putting this type of pressure on players is a very useful image to have imo. And yes its arguable that I'm even good enough to do this to players, but the reason stills stands regardless.

I didn't have my notes at the time so I did have to make assumptions about the villain but it doesn't actually really matter that much. What we need to understand that most of us do, is that if we don't have a 4bet fold range, than we cannot have a 4bet call range. We know can't just 4bet call AA KK because villain can easily exploit it by folding worse hands.

What we really want to ask, and it would be a nice dialogue, is what adjustments this causes villain to make after seeing we have a 4bet fold range? And how light can villain really 3bet shove especially if they are 3betting a polarized range (they can't really shove their air right?) And if villain is not polarized, and is 3betting hands like jts then we must assume their 3betting range is quite wide, and regardless if they can 5 bet shove light they are open to exploitation.

What we want to know or address is whether or not our villains will realize that we are not 4bet folding AQo 100% or even 25%, but probably only ever this one single situation.

But now, because of mixed strategy we have opened up our ability to 4bet/call our nut hands. So when we add mixed strategy in our game and if we do it with reason and care, all of a sudden we are able to add all kinds of lines to our game that we can never have if we don't mix our strategies.

This is what I mean by "at first I hated it, but now I think its optimal". There are certain regs that do not respond properly to mixed meta games strategies, and this means that if you are not using them properly you have a chance gain edge on these regs...and leave them thinking that since you are showing up with hands in spots you shouldn't be, that they have an edge on you that they don't really have.

I didn't really finish my thoughts here, actually I don't think anybody really asked for them.

We really need to look beyond the vaccuum that is this hand here to understand why I think there is reason to this line. I wanted to make a vid on it but I don't have the time, and most of my strat I post to the community gets snapped locked/deleted. I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be posting in this forum anyways.

But I did run this through an icm calc the best I knew and I still think it supports my understanding. But we need to look far beyond the simple ev of 4bet folding aq vs villains range.

In today's game players are admitting its getting more and more difficult to find edge since there are so many regs, but we do have some tools in our belts that can help us get edge and I think putting regs in difficult spots is always going to be one of them:
To me this is a very important factor in this discussion. I would argue we WANT our villains to feel this way and that this type of pressure is more +ev than just the chips observed in the vaccuum. Being known for putting this type of pressure on players is a very useful image to have imo. And yes its arguable I'm good enough to this to players, but the reason stills stands regardless.

I didn't have my notes on the time so I did have to make assumptions about the villain but it doesn't actually really matter that much. What we need to understand that most of us do, is that if we don't have a 4bet fold range, than we cannot have a 4bet call range. We know can't just 4bet call AA KK because villain can easily exploit it by folding worse hands.

What we really want to ask, and it would be a nice dialogue, is what adjustments this causes villain to make after seeing we have a 4bet fold range? And how light can villain really 3bet shove especially if they are 3betting a polarized range (they can't really shove their air right?) And if villain is not polarized, and is 3betting hands like jts then we must assume their 3betting range is quite wide, and regardless if they can 5 bet shove light they are open to exploitation.

What we want to know or address is whether or not our villains will realize that we are not 4bet folding AQo 100% or even 25%, but probably only ever this one single situation.

But now, because of mixed strategy we have opened up our ability to 4bet/call our nut hands. So when we add mixed strategy in our game and if we do it with reason and care, all of a sudden we are able to add all kinds of lines to our game that we can never have if we don't mix our strategies.

This is what I mean by "at first I hated it, but now I think its optimal". There are certain regs that do not respond properly to mixed meta games strategies, and this means that if you are not using them properly you have another chance gain edge on these regs...and leave them thinking that since you are showing up with hands in spots you shouldn't be, that they have an edge on you that they don't really have. And the types of regs I think this works best against are the ones that refuse to consider the possibility of taking this line.

I have more to say on this but I guess ill keep it at this because I expect to get ridiculed, berated, laughed at and banned anyways. But I guess my point is that mixed meta game strategies give us the ability to show up with any hand any where any time, while still maintaining a decent enough edge on the field of regs that play you on a daily basis to make some decent profit.

reread that HH^^
you didnt put him into a difficult spot at all
you're the one that got put into a difficult spot

I suppose it might be true. Seems also true it gets increasingly difficult to be deceptive as you play an significant amount of hands vs certain players. And that this game is getting more and more and filled with regular players as time goes by.

This specific hand...I dunno...but I do KNOW, that there is a certain type of reg that doesn't understand well, mixed meta game strategies.

Wow adyo you are extreme analytic(not a bad thing). Thread is pretty long only read the first few and last few posts. anywho my general rule is that I do not like to turn my value hands into bluffs, I'm sure your aware of that. so if I feel he is capable of 3betting light here I would prefer to call or jam but I think we may have a few too many bbs(in my opinion). now nothing wrong w/ 4betting/folding here for the above reasons you mentioned I just think I'd do it with the top or complete bottom of my range and keep the AQ for value if that applies.

Ah right, I forget to mention why AQ. We want the best blockers available to to do this, i think. So although we would rather do this with JTo, it not near as strong as AQ. Or course we would rather have ak, but obv we can't r/f ak either (to strong too r/f).

So its not a matter of me arguing the play is correct in a vacuum, but i really think we need to look deeper and wider in the overall aspect of the hand. Rather than saying "you can't do this, because villain will do that", we want to discuss all the different scenarios and possibilities so we may understand a given spot holistically, with as little judgement as possible on which is the correct line.

seem fold/call ip pf. We no want build up pot to make hero fold to 5bet.

4bet sizing is terrible and so is 4bet folding AQ in this spot. Flatting, 4bet calling, 4bet shoving are all much better options. Putting in large amounts of your stack preflop and then folding hands with huge equity is generally a bad idea.

what about working together cooperatively to make +ev decisions that benefit all players?

i see your point of having blockers. but i think this would be more suited to situations where icm is not such a big issue and we can call based on that fact. basically i have to agree with ismelltoast. i know your looking for different reasons to do certain things but i think when icm is a factor we might be a little limited to what we can do in some cases