of course all plays in poker are player dependent or you arent playing well as you can.

but when oop you dont want to be getting players in for decent money without super hands and having to fold or bluffed out after the flop.

i personally will never 4 bet a small amount and fold if reraised unless i am sure he has me beat when 20% of my stack is in. and if it is someone that would always reraise with aa,kk then i can get away from the hand. but many will just call and trap you if you hit the flop. so building it oop with ak is a poor play in general.
and if they are that tight you shouldnt be 4 betting them in the first place with that hand.

and if they are decent players and see you are 4 bet folding then you are going to get run off alot as you will only be in with aa,kk. and you will be 4 betting with more hands.
and they can comfortably reraise with ace king against you and you will fold all your pairs and ace king as well. and give up 20% of your stack.

In general, if you're willing to fold after 4 betting, then you shouldn't 4-bet.

If you never 4bet to about 20% of your stack and fold to a 5bet, then you must never be 4bet bluffing. Against good players who 3bet you at a good frequency, never 4bet bluffing doesn't seem like a good idea. (3betting frequencies at live games also seem to generally be lower than at online games.) You obviously don't 4bet bluff vs. someone who has a 3bet % of 1.5% (but no good players have such a ridiculously low 3bet percentage online). But when someone has a 3bet % of 8.5% and is 3betting your button opens 15% of the time, you're probably going to want to have some 4bet bluffing range. Your 3bet calling range should probably be wider than your 4betting range (at least IP), but you're going to have a 4betting range and some of it should be bluffs rather than only 4betting premium hands.

4betting with AKo OOP with ~100 big blind stacks is so super standard and has been for years. Hero raises CO with AK to 2.5 big blinds; villain 3bets button to 9 big blinds. It is so standard and a good play to 4bet AK to 22ish big blinds here. Calling with AK sometimes here can also be good, but 4betting is absolutely fine. Probably should 4bet sometimes and call sometimes. I definitely 4bet most of the time.

And a 4bet value range of AA,KK is way too narrow in a lot of situations. In button vs. blind or sb vs. bb situations JJ+,AK are usually easily 4bet and call 5bet shove hands. TT,AQ can be, but also can be played as calls. 99 and 88 can possibly be 4bet and call a 5bet shove hands sb vs. bb.

When you 4bet AK 100 big blinds deep, you usually don't fold to a 5bet. The hand that was being discussed where UTG raised and someone 3bet and hero cold 4bet AK from the blinds is a rare occurrence where the action in front of hero is to a point where AK is a relatively weak hand, but has good blockers to AA and KK and is probably the best hand to take a few combos of and use as a bluff. A much more common scenario is hero opens the button, villain 3bets in the blinds, hero 4bets and if villain shoves, then hero calls with AK.



If you never 4bet and fold to a 5bet, then you must never be 4bet bluffing. Against good players who 3bet you at a good frequency, never 4bet bluffing doesn't seem like a good idea. You obviously don't 4bet bluff vs. someone who has a 3bet % of 1.5%. But when someone has a 3bet % of 8.5% and is 3betting your button opens 15% of the time, you're probably going to want to have some 4bet bluffing range. Your 3bet calling range should probably be wider than your 4betting range (at least IP), but you're going to have a 4betting range and some of it should be bluffs rather than only 4betting premium hands. [EDIT: If you meant specifically with AK, then, yea, I think generally you are correct. It would be rare situations where I would I would 4bet with AK and fold to a 5bet (especially 100 big blinds deep) and I think it would pretty much have to involve a cold 4bet.]

yes to your last two sentences. i can find 4 bet folds with/or bluffs but not with ak and only player specific. against any player that you dont know there is no need to 4 bet bluff . and it comes up rarely enough for even the best to have a handle on your frequency as he can never know if it is player specific with you or not.
think about that when you look at statistics. as a bad example, suppose you will never bluff against a specific player, but your statistics show you bluff frequently. what happens is he will basically be giving you money all the time. while you may not show as good a profit unless you do it right overall as your bluff frequency will be higher against the field.

Oh, ok, if you meant the never 4bet/fold with specifically AK, then I agree with you. I really wouldn't either except in extremely rare situations. We just happened to be discussing one where it doesn't look bad. I actually find that for a lot of people, there isn't that much difference. I know that for me there is.

And I agree that I wouldn't be 4bet bluffing unknowns. But against almost every reg online, you should have some 4bet bluffs. And it isn't that rare; it actually comes up fairly often.

And obviously you should consider not only how often your opponent 3bets vs. the general population, but how often he 3bets vs. you.

also the 4 bet bluff that is only double his bet to me is crazy as you are going to get called. that isnt why i bluff. but i tend to bet much more than most and am very successful doing it.
last thing i want to do is bluff small and get called and then have to try against after the flop which leaves me very vulnerable to what comes out. plus if he is good then many times he will outplay me and steal my pot. which hurts even if i can outplay him more often as i dont get the benefit of winning those smaller pots..

Okay but you can't 4bet bluff to a big size and 4bet with value to a small size, and if you're 4betting big you're gonna have problems 4betting a value range that looks good + you'll get too many folds. With a small 4bet the pot is so big anyway that we don't have to care that much -- villain realizes equity sure, but he already has 20 or 25% of his stack in the middle in exchange.

Good posts itt Lego.