I recently started reading/posting in the small stakes live forum. Some of the replies to threads there have seemed suspect (i.e. not good advice). One thread in particular had a discussion of a preflop situation. I want to see what higher stakes players would do in a few similar situations.

Situation 1:
Loose/passive fish limps UTG
Drunk loose/passive limps UTG+1
"Standard" player raises to 5bb on the Button
Hero has AJo in the BB. Rate each of our options here from best to worst (fold/call/raise)
Effective stacks 100bb

Situation 2:
Everyone folds to Button
"Standard" player raises Button to 3bb (less because no limpers/fish)
Hero has AJo in the BB. Rate each of our options here from best to worst (fold/call/raise)
Effective stacks 100bb

How do things change if hero has 55-60bb and rest of players cover?

Thanks, I appreciate the responses

1: call/raise/fold, sometimes call/fold/raise. Def not a super profitable spot to call but you can generally eke out > 4 bb from the fishes here. Raising would be unprofitable vs some tighter opponents. Anyway, you should never raise a playable hand here as it goes against basic fish stomping principles.

2: call/raise/fold.

55-60bb doesn't appreciably change the situations, except to make 3-betting notably worse in either case.

Why is 3-betting notably worse in both cases? Only things I can think of are BTN might have a tighter 3b flatting range since he's expecting us to play our short stack aggressively post flop, or he might have a lighter "shove over top" PF range forcing us to fold? Neither make a ton of sense, though, so I'm guessing I'm missing something.

It's just an awkward stack size for 3-betting light in general. If you make it 16 and get shoved on, you have to fold but you had almost enough equity to call. If he calls, you don't have a lot of stack size leverage post flop, you either have to bet tiny or shove, and AJo flops poorly for this.

Renton is prob right but my gut response is 3bet<call<<<<fold for both, this is certainly how I'd play in practice (not even close, so I hope my instincts are mathematically justifiable). Considering stack depth significantly below 100BB at these stakes is rather meaningless IMO, def should not change the answers (assuming they were correct to begin with).

That said, I defer to the math guys on actual correct answer.

I need to clarify what you mean.

I said rank the options from best to worst so are you saying 3bet is better than call is better than fold, or are you saying 3bet "is less than (<)" call "is much less than" fold (meaning fold is by far best option)?

Sorry about the typo, reverse direction please. So yeah, "3bet is better than calling, which is significantly better than folding." First part is prob debatable, second is not.

Situation 1:

1. Call
2. Raise
3. Fold

We have a substantial range advantage against the passive fish who will rarely fold or 3bet their hands in this situation. Exploiting bad players is where the majority of $$$ is made in poker, so it's hard to argue against calling and likely keeping them in the hand. At the same time our hand, albeit not great, is decent enough against the standard player's open to play heads up should they both fold.

If we always 3bet this hand in this spot, we're simply going to be 3betting too often. Any decent player will start 4 betting us lighter, getting stickier with pairs post flop, etc. You develop a lot more history with regs in high stakes games b/c there just aren't as many of those games running - so even if they're not in this hand and just at the table with us, they will still pick up on this. Though in a vacuum, 3betting should still be profitable in this spot - might run into some trouble sometimes, particularly when he has AK/AQ and flop A, but I would expect to win outright pre or w/ a cbet pretty often and occasionally make money against smaller pairs on jack high boards and other things like that to make a little money.

The fact that both calling and 3betting will make money makes folding the worst option.

Scenario 2:

I personally think this is a spot where we should be doing both. Both options are totally fine, if villain is a total unknown let's just pick whatever will balance our image better (if we've been 3betting more often than usual at this table so far, call. If it's the other way around, 3bet).

Isn't AJo a clear 3-bet for value in situation 2?

AJo will be an equity underdog vs a standard 3-bet defending range. Not to mention being further a playability underdog OOP. It flops strong on boards our range is expected to flop strong on, and weak on vice versa boards. Not good.

AJo being an equity underdog depends on the definition of standard 3-bet defending range. This is a kind of situation where I have seen an enormous amount of spew by the original raiser.

Is your playability comment aimed at hands that are specifically equity underdogs, or against balancing in live play in general? For instance, if we were only going off of whether our exact hand flopped strong on boards our range would be expected to flop strongly on, and vice versa, we would never 3! AK. AK is better because we will be good more often when we get action on Axx/Kxx boards, but AJo will still be doing fine on similar boards against opponents who are calling 3! and stacking off lighter.

AK, especially the offsuit version, suffers from many of the same issues that AJ does, but just happens to have enough raw equity that it still maximizes by 3-betting in spite of it. Weaker hands need to have board coverage or have a suit or connectivity to thrive as 3-bets OOP. Of course reads on the opponent would help. If he's weak tight, folds to 3-bets too often or not often enough, stacks off too light postflop or not light enough, etc., these would all be factors to consider in whether to 3-bet a hand like this.

Yeah, no boys, it's 3bet>call>>>>fold, for both scenarios. Let's just exclude the second part since it's really not open to debate.

Above assessment isn't absolute in the sense that you shouldn't always 3bet (insofar as you prob shouldn't always do anything with any hand), but you need to 3bet more often than not, especially given background info.

well it sort of depends what is meant by "standard player." pretty often the standard is for players to be bad (and in different ways) such that even RFI btn -> defend vs bb 3b can be an adventure.

if standard means solid/knows what they're doing then call is best in both imo and i agree w everything Renton said. in hand 2 I'm okay w low freq 3b mixed in.

AJo def not a std 3bet in situation 2..

AJo four ways with the worst absolute and relative position? Depending on the type of game I'm in (and what a "standard player" in it is) I'd raise or fold.

1. Fold, not thinking twice about it.

2. Call.

Almost never reraising unless initial raiser has been wide/sticky. More stylistic question than anything.

I think it's call or fold. Generally callable if the raisor isn't too tight / the fish are bad enough.

How does the analysis change if we have AJs for each situation? Does the extra equity provided by the suit push it more to a 3bet for value? Probably more relevant for case 2 since the rule of fish still seems to dictate a call in case 1.

What about KJo? In either case it feels like KJo is more of a 3 bet or fold since it has significantly less equity than AJo in this situation. In case 2 I typically play KJo as a 3 bet/ call mixed strategy. In case 1 I'm totally lost between the three options.

to OP:
me thinks you're going about this all wrong.
it sounds like you're seeking a "poker in the box" strategy that will make you feel good/confident about your actions.
but the truth is, unless you're an Upswinger (who uses poker in the box starting hand charts) - what you've asked can only be correctly answered with "it depends...."

what's your image?
how sticky are the opponents?
what are the dynamics at the table?
how good is the button?
what's their frequencies?
what's your frequency?
are you looking to play GTO or exploitatively?
is the game short-handed or 10-handed?
what limits are you playing?
the list goes on and on...

the answer will vary as you've already seen here.
Live ain't like online where AJos is a mandatory 3-bet.
(If I remember correctly, Janda likes to put AJos into his 3-bet/fold range from the blinds in his theory vids)

your TRUE answer starts with YOUR strategy... YOUR range.. and YOUR reads. How one player does it may be totally different than how another does... and they can both be "correct" based on how they play the game.
BTW... I know some players that (using card removal analysis) would shove here... which no one has offered as a possible solution.

Instead of looking for pat answers, consider asking how to construct a logic tree. Do this, and you won't care what anyone says on small stakes, med stakes or high stakes forums.... cuz you'll be on your way to crushing your game.

1. 3bet, call and fold are pretty close, it really depends on how you perceive his raising range vs limpers. Construct a range first, and do equity and folding equity analysis
2. 3bet all day

1. AJo is a flat because most standard players are only ISO'ing something like top 20-25% of hands here. AJo against that range rates pretty poorly at 100bb, but we have too much equity to fold pf, so call

2. Against a 40-45% open, AJo is likely a mix between 3b and call. its very player dependent, though. If its some old timer, I'd call, but against some young kid who is likely 60%+, its a fistpump 3b. Readless, just mix.

At shorter stack depths 3b 100%. You have an equity edge and you can flop big pairs and just get it in, in both scenarios

I have no idea what type of games everyone is playing in where AJ is an equity underdog to a btn's 3bet defend range. How does a top 5% hand match up poorly against a 25% opening range? If btn is folding 80% of his range and only calling with hands that beat AJ then a 3bet is already hugely +EV.

Also the fetishization of "letting the fish in no matter what" has got to be a leak at some point. AJo is like the definition of hand that plays extremely poorly OOP in multiway pots.

[ ] top 5%
[ ] 25% opening range is a 3-bet defending range

I agree with your last paragraph, though, which is why hands beyond a certain strength threshold are 3-bets regardless (such as JJ+ AK). Just not this hand.

It should be close to that with 50 % button steal or I'll abuse the **** out of the button. AJo is 56 % - 44 % favorite against my reg 3-bet defending (flatting in this case) range (10 % - 12 % 3-bet).

1.) Call 50 %, 3-bet 50 %. The hand is not super profitable since AJ hits top pair type of hands in 4-way pots OOP. Even with fishes, it's really tricky hand to play. Both leading and x/calling flops will be awkward. Reg should have a wide range.
2.) Call 30 %, 3-bet 70 %. I disagree that we have a range disadvantage against 3-bet flatting range and a decent reg should defend about 50 % of his/her button steal. This means that his defending range is not far off from 25 % opening range. I mainly flat this for balance since it can take the heat with one pair and some regs v-own themselves with worse top pairs. Therefore flatting this "helps" when I have a weaker holding and reduces the amount of 3-barrels/2-barrels.

Again, I mostly play online, but it's the same game, right?