I have been reading some articles and watching some podcasts in recent months and trying to construct my 4-bet ranges both for value and bluffs. I regularly play 2/5 NL (1k cap buy in) and 5/10 NL (2.5k cap buy in) it's not uncommon for these games to run pretty deep stacked (300-500BB + effective). When the game is good and playing deepstacked I know mixing in 4-bets will clearly help to protect my preflop opening range especially when opening OOP because my opponents will be aware that I am willing to mix in preflop 4-bets as part of my range balancing strategy.

In this particular thread I am not looking for advice on constructing preflop 4-bet ranges for Value, although it will depend on opponent, stack sizes, history, and game flow amongst other factors I already have my preflop 4-bet value ranges constructed with adjustments made when necessary due to the ladder factors I just mentioned.

What I am looking for advice/opinions on: Much of what I have been reading/watching mentions that hypothetically when playing in a deep NL game suited A high wheels are amongst the best 4-betting hands preflop because we block Aces and from a raw equity standpoint we are about 35% against the TOP of our opponents 4-bet calling range due to our ability to make straights, flushes, a pair of Aces etc. Now comes the tricky spot I am curious on your thoughts about: if we open say As 3s in the HJ for 5x ($25) and say the CO 3-bets to ($95-$110) fold to us in HJ and we 4-bet to ($260-$275) CO Flats. When the flop comes Ax 7x 9x we find ourselves OOP in a super tricky spot with a bloated pot. Yes we block Aces, yes we flopped top pair but in reality I'm not in love with this spot when my opponent flats my 4-bet pre... what percentage of the time do we think we are ahead in this particular spot against opponents 4-bet calling range? Do we check/call a jam for say 70-100 bigs? Do we lead for 1/3 pot and get away from it if opponent ships? Thoughts?

as my standard play i use the wheel aces as x/c on ace high boards to protect my x/c range. they’re very playable on lots of run outs

5x in an unopened pot is overkill from lp 4x is fine at 2/5 to 20
Anyway your 4b bluff strat should be mixing hands w good blockers and dec equity a5s is a more popular choice for bluffing vs ep opens but is fine at a low frequency other places
Aj at a lowish frequency is a nice 4b bluff hand as well as kq/kjo be careful w frequencies and not overbluff
Post flop you can rly do whatever you want to balance as long as u don’t fold post when u flop tp

4b sizing seems small for OOP, whereas Villain's 3b sizing seems large for IP. Think Villain has to call fairly wide at this price of 160 to win 370.

Small 4b sizing is std you have so much strong stuff and it’s v easy to comfortably get stacks in with aa/kk in like almost every board

This was just a hypothetical situation but if playing with 400+ BBs effective opting to 4-bet at this sizing provides me with the opportunity to fold to a 5-bet jam, win the pot with my 4-bet preflop if I'm being 3-bet light, or lastly see a flop if Villian flats my 4-bet with a hand that has blockers and can make nut flushes, straights, and flop top pair. The particular 4-bet sizing I chose for this hypothetical hand would allow me to comfortably fold to a 5-bet shove because of effective stack sizes. Also if Villian just flats my 4-bet his range is somewhat capped so even though I play OOP I can re-eval post flop based on board texture and feel good about x/c majority of A high flops imo.

But yea when ur deep obv 4b bigger

usually on A79 here I go into XC mode, don't hate 1/3 pot bet, especially as mixes though. My thinking is that most AK 5bets in vils shoes here and AQ can't be that confident in most players hands at this stake. basically Axx is going to be the toughest spot that A/wheel gets into in 4bet spots OOP. lots of other spots it easily gets turned into a bluff or semi bluff.

+1

2.3x or so is good imo.
maybe Cheese has a point as well about OOP vs IP (def agree that that 4x 3b size is slightly big IP) idk, i wouldn't adjust 4b size too much more than 2.7x OOP normally, I think it just ends up doing the wrong kinds of things.

in terms of positives for 2.3x... good price on bluff and makes it tempting but wrong for vil to call with trash (not by a ton, but still wrong). if the sizing seems wrong then I think it's largely bc we are either mis-constructing our own 4b range, or mis-adjusting to vils 3b range. (kind of the same thing sometimes I guess.)

psa in this hand 4bet to 260, 3bet 95, 165 to call into 520 = 32% equity needed to call.

if we 4b AK,JJ+ and all As/wheel vil has odds on...
{ 22+,A2s+,KTs+,Q8s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,65s,A5o + }

Vils issue is two fold imo
1) every hand in our range over realizes equity vs this calling range at low SPR
and
2) I don't have the math in front of me, but I feel like every time I've done the math in the past if we aren't 4bing vs 2%3bers (i.e. not constructing dumb ranges) we profit slightly from FE pre anyway

I guess another way of saying what I'm saying about ranges is if vil calls 4b too much we could easily just 4b
AK,JJ+.A5s,A4s
and vil only has odds on

{ 22+,A2s+,KQs,QTs+,76s,ATo+ } and still runs into the same issues with equity realization

Agreed on all points

5x in an unopened pot is overkill from lp 4x is fine at 2/5 to 20


Statements like this are really terrible for live poker
Tables vary so much from one another that your strategy should also vary a lot on different tables.
3x can be fine on some tables while 5x(or more) is optimal for other tables

4betting it OOP I think is usually a bad idea, even HU in position can get costly if you aren't playing perfectly postflop. Best time to do it is when you're the original opener and 2+ guys call and the bb squeezes. Can just make it huge.

Yup. The whole point of picking big sizing is that you still have weak stuff and want to push out parts of someone's range. When you 4 bet, you're basically saying "dude I have JJ+/AK you really want to come at me?". Maybe even tighter. So you don't have to 4 bet big to encourage folds: AQo for example has just 28% equity against this value range and may find it unappealing to play for it.

Axs seems to be the biggest part of other people's 3 bet bluffing range, so although Axs has blockers vs AA/AK, it also has blockers vs the same suited wheel aces you are 3 betting with. Why not 4 bet with something like K9s? it blocks equally as much of AK/AA/KK which are all usually 5 betting, and it doesnt block any of his 3 bet/fold hands like A4s. Further, since AKs is more likely to 5 bet, and AQs maybe even AJs may flat the 4 bet, you are in a situation where when you flop top pair you feel a lot happier about it, and your high card plays equally as well against QQ/JJ/TT type hands. The drawback is losing out on the straight draw.

I'd be lying if i said these exact thoughts didnt cross my mind when I was constructing 3b/4b ranges LOL.

But in a vacuum 4-betting suited wheel aces are much better than say K9s. A lot of players are 3-betting 65s-J10s, so having A2s-A5s doesn't block any of those bluffing hands that should (but not always) be folding to a 4-bet. A lot of players are not 3-betting 43s/32s/53s. Also, with K9s, we are blocking J9s/97s/96s/98s/97s; you get my point. Those are a lot of combos that are eliminated from his range since we have the 9. We really hope that when we 4-bet with our suited aces, he has the bluffing portion of his range and is folding to it. And if he just flats with ******ed hands like 87/K10s, we are doing really well vs his range.

A5s just has a lot of equity vs a 4-bet calling range. Plug it into pokerstove. Against any reasonable range, you should have at least 30%. Plus with hands like K9s/K10s, your straight outs are blocked by their 1010/JJ/QQ that are flatting the 4b. And let's say for example they flat with AQs. That doesn't mean you are dead. Because you have an Ace and they have an Ace, it's not likely at all that you will flop one. And you could also suckout anyway with occasional aces up, flush draw, bdfd, bdsd, etc.

But for live poker, unless it's 10/20+ in really tough lineups, I am 100% confident you do not need to be 4-bet bluffing at all, especially OOP. At least with 4-bet bluffing IP, you get to wayyyyy overrealize equity, whereas OOP you are going to get owned by a good pro/reg who has position on you (because we're obviously NOT 4-bet bluffing fish). If you do, just get out of the ****ing game and find a different one. 4-bet bluffing in live poker is basically setting money on fire.

So in general, if you're asking about 4-bet bluffing specifically for live (where people cant use HUDs or massively exploit like online regs), don't do it. You'll burn money. And if you knew the answer to it already, you'd be crushing live highstakes/playing the nosebleeds and you wouldn't have to be asking how to construct 4bet ranges.

Ok fair enough, I havent seen people show up with SCs super often in 3 bet pots actually, ive seen a lot more of the Axs variety, but I dont have a lot of volume, so ill believe you. What about K2s? A4s has ONE more straight draw than K2s.


Pokerstove:

QQ-88, AQs/AJs AQo
K2s does 33.61%, A2s does 31.86%

If i add AK in...

K2s does 32.25%, A2s does 31.44%


If I give them a wider calling range with a few SCs...

Added:
T9s, 98s, 87s

A2s 35.46%, K2s 35.81%.

I think unless they start including hands like KJ, it seems like K2s theoretically plays better even without any straight draw.

With respect to who I personally 4 bet bluff, I havent been bluffing fish or good pros. Last few sessions I have 4 bet bluffed ABC players and weekend warrior types at 2/5 with reasonable regularity. Basically working stiffs just like me who dont play a huge amount but read forums like this that suggest bluff 3 betting hands exactly like A2s-A5s, but dont have a lot of experience with these spots, and it has seemed pretty successful so far, and seems like they show up with something similar to the above range with their calls, ive seen JJ and AQ. If the call you just fire two barrels and take it down on most boards.

Could also consider KQs OOP since it isnt super exciting to play OOP in a 3 bet pot, and since the Q blocks AQ and QQ from their calling range, and you get two overs vs JJ-88 type hands. Vs the ranges from tightest to weakest it does: 40.81%, 38.30% 42.74%, so it plays really really well postflop.

You can 4b a low frequency of hands like this and it’s fine just have to
Be careful not 2 overdo it

Wrt to SC in 3-bet pots, I think players tend to 3b SCs more out of the blinds and people will flat SCs more often IP (BTN/CO) vs the blinds' 3-bet. They are more likely to muck pre if they are in the HJ and BTN/CO 3-bets, and HJ has 65s-109s.

Your ranges seem pretty reasonable, but you are discounting players flatting AA/KK to a 4-bet (which many good pros/regs are doing, especially IP where they can own you more than OOP). This also applies more when you are deep; you dont want to turn your hand face up with AA. and with KK, if you are 200bb+ deep, generally not a good idea to 5b KK because you're turning it into a bluff at that point.

If you 4b K2s, you dont block any 6 combos of AA in the deck at all, and if they flat KK, you're drawing basically dead. Your equity will drop a lot if you add some/most/all combos of AA/KK in their range.

Interestingly enough, I checked the equities of A5s, A4s, A3, A2s individually vs a 4-bet calling range. A5s > A4s > A3s > A2s, each one around .3% more or less. Im assuming this is because A5s can make more straights than A2s, etc etc.

But even so, i personally don't open K2s-K4s at all. K5s/K6s are okay OTB/SB for me, but unless the blinds/BB are total nits or massive whales, I do not like opening K2s-K4s. I thinking 4-betting suited Kx are okay once in a while, but I think sticking to the suited aces are going to be a little better mostly because with A2s we can suck out vs KK & we block half combos of AA.

KQs is fine to 4-bet, but i think we shouldnt be doing at high freq or else we'll have too many "bluffs" in our 4b range and will have to fold vs shove. I think KQs is really good in a flatting range because some good pros/regs will 3b more linearly with hands like QJs/KJs/K9s/Q10s/Q9s/K10s or sometimes put in the squeeze with the offsuit versions. If we 4b KQs, we are making the mistake here and letting them get away. If they have AK/AQ, we're gonna lose either way if we flat the 3b or we 4b. If we 4b with Axs and they fold (which they probably will), we win by folding out 40%+ of their equity

Well I recognize that some good pros effectively dont have a 5 betting range in many spots, and vs an uncapped range, I assume that 4 betting with SC would be better than either wheel or Kxs, although I dont know that id do either one and rely on my image vs other players to protect my AA/KK. If someone did flat me with AA theyd make a ton of money because I keep firing postflop.

And good point on K5s rather than K2s.