If I 4bet QQ and THIS villain folds out pairs 22 to JJ and Kx - Ax hands is that a big mistake? Because then I make him play perfectly against me.

However, villain does have some equity against queens so the question is if it's better to fold out his hand or just flat call in position to try to get a bet or two out from him.

I find myself just 4betting QQ against passive, or not so aggressive opponents and flatting against aggro opponents.

So the question probably is if it's a mistake to 4bet passive or "not so very aggro" opponents to fold out their equity against queens?


BB ($216.95)
SB ($100)
MP ($132.30)
CO ($299.40)
Hero (BTN) ($100)
SB ($203)

Preflop: Hero is BTN with Q, Q
Hero bets $3, BB raises to $10, Hero Call/4Bet

So you're saying he only calls with QQ,KK and AA? In that case the bigger question should be how many garbage hands you should do this with.

Sure, 4betting in small stakes is extremely profitable against many opponents who 3bet lights, but it doesn't really answer this question.

I think youve answered your own question. If villian folds everything to 4bet other than AA/KK then there is no value in 4betting QQ.

But also I think your thinking about villians kind of back to front. You say you 4bet the passive ones and flat the aggro ones. You need to think about why your taking that line against each opponent.

Eg, I Imagine your saying you 4bet the passive guy because he will call with hands you have crushed plus his Ax etc and that you the flat the aggro guy because you want to extract more value post flop?

This makes sense on one level but at the same time the passive guy is only going to 5b you with KK+ whilst the aggro guy may do this with JJ+ AQ+ and some total bluffs, depending on your positions, the image you both currently have and the ongoing dynamic between you.

So wouldnt it make sense to flat the passive guy and 4b the aggro guy?

This is why we 3bet light sometimes, to create a dynamic where hands like QQ against a particular opponent become the nuts in all in preflop situations.

Basically what im saying is that if we knew 100% that villian folds everything except KK/AA to a 4bet then 4betting is obviously a mistake (but we will never know this for sure)

The key thing is rather than make the decision to 4bet based soley on a generic player type we need to take into account all the variables and informtation we have at the time - Positions of players, Our Image, Their Image, recent dynamic between us at the time, Overall history, Is the opponent tilting? has he recently lost a big pot? does he think we are tilting? etc etc.

well if he folds everything but KK+ and 3bets alot, we can 4bet him light all day..

but in this specific case, which is probably what you meant, i agree

Against this villain 4-betting is clearly a bad option with QQ as his calling range crushes you. You should probably 4-bet a good deal of low-suited connectors that can flop strong even if you run into a monster

Okay, thx guys

It's not trivial that 4-betting QQ is bad even if the villain folds all hands except QQ+ and 5-bets those. What matters is whether you're winning enough pots without contest to make up for the ones you lose (probably also without contest). If villain is 3-betting a lot of hands (maybe some suited aces or even smallish suited connectors), you might do fine. Also, the size of your 3-bet matters.

This is a bit alien to me, as I think of honest 4-bets being AA/KK.

If Villain is only calling QQ+ you should not 4-bet with QQ as the only hands you fold are hands that you have absolutely crushed and AK. Put another way, you gain more value from worse hands (against this particular villain) by just calling. Sometimes when you flat he shows up with KK or AA any way, or he hits 2 pair, or he hits his ace or king and you'll sometimes lose your stack by flatting the 3-bet. Still, I do not htink that you pick up enough in uncontested pots to make up for (1) the amount of money you lose to the 5-bets from QQ+ and (2) the money you are not gaining from 99-JJ, AJs+ AKo type hands.

Are you fully taking account of the fact that if you call, he has a considerable amount of equity in the pot? Say he has A5s, you have equity of less than 67%. If you bet and he folds, you have gained a third of the pot in equity. With villain hands being high card heavy, you are giving him a lot more chance of making a better pair than making a pair that QQ beats.

This is a purely theoretical discussion for me - I don't feel the inclination to 4-bet QQ.

I don't see him 3-betting with A5s if he's only going to play a 4-bet pot with KK+ but that's another story, and if he is he's going to have a range much more weighted towards pocket pairs. Still, if he is 3-betting light (as would be the case with a player who 3-bets A5s, the best option is to flat for a number of reasons.

1) You are exteremly likely to get a continuation bet out of this player on the flop
2) You are controlling the size of the pot preflop
3) You allow your opponent to make a 2nd best hand that he will call a large bet with a good amount of the time (should 2 spades hit or a J hit when he has AJ)
4) You are increasing your implied odds those times that you are against AA or KK

There are more that I can't think of right now. Long story short, that $10 bet represents only 10% of the effective shorter stack. I have a hard time thinking that picking up the "extra 33% of the pot" is worth forcing out only the hands that you are a significant favorite against.

Let's say there is x% of the villain's range that has like 33% against our QQ (A5s, etc), then the other (100-x)% of the range has 80% equity against our QQ (KK/AA).

Also, let's say he folds worse and calls with better (and if he doesn't it's only better for us)

One more thing to assume is that we 4bet 1PSB which is... (assume there is no sb, and the villain is on bb)... 1bb + 3bb (that's our raise) + 11bb (3bet, pot=15bb) + 21bb (4bet, pot=48bb)

Now we need to solve if and with what x=? values 4bet > call 3bet:
15bb*x + 48bb*(1-x)*0.2 - 21bb > 24bb*(x*.67 + (1-x)*.2) - 9bb

Anyone to solve it? I'm not that good at math to do that myself. Hopefully I put the equation right at least

Don't 4bet SCs since he will never call your 4bet and you will fold to a shove anyway.

Kx and Ax hands are much more suitable hands to 4bet-bluff with because they have blockers for AK, KK, AA.


Anyway, I think it's a pretty easy 4bet/call because AK is also in his range. Thus you can play a 40/60 and win $13 when he folds.

ok, i think i got it

x > .158

that is whenever villain has more than 16% *of his range* some hand that he's either folding to 4bet or we get 0.33 to win if we call, we can 4bet profitably... mhm, seems like we should 4bet whenever there's any chance that his 3bet wasn't AA/KK only...

now that I think of it, this may be however worsened if the villain sometimes flats/5bets with his 33% equity hands..

anyone to proof read my math?

it's interesting though. the equation could be easily modified to see what we get if we include some fraction of x range for 50/50 hands, so we can get x for JJ hand, etc.

nice thread.

sorry for it's getting flooded by my possibly poor math, one more thought:
even if 4bet > 3bet, sometimes both of them is -EV! (e.g. if opponent had only KK/AA or JJ), so it's basically that we should always either fold or 4bet (unless we have some meta reason to flat, i guess).

Where does AK go? Are we going to assume that he never 3-bets with AK? What about 99-JJ ? If he always 3-bets - calls with AK his equity drops to 60%.
We do a lot better against his folding range as well. Ax-s (when it's not AK,AQ) has 32% equity but pairs, suited connectors or any other 2 undercards have considerably less equity.

Simulated 100000 Holdem Hands (Monte Carlo)
Simulation by Slice - The ev++ Equity Calculator

Player	Equity	Win Hi	Tie Hi	Combos (Natural:Reduced)/Total	Range
1	59.8	59.6	0.4	(28:28)/1326	KK-AA, [A]K, [AK]
2	40.2	39.9	0.4	(6:6)/1326	QQ

This little range and how much equity QQ has against it really opened my eyes into how aggro we can be with QQ vs some villians
Including 4bet shoving, and 4bet then calling stack off

I have the correct math. Lots of formatting, so will post it in like 30 minutes. Also, as I'm kind of app programmer (self proclaimed at least ), I'm thinking of creating pokerstove-kind-of piece of soft where one can instantly get EV for Nbet vs. flatting (N-1)bet. 30 mins.

Could you please explain what "N" and "(N-1)" stand for please ?

betting goes as follows:
Now let's assume x is a fraction of the hands beating us where our QQ has 1/5 equity, and (1-x) is a the remaining fraction of hands against which we have 2/3 equity.

If we're the ones at the point to 4bet or flat 3bet (i'll skip BB notation and just go for the exact value):

EV(flat3bet) = (1-x)*(2/3)*18 + x*(1/5)*18 - 6
EV(4bet) = (1-x)*36 + x*0.2*54 - 18

Let's find the values of "x" when EV(4bet) > EV(flat3bet)

(1-x)*36 + x*0.2*54 - 18 > (1-x)*(2/3)*18 + x*(1/5)*18 - 6
36 - 36x + 10.8x - 18 > 12 - 12x + 3.6x - 6
-16.8x > -12
x < 0.7143

The x is the fraction of KK/AA hands in his range in this case. So...

If we believe he has 39% chance of 3betting with AJ- we're better off 4betting.

Now the side notes...
every possibility of him 3betting with AK makes us better (because we're ~50/50 with the money already invested! so we'll be +EV to play against that)
every possibility of him 3betting JJ- makes it even better (we're way ahead).

I'll fine-tune the generic equation for calculating all the factors (like our EV against every hand in his range), to find out what the exact EV(4bet) <> EV(flat3bet) is. 24 hours, please

like in 4Bet vs. 3Bet (Nbet vs (N-1)Bet).
that's because it doesn't theoretically matter if we're 4betting against 3bet, or 5betting against 4bet... the thing is we're just adding +1 to the bet sequence. (the ranges chage, but that practical, the theory still applies).

Also, my worst apologies for bad English and bad Math languages, I'm not a native English speaking and I don't even have a SAT equivalent. Hopefully you're smart enough to figure my **** out :P