Got a trivial question here. Argument is from this thread in LLSNL.

1/2, 300 deep, Maniac opens CO to $13, estimate top 75-80%, it's on us in SB. What is a better hand to threebet with and why - ATo or A8s? (I'm aware it's close).

Sample hand to assess Maniac Power Level of opponent:

Thanks!

AT, seeing that hand you just want to make a pair and stack him and AT makes better pairs than A8.

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Trick question both are fine and probably not significantly different enough to warrant debate.

To some extent A8s has better 'playability' in that it might flop more equity with flush draws and stuff but that is deceptive vs villain because both probably play more similarly to AK where a pair draw for both your cards could be live and should be considered.

If the debate is about showdown value it shouldn't be because you probably shouldn't be showing down naked A hi vs someone who bets/raises bottom pair no kicker like that.

300 deep pretty clearly A8s

AhTd 61.33%
80% 38.67%

Ad8d 60.34%
80% 39.66%

When you flop an ace:
board: As9d3h (I gave hero a bdfd)
Ad8d 86.49%
80% 13.51%

board: As9d3h
AhTd 87.14%
80% 12.86%

I guess we take ATo and valuetown him hard when we hit a pair?

It's a pretty silly question. Both hands are doing great.

A better question for someone opening 75-80% is do you expect folds if you 3bet from OOP.

To the extreme, if he opens 100% of hands then you can think of the spot almost exactly like a SB vs BB and straddle for $13 situation where the difference is the CO can't raise if we call. We still open pretty tight in that spot and I think A8s and ATo both make it into that range even if he's not folding but it becomes much less attractive to open if he's never folding preflop so I think you'd be surprised how tight we should be playing.

I assumed the purpose of the 3! was not just to get folds from V (although we dont mind) but to try and get closer to heads up with V significantly increasing our equity and helping to prevent it from going 6 ways.

ATo.

Triple barrels are good. Players who doen't have the wherewithal to not open 80% of hands are likely to make their costliest mistake on the river. Let the GTO types tell it and A8s has better barrelling potential than ATo. To that I say, who's got time to make a nut flush or nut flush draw?

ATo offers more natural triple opportunities for the good but not elite player. Txxxx, Axxxx...value triples what seem thin but should be taken against a mouth-breather (depending on tendencies) would be passed on equivalent top pair boards with A8s, they'll start checking for pot control. All the gutshot boards like QxxJx. GTO geeks want to check fold their busted nfds on the river anyway. The same boards where A8s bricks river are the same board where heros with convince themselves that the maniac has it. 9726J. When broadway bricks holding ATo we'll always maintain a nut advantage v a silly range so buckle up.

Who is the bb?

I'd prefer a8s over ato the times you get cold called by the bb.

Agains the whale, ato is better. More chance you flop him dead.

Thanks for responses, all. I was arguing with someone who thought A8s was clearly better than ATo (to the extent that they thought A8s was a blindingly obvious 3bet but wanted to flat ATo). My contention was that ATo is a small amount better against this particular opponent. I didn't particularly want to threebet either hand (would rather get money in with huge equity advantage later rather than create a large pot pushing small preflop edges from OOP) but would prefer to threebet AT to A8s. The GTO idea of better opportunities to barrel I think is inapplicable to a player that you don't want to bluff.

Probably should have explicitly said that the answer to this is no. The sample hand should give a fair idea.

I personally would rather A8s over ATo but saying one is specifically "better" than another is really a stupid argument and a moot point as it's close and it really doesn't matter because they both make into the 3bet range...

You could solve the EV of both hands with Pio preflop solver nd you could nodelock his strategies on each subset of flops (you can use the built-in pio subsets to get a relatively good representation of all flops) then nodelock each turn and then nodelock each river (assuming you have a rough idea of his strategies/deviations) and now you'd have a model of which hand has higher EV vs this specific villain. OH don't forget to model the scenarios where he 4bets or you get a cold caller or cold 4bettor cause that will affect your optimal range (ah **** can't do multiway solutions...) maybe nevermind about that last part. Probably would only take you a few days/weeks if you know what you're doing and have a server with at least 256gb ram dedicated to pio and a decent CPU, well plus the time to analyze the results and total up the EV of A8s vs ATo.

Seems like a lot of work for nothing! This is a meaningless discussion/argument from a theory perspective imo

From a theory perspective sb vs CO check out the EV of A8s vs ATo that Snowie has

Perhaps it’s close overall but doesn’t A8s have the disadvantage of not being able to realize all its equity by the river? It may be dominated enough times by the turn that it gets blown off its draw, right?

Not sure what you mean it is dominated to get blown off it's draws more than ATo would be. I mean ATo specifically beats 9's and T's that A8 wouldn't but not sure what that has to do with being blown off draw equity...

Right, I mean my argument was "AT is a little better but they're insanely close", if I'd been arguing against "A8s is better but they're close" I'd have shrugged and let it go, but instead I was arguing against "A8s is vastly better to threebet to the extent that it's an obvious threebet and you suck if you disagree, however I want to flat ATo".