Hello,
My name is Victor, I’m co-founder and responsible for development of PLO Genius.
I’d like to welcome you personally by a short article about very common spot: BTN facing 3b from blinds.
I’ve found that it’s being misplayed by many players (partly for the reason - we discuss it later).
In publicly available sims BTN isn’t slowplaying many AA, usually something around 10%.
My educated guess for this is due to the limitation of the simulations, which typically allow for only PSB in 4bP. While this work well in general for situations with SPR less than 1, it may not suffice when the ranges are very narrow.
When you allow players to bet smaller, both on flop and turns - suddenly solver adds many more slowplays with AA pre flop.
Why is that?
The reason behind this is that the OOP player can leverage smaller bet sizes to extract additional
EV on favourable boards (e.g., KJ7, QT8) by forcing IP to put extra money with weak AA.
By slowplaying certain AA hands, you can prevent this, while maintaining dominance over hands like AKK/KK which your opponent might fold against a 4b.
Another benefit of slow playing more often with AA is protection vs PSB CB in 3bP, where OOP exploits IP weakness on board such as J62 or AKx.
How much you can earn by slow playing AA?
It depends on exact combo, but you can expect extra 0.1 to 0.5bb (each time when you call instead of 4b with correct combo. Most profitable slow plays are AA54 AA53 AA43.
But should you really slow play in your real games? It’s a tricky question. Average player folds to 4b significantly less than what is optimal (36% in mid rake environment).
I will delve deeper into this topic in our inaugural newsletter for subscribers. But for now, I would advise you to practice and develop the discipline needed to make the right folds when you're in the blinds against a 4b.
By doing this effectively, you could easily win an additional 4bb+ each time you fold a non-trivial hand correctly against a 4b.
Thanks for your interest, and GL at the tables!