Hero 420$ 1/2 live.

Villain has $170~

A4dd in SB

4 limpers, hero raise to 18$, bb 3bet to 38$ folds to hero, hero?

Table has been fairly passive to raises. Not sure if I should just limp here. I've been taking down many pots pre. We are 6 handed so every player limped.

Results:

Limp pre, AP fold

Can you please explain why to limp pre and ap fold. Doesnt really help me know why without an explanation.

I figure the hand can be raised or limped but I do feel maybe limping would be better. Good implied odds but raising can win us a lot of dead money.

AP idk how we fold on flop. We have massive equity against most hands except sets which the only reasonable one here is QQ and even then we have good equity.

Raising pre is great if people actually fold. Slightly less good if people are sticky pre, but it doesn't stop me from raising almost always. I would make it a round $20. Conditions which would make me limp would involve tight-passive players who will limp big aces/decent PPs but don't limp garbage hands that will fold to pressure.

Fold to the 3-bet because if you call you're just giving nits money.

Overlimp or raise, both have merits and it depends on game conditions. Snap fold to the 3bet. We are behind any reasonable range, OOP and have no effective stack depth to leverage fold equity from any draws we might hit.

Deeper you can consider a 4! instead of folding.

This. /thread

We don't fold on flop. We fold pre to the reraise, since we're out of position with a speculative hand against a strong range...and stacks are such that reverse implied (paying off a better ace) are more salient than implied odds.

That's a big raise for 1/2 and the 3! is very light which means he wants a caller or is not competent. I'd call the flop here if it were me.

Exactly. This should have been folded pre after the 3 bet. The near minraise 3-bet screams strength. He is begging the hero to call. With small stack sizes, we have no business calling with a speculative and otherwise dominated hand. We will miss way too many flops, and we can't even be sure our ace is good if we pair it, since the villain can lots of AA/AK/AQ hands.

Once we get that flop though, villain only has 130 left behind. OP doesn't state it, but I assume we checked, and the villain bet. Flop starts with 80ish, and villain has 130 behind, so we are going to risk 130 to win 210 if we jam over his bet. We have a nut flush draw and a gut shot, so like 12 outs. We expect to win this hand something like 45% of the time, so given the fact that we made it this far, jammy jam time.

Being OOP matters here. Much rather just limp in and call $1. I like playing suited aces cheap in multiway pots.....where I can't lose a lot if I just flop an ace. If you were on the button, then I can see the raise and try to get heads-up with one caller.....then you C-bet a lot of flops to win.

Fold to the reraise. A4 suited plays terribly against a 3-bettor OOP. You have reverse implied odds. You flop and ace and you won't know if it's good. And if you flop an ace and V has a hand like QQ, you won't get a lot from him. Terrible spot to make a profit.

What would your plan be if you 1) whiff the flop or 2) flop a pair of aces?

I agree that the raise is big (and I don't like it), but I was just curious to see why you would call OOP with a weak suited ace.

Just saw the spoiler.

As played, Hero has to shove. He has good equity against anything but a set of queens. V will fold some of time (likely if he has AK), which makes it an easier jam.

Don't post results, even in spoilers. Folks can't resist looking, and then it biases advice.

Fold pre AINEC. If by "passive to raises, you mean they love to limp/call, limp pre. If you mean they limp/fold a lot, the stab was OK, but calling after BB cold 3-bets is horrendous.

gotta admit calling vs the min 3 bet is tempting

Your online background is showing. BB's range here is AK and QQ+, readless. Also with the giant sizing of 1/2 PFRs, we are really shallow effectively. If we call, we are going to have an SPR of 1.5:1 and be OOP with A4s. That is no way to make money.

No looking to battle vs that type of range with a4 oop

into the muck it goes

Just overlikp pre and fold to most raises, unless you are getting 4:1+ and are closing the action.

Does math only apply to online games, and not to live, then? Cause vs said range, not only do we clearly have the correct odds to peel a flop, we can play (almost) perfectly post.

I think the bigger problem here is that when he uses this specific sizing, his range might only be KK+.


Btw, the initial raise pre seems really bad. Easiest complete you are gonna find, imo.

It's not that math only applies online, it's that 1) ranges are much tighter for 3-bets 2) The large open sizings (especially at 1/2) make for tiny SPRs and 3) There is really no way we can "play perfectly" and show a profit post against that range.

The money is all going in if there is no ace on the flop and V has a PP almost always. If an ace flops and money goes in, we are crushed unless we flop 2p, and even in that rare circumstance we are vulnerable. We really only love life if we flop a flush, or at least a pair and a FD.

Given that we have almost only RIOs post, I'm really doubting your statement that "we clearly have the correct odds to peel a flop." I'd need to see you math and your assumptions on that.

I fully agree with 1) and 2).
About 3) I'll concede that saying we can "play perfect postflop" against his range is a bit of a hyperbolic statement .
What i meant was, his range is so narrow and condensed we can hyperexploit him quite often postflop. We have a perceived advantage in this spot since we can put him on a lot of specific combo's, while he very likely doesn't have that advantage on us.
So everytime he checks back low flops, we can bluff turns at a ridiculous frequency, since he almost always has AK. We can make highly exploitable flop folds on say, AKQ or K74, for instance. We can flop an ace, see him check back QQ/KK and get thin value on the turn or river, etc.
Yes, the majority of hands will unfortunately end up in us x/folding flop, but if we are getting the correct odds pre, that is an acceptable outcome.

As far as the math goes, we have A4s vs his range of QQ+,AK. As mentioned, i think this range might be too wide, but let's roll with it.

So this is our pure equity, if we always realized 100% of it:
Equity Win Split
MP2 29.74% 28.56% 1.18% { A4s }
MP3 70.26% 69.08% 1.18% { QQ+, AKs, AKo }

We need to call 20 to enter a pot of 84, which means we should have at least (20/(38+38+8)=)23,80% to break even.
So based on our "cold" equity this is a clear call, cuz 29,74>23,80. Clearly, this isn't always the case in practise.

If we look at our hot/realisable equity, we need to take into account that we are oop, and villain is gonna deny some of our equity some of the time. I think it was RIO coach Steve Ambrose who calculate this as effectively a 20% equity penalty (ie. multiply by 0.8). So our 29,74 equity would be around (29.74*0,8=)23,79, which is hilariously close to our actual pot odds. So essentially we are breaking even on a call preflop.



I guess my main point itt is that everybody just seemed to respond with "villain has a premium, you should fold", rather than looking at first of all the pot odds, and secondly the overall situation and how to exploit it when we have an advantage we can work from. I feel like a lot of threads on this forum end with "we are oop, we should fold" or "SPR is too low, we can't call".
Maybe my brain is wired differently, but the first thing i asked my self when reading this thread, was: if folding is at best 0EV (the 18$ raise being a sunk cost), can we find a way to make it +EV? The answer is probably still 'no', but it's close enough to not instantly dismiss it imo.


This is a long derail and again to be clear, i actually agree with folding in this spot, so i'll bring it back to base and finish in true LLSNL fashion:

OP, fold pre.

Good post. I think our "penalty" is much worse than that at 1/2, especially with an SPR this low. I don't think AK checks back a low flop very often at all, for example.

I agree that it is V dependant and worth considering, though. I'd just be a lot happier considering it in position.