Friday night at Bally's Las Vegas. Table is ten handed and action has been good. Fairly loose preflop with only a couple aggressive players at the table.

Villain in this hand is a white guy in his mid 40s. VPIP/PFR has been about 40/20 after 50 hands. He seems to be varying his raise sizes according to the strength of his hands. Most of the time he'll say "Sweetener" and throw out $5-$7, but occasionally he'll make it $15-$17. Postflop he has seemed to play fairly straightforward.

Hero has been 20/15 at this point. I lost one big pot when I 3bet $50 from the BB after a $12 UTG raise, went HU with UTG, bet $70 on a 973r flop, checked an A turn and b/f $50 on a J river after UTG shoved for an extra $110 (I had KK and didn't show; UTG was an old Asian man and I assume he had JJ or possibly AQ/AK). Just prior to this hand I chopped a pot with another loose old man when we both hit broadway on the river; he had A4, I had AK, board was KJT8Q. I had raised preflop and bet pot OTF, 1/2 pot OTT, and the old man c/c my bet on the river. Villain in this hand may think I'm tilted from those two adventures.

On to the hand:

Villain raises to $7 UTG. Hero looks down at AQ in MP and 3bets $20. Folds to BTN who calls (woman in her twenties who had been playing 30/3 up to this point). Blinds fold, villain calls. $58 in pot after drop.

I don't often 3bet AQo from MP, but in this case I felt it was very likely I was ahead of V's small raise range. Although I've put in a couple 3bets already in the session, this is the first time in the hour and a half I've been sitting here that I've 3bet against this villain's raise.

Flop comes A 7 5. Villain checks, hero bets $30. BTN tanks and then folds. Villain shoves for $114 more. Hero ???

I feel as though it's unlikely this villain made his small raise with AK. The hands I'm worried about at this point are 55, 77, A7 and A5. In the previous 50 hands I had not seen him make a big check/raise like this on the flop. I'm getting slightly better than 2:1. Will this villain type show up with AJ/AT/A9/A8 more than 33% of the time here?

Seems like a fold.

Eh, SPR of less than 3 OTF? That's fine for stacking off vs. this V.

I call.

So, in gneral when villains raise 6-8 at these limits I assume low pocket pair, and just 3bet-->cbet then fold to agression. However, this is pretty shallow and villain appears to be pretty lose with some levels of agression. I think this spot in particular is very very close and I have a pretty hard time folding to this sizing.

I don't think villain is really bluffing very often here. His shove is less than a pot sized bet and it's an ace high flop. He can't really expect you to fold AQ or AK here which make up a big part of your 3bet range with that sizing.

I don't think it's a terrible call but I think villain shows up with 55,77,A5,A7 or 57 here a huge percentage of the time.

Every once in awhile he'll show up with like a weaker ace and he's just hoping you have 88-KK. You're getting 2:1 but I don't know if I expect to be good 33% of the time.

shrug call? seems like V can be shoving any A here

The 3 bet should be more like high 20s low 30s not just 20.

This is marginal, so player dynamic, I think I find a fold here though.

Is he ever raising A9 utg? If not, there are 12 ways he can have AJ or AT, and 13 ways he can have AA, AK, 77, 55. Is he even raising AJ/AT, or would he limp?

We only bet 21% of his remaining stack otf. Back when I was an MTT grinder, 25% was the magic # that we could b/f and V would be guessing to whether we were committed or not. So at 21%, definitely not committed.

I think preflop is what we should be discussing. Whether or not it's the right move, the decision should be made preflop to get ai or not if the board comes A hi or Q hi. Last night my table had half guys with 600+, half guys with 100-. There were limited set-mining opportunities and 3betting opps against the short stacks. This guy had 82BB, I wouldn't be 3betting him a ton personally, but you said you were ahead of his pot-juicer range, that's why you did. Given that, I'd stick with the idea of you being ahead of him and call. Wasn't the plan to stack him while having your kicker play?

Don't level yourself. ~3 is on the border anyway, but it's not a rule to follow blindly. I'd call $1 into a $2500 pot with 6 high on the chance V misread his cards and has 5 high, that I'd do blindly. But getting ai with TPGK with an SPR < 3 regardless of all else is going to get you in trouble in the long run.

3b to $27 pre. I'd call it off. They probably jam any Ax when they think you have JJ-KK

When I see a PFR above 20 as well as a smallish raise, I like to 3bet mainly to isolate so I can play a pot in position against a hand I probably dominate. Initially I was more concerned with the woman who called OTB. If she had raised or even just called the flop I would have started to feel a bit concerned about AK in her hand.

As far as the plan to stack, yeah, this had a lot of impact on my thinking. On such a dry board I was a little surprised to see a c/r rather than c/c from him; I would think with both TPWK as well as 2pr+ he would wait a street to gii. I thought it was possible he puts me on JJ+ and thinks any ace is the nuts, though I wasn't sure exactly how to quantify that likelihood.

Brokos said once, you need to think exactly 1 level above your opponent. If he's on 0, only thinking about his cards, you're leveling yourself if you're thinking about what it looks like you have, because V isn't thinking about that in the least, you just need to think about what he has.

So, is V even ranging you? Maybe, you know him better than me, but most 1/2 people will think for 2 seconds about our ranges and then just go back to "Yeah, I'll call $25 with 2nd pair pray for trips ott." So I think it's very unlikely he's c/shoving A3 because he thinks you have KK-TT.

So I wouldn't have 3 bet, but that's a table dynamics thing. My room is full of passives, 3bets usually win you small pots (unless it's a cooler) or you piss a guy off finally to c/r-shoving with a draw for the first time in his life because he's finally fed up with your aggression after 9 hours, and you have no clue how to range him, that's why I 3bet not so frequently. But given you're 3bet, remaining stacks, preflop plan, etc., I'd call.

I'm not leveling myself. Given the description of this guy (playing about twice as many pots as he should, fairly aggressive), I don't think 3 is borderline. I'd go up to 4 with him easy.

I still call.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

39,600 trials (Exhaustive)

board: A75

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
AcQh	33.80%	10,150	6,473
AK-AJ, A7, A5, 77, 55	66.20%	22,977	6,473

Even if the only hand he'll jam that you can beat is AJ you still need to call. If you can add any weaker aces (or air) to his range it's a snap call.

Thanks for the table, Stinkubus. Super lazy of me not to have already looked at that to consider my equity against range. His two pairs will occasionally get counterfeited or sucked out, so I did have that going in my favor.

I definitely felt as though AJ was in his range to do this (even though I think it would make more sense for him to c/c that hand).

Yeah, guessing the thought processes for 1/2 V's check/shove is always a bit tricky IMO. Last week I posted about a hand where I 3bet pre, flop came KQ8r, and I saw a big check/shove from the original raiser who had AK against my AA. If he really thought about it I think he'd see that on that dry of a flop he's really turning his hand into a bluff since I'm never calling off with KJ/AQ/JJ/etc. His thinking was probably just, "I have TPTK, if I lose it's a cooler, let's get the money in." Maybe he thinks his shove is protecting against the times when the third opponent holds JT or I'm c-betting with AJ...I don't know.

So in this spot I start to wonder, "Does he realize that if I 3bet pre and c-bet, that I'm not going to call off his c/r unless I have a big ace in my own hand? Or is he just overly excited that his crappy ace hit a flop?" I think it would be a much easier call if the flop was more wet since he can either be c/r as a semi-bluff or be protecting against semi-bluffs in my range. But I felt as though I had to think about this one for a minute.

One other thing I considered is whether 86s or 64s can be part of his UTG "Let's build a pot" small raise/call 3! range. Not sure if that's truly the case or if I'm leveling myself. If I include just 86s in his range my equity improves slightly from the one mentioned above; I go from just over 33% to just over 36%.

Snap call.

Fold.

Fold

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You're putting together an SPR for each opponent than following it rigidly. That's a little backwards, I'd do it the other way.

Don't have an SPR for each opponent, then follow it to the death. Have an SPR you're willing to stack off with for everyone (about 2), then use judgement/information from the preflop action to make a decision.

You're making SPR decisions then following it no matter what, I'd have a stable SPR then make some decisions to still stack off or not.

If he can have 57s he can have 68s as well. I think he shoves any A w/ this stack, I'd be calling.

I think pre flop should be closer to $30 for sure.

An SPR of 4 is probably just fine if we're doing the betting. He'd need quite a bit of air in his check/jam range to make it right to stack off here though.

Results:

Hero calls. Turn and river blank. Villain tables A7o.