So just because people at the table have a tight 3bet range makes raising/playing ~ATC in EP profitable?

GmaybeI'mmissingthepointG

43s isn't ATC because it can graze a lot of flops for semibluff value. (I've been reading a ton of Ed Miller lately which has really changed my thinking; not sure how his recent books are perceived on here.) But it's still way too weak to open UTG. We should probably open-raise KJs UTG, and knowing JJ or A5s is never 3-betting would add value.

Yeah, on the suited connectors front I am opening 98s UTG in any game, 76s in a soft game, so I'm thinking if a game is really so soft that a 3bet is QQ+/AK almost all of the time we should probably be opening 43s or at least 54s. A huge reason we want to keep opening ranges tight is because people can 3bet us and deny all our equity. If they choose not to do this, bombs away!

So for the only reason that no one is 3betting preflop without the nuts makes bloating pots in the worst position with the worst hand instantly profitable?

Gnotsurehowyouareconcludingthat?G

It's also important to think about 43s is weak here. Most of why we're playing suited hands is to make semibluffs that still have equity when called. Plan A isn't to get to showdown but rather to have hands with equity that give us confidence to try to win at showdown. Plan B is to make a monster. Plan C is to make a moderate hand that wins when no one else has anything.

We can't play every suited hand for a raise because even bad players will notice we rarely have good hands. So we need a way to narrow them down to a reasonable number that still exploit our opponents postflop while balanced by a decent chance that we have a good hand when we raise.

We could just pick suited hands on a whim because we saw someone drag a big pot with them once, like T4 and J5. T4s is as likely to make flush draws as 87s, and if we don't get to showdown (Plan A) it doesn't matter what's printed on the front of the cards. But they're worse for Plan A and B because they don't connect. We flop fewer straight draws so we have fewer spots to aggress with equity (Plan A). And we back into fewer straights (Plan B).

As for Plan C, backing into mediocre winners, J5s will make top pair more often than 87s. But 87s is better than 43s because it can back into middle pair more often. Plan C isn't where most of the value comes from, but we may as well start by adding middle SCs rather than little ones. Not that anyone was advocating playing 43s but not 87s, just making a theoretical point.

So then:

• If we play too many hands, we end up with a weak range that even mediocre opponents can figure out is weak and often call down light.
• If we play the right number of hands but a silly mix (play J5s but not 87s) then we're just giving up marginal bits of equity.

Sticking to middle SCs OOP is mostly a way of avoiding too wide a range but if we're maintaining a certain range, may as well pick the best hands.

Yep, you've got it now chief. Of course it's only profitable if we know how to play postflop, but yeah.

I keep forgetting that we're 100x better than all our opponents.

GmybadG

I never used to think this until I learned that 1/3 players never 3bet worse than QQ.

We should keep a healthy but realistic respect for our opponents. In particular their motives for playing aren't ours and some of them are pretty disciplined at sticking to a nitty set-mining strategy that used to make you a lot of money and still makes a little. But yeah, the vast majority are playing the lottery. "If I can just sneak in for cheap with my JJ and stack off set vs top pair, I could double up my $89 stack!"

Yeah to be clear, I'm a bit snarky here because I'm trying to educate, but I definitely have the utmost respect for rec players (I'm a rec player! This certainly isn't my day job). We should never act like we're better than anyone else just because we play poker better. That's pretty silly to even think about! Having said that, only 3betting QQ+ is a really bad way to play poker, and if your goal is to maximize your earnings at the poker table, you need to punish people who do that.

Nice troll.

We're significantly better than the vast majority of our villains and in particular they 3bet way less than they should, therefore it is quite obvious that we can profitably open in EP wider than we otherwise could.

Villain (CO): 20s white guy, sat an orbit ago and hasn't played a hand yet ($350)
Hero (SB): late 20s Asian guy, no history with villain (covers)

EP opens $13. A player flats in MP. Villain squeezes to $45. Folded to hero in SB with AK. Hero 4 bets to $105. Folded back to villain. Villain calls after some thought.

Flop: 668 ($234)

Hero checks. Villain quickly checks back.

Turn: T ($234)

Hero checks. Villain bets $90. Hero folds.

Gotta say I truly hate your line here. If this is how you planned to play AK after 4! pre (and you MUST know how you will play it on 95% of flops BEFORE 4!), then either folding pre or just flatting the 3! pre were much much better ways to go. Once you put in ~1/3 of your stack pre, it is criminal to just check/fold afterwards.

Sorry if this was harsh, but from my perspective you lit 5+ hours of earn on fire here, mostly because you didn't have a plan for the whole hand.

Pretty sure the holy trinity of preflop is skill advantage + position + card strength, and yet we're throwing 2 of those out the window all due to no one 3betting non-nuts preflop.

If you're a wizard compared to everyone at your table, maybe you'll do alright flat out ignoring 2 of the 3. Otherwise, continually going to the flop with the worst / dominated hands in bloated (i.e. low SPR) pots OOP is likely not going to work out too well long term (whether anyone 3bets us or not).

And one of the reasons we are so much better than a lot of our villains is that we simply play preflop a whole lot better than they do (like not opening extremely mediocre hands in EP).

GimoG

this line sucks, but your fold is probably correct. this is the weird paradox that comes up when you make a big mistake pre. this smells of careful play by an overpair.

Good post.

If you are gonna play this passive when you whiff the flop (wich we all know is gonna happen 2 out of 3 times roughly), then the cold 4 bet pre is absurdly bad and lightening money on fire.

You have decided to play your hand fast and "rep" a big pocket pair like KK/AA with the cold 4 bet pre, now you got to follow through with it and try to fold out villains JJ or AK. Maybe you can get a herofold from QQ a non zero percentage of the time too,who knows.

As others timely have pointed out earlier in this thread, this is the kind of messy spot youre gonna find yourself in when choosing this line pre: OOP with A high with heaps in the middle against a strong 3 bet/calling range, forced to basically shove allin for stacks praying to get folds. Not exactly a good spot to be in readless against a villain we have close to zero information on. Despite what some people may seem to think, AK does not come with a tag to it where it says we have to play if hard/stackoff with it 100 percent of the time.

i think this is part of the reason people "hate AK". there is a lot more nuance to how the hand plays pre and post than other top tier holdings. you have to figure out the nuance. this spot is a good example of where the right move is to straight up muck AK, which many players would say they never do. but it takes a fairly quick look at the equities to see how we fare.

AK is an interesting hand because even with regular low-stakes villains, it can at once be a fold in a double raised pot or a 5bet shove in another pot.

so villain had QQ ya? :P

No pre is fine asides from the sizing. Post I shoulda just shoved flop for max fold equity and the fact that I have almost the direct equity to stack off against QQ assuming an SPR of 1. I leveled myself into "oh he's never folding QQ" when it doesn't matter cause he folds AK often enough.

Villain claimed to have AK. Given his snap check back on the flop it makes sense. I think QQ/JJ would have considered a bet. I was honestly considering shoving over turn if he made it small just because of that read. But 90 looked like a stack committing bet. If he wasn't lying, power to him. Shows how useful position is.

Nah, he probably was honest. Snap check back in that spot is very accurate sign of a guy who have AK and just want to see one more card or get closer to showdown without having to put anymore money into the pot.

RE almost correct odds to stackoff against QQ on the flop with a SPR of 1: that i just because you choosed and created that small SPR with piling in money pre with a cold 4 bet into a very likely nutted strong 3 bet range from an unknown,so youre telling yourself youre getting almost the correct price is an illusion and a way of fooling yourself.

Well here's the math I did to break down whether 4 betting would be +EV or spew. If I made any incorrect assumptions, please correct me.

I havent said its spew (even though alot of the hands you have posted i have said is pure spew), but its highly questionable with so few accurate reads and therefor lack of an accurate profile to build a realistic range for him, if it is any +EV at all- and all it gives you is adding alot of huge variance.

What i said was that once you reach the flop in this manner after a cold 4 bet you dont really have a choice on majority of flops, you cant just check-fold when you whiff majority of the time. What i said was that is kind of manipulative to say youre close to getting close to correct price to stackoff to QQ on the flop in this spot,just because that is building on a highly questionable preflop decision.

Its the same that if a guy 3 bets spazz with 6-4 offsuit for half his stack, then the villain 4 bet shoves- and 6-4 guy justifies the call that he is drawing to livecards against AK so he is getting the correct price. Well, he is just getting the "correct price" because he choose to spazz out preflop piling in money with a weak hand, wich leads to the next questionable decision.

Not the same as 4 betting AK of course, but the principle in justifying decisions created by earlier questionable plays can be a dangerous exercise. This is a cousine of the classic follow up mistakes.

So how are you doing in a 4 way pot on the flop? This isn't online, people are calling a raise far more frequently and not folding TP to a bet.

Now you're asking the tough questions!

In theory we want to do the same thing we always do: bet our value hands and bluff with enough hands to make our ranged balanced.

In practice, I doubt anyone has figured out how to play 43 suited 4 ways out of position in a game where no one raises preflop (so their flatting ranges are stronger than they should be). My guess is we almost always bet 2 pair+ (although check quads) and bluff with our draws that were comfortable folding to a raise (these are probably gutshots, mostly). Generally we don't need to do much bluffing in 4 way pots.

I'll be first to admit the above paragraph is speculation-- eager to hear if others have thoughts on how we'd build a betting range there.

Cbet bluff frequency goes way down, generally only on something like Q52r or maybe when we have some backdoors or maybe if 2 of the callers are in the blinds. Plenty of x/f when we go 4+ ways and wiff. (one of the reasons I like 3x, the sunk cost is cheap when I want to get away)

Ok, you guys have really piqued my interest and now I want to see one of these low stakes games where people only raise with the nuts. I am heading to either Flamingo or Harrah's to play 1/2 for the next few hours.

Playing only standard opening ranges tonight. No 43 suited unless I'm in the cutoff or later or my BAC eclipses .1. But if you're all right about the way these guys play, I'll come back soon and play like a maniac. Excited to see what these games look like!