$1/$3, 8-handed, $250 eff.

Villain (SB) - Young Asian LAG, talks about how he mainly plays online. Has been raising a lot preflop and has been bet/folding some flops and turns.

Hero (BB) - Young reg, TAG image.

Rest of the table = loose-passive older folks

Hero is dealt AJo in BB
3 limpers
Villain shuffles with his chips and looks as if he's about to put out a large raise, but accidentally announces $12 and the dealer declares that his raise is binding. I'm not sure if this is Hollywooding or not but I decide to test the waters:
Hero 3bets to $30
Folds to villain
Villain tanks for 10 seconds, fiddles with his chips again, then 4bets to $125 (very odd sizing for someone with a $250 stack)
Hero ???

Taking the live tells into account, what do you think the best play is? And do you like my decision to 3bet preflop?

3 betting or flatting are both reasonable preflop vs a sb raise. Fold to the 4bet. As far as villain's behavior, I'd assume he has a big hand - JJ+/AK/AQs, maybe even tighter. I'm not that great at live tells though. I'd fold to the 4 bet either way though.

Angry instamuck here. You tested the waters and found out there was a monster in the depths. No sense plunging in once you got your answer. You're going to be playing for stacks and you're dead often, and even best case only marginally ahead.

I do prefer a flat in position to the original bet.

Not sure how someone accidentally announces $12. Hard to say from behind a keyboard, but this seems like a very strong hand when combined with the 4bet.

I prefer to flat and play IP with AJo and would 3b! with hands closer to the bottom and top of my range, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the 3b! pre.

This.

I'm curious as to the reason for the sizing of your 3bet. If you woke up with a big hand here, what would have raised to?

It's an odd hand.

Like dmmcoy says: how do you accidentally announce a raise??? I'm not really buying that. So here's my stupid theory:

I think he intended to raise what he announced and is probably juicing the pot with a small pair so he can more easily stack someone when he hits a set.

Then hero puts in a small 3bet, possibly after giving off some sort of physical tell in response to SB's weird behaviour. Also OP do you look at your cards on your turn to act or before? Just if you looked early then V might be aware you intend to raise and was just trying to keep the sizing down in order to set-mine effectively.

So V sees the smallish raise and reads it as non-premium big offsuit (TT+ AK 3bets bigger, 99- just call) and thinks there's a good chance he can force a fold here and now and of course he doesn't hate flipping if you call.

I wouldn't do it myself live but after the fact and with your money I shove like I have QQ+ and try to change his mind on his read of my 3bet but expect to gii Vs 88 quite frequently.

This was my first 3bet of the night and I'd never played with this player before, so I thought I could get away with this small sizing. You'll see fish make tiny 3bets with KK+ a lot of the time, so I was hoping he'd just interpret my raise as some idiot fish who might have a monster.

In addition to that, it makes more sense from a GTO standpoint to be 3betting small when we have shorter effective stack sizes, since in theory, villains are not going to be priced in to call with suited connectors and low pocket pairs, so we don't need to put as much emphasis on protecting our hand.

So I thought it can't be too bad, with both things considered.

Results:

3! AJo from the blinds is completely fine, though I'd size larger in general ($40-$45). Once V 4! half his stack there's really nothing you can do but fold. You're hoping to be flipping and often crushed. No need to put >100bb in with a fairly weak hand.

Honestly given the odd situation with the "accidental" verbal raise, I'd probably just avoid this hand entirely and fold. I really don't think you're missing out on a good spot by mucking AJo from the blinds and moving on to the next hand.

Based on physical tell description in combination with the weird $12 announcement I’m folding because he seems strong. AA,KK,QQ, AK/AQs

3 limpers & SB raises to $12. Wouldn't a TAG BB either raise or fold AJo?

Weird behaviour + 4 bet = strong hand 99% of the time unless you have seen proof otherwise. This is an easy snap fold.

BTW this is one time you can actually flat AJo pre but since we're here now just give it up. Don't know why this is even a question. 80bb deep you can wonder about say JJ or AQss and I fold these to most 1/3 players anyway, but there's a debate available. AJo is straight garbage vs. any realistic range.

I still want to know how you accidentally verbally raise???

In my game verbal bets are binding but if someone announces a raise the dealer confirms it and if the player has mumbled and ends up being miss-heard then the dealer will take a correction. This happens numerous times each session, usually with guys whose first language is not English.

So assuming same rules in this situation I'm supposed to believe this villain mumbles 12 when he meant to say 22, dealer confirms 12 AND villain doesn't correct him though he's sat there with something like QQ????

Difficult to believe.

If V doesn't correct dealer AND he actually has a monster then he's willfully allowing the pot to go 5-way while sat in the worst seat - which makes absolutely no sense.

This is why I asked OP when he checks his cards - because the ONLY thing that makes sense of this nonsense is if V picked up a tell one of the limpers or BB wanted to lrr/raise or one of the players live in the hand is just so aggro that they can be relied on to raise or lrr here nearly all the time.

If he's got no physical tell to go off and there's no maniac live in the hand then he's just making a pot-juicing raise in the hopes that specifically the BB wakes up with a hand to 3bet with. Does that seem like a reasonable play to anyone?

Exactly, especially against an internet player.

"I prefer to flat and play IP with AJo and would 3b! with hands closer to the bottom and top of my range, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the 3b! pre."

True heads-up but this is going multiway OOP because all the limpers are calling $12.

If WereBeer is right "AJo is straight garbage vs. any realistic range...." & we call, we are putting in 3 BBs with 3 players yet to act. We then go to the flop without any significant hand strength & we've capped our range by calling. We don't have the initiative, which diminishes significantly the value of position, so we are left with what? Having more skill than our V?
OP's 3! allows him to get out from under his hand for $30 & wait for the next time this situation comes up & have a real hand when V tries to take it down pre again, having remembered how H folded pre.

I think if you noticed villain went for a larger pre-flop raised but mistakenly said 12 you shouldn't be re-raising w/ AJo here. Why? Because we are beat pre flop by AQ+,AK+,JJ+,QQ+, KK+, and AA here. So, when you re-raise here of course he is going to 4-Bet you to get max value from all weaker hands. Villain wants to get all the chips while he can given that he's an experienced player and has been in this position (online player). +EV move by villain here.

You're 100% right here, I forgot about the limpers. Almost a mandatory 3b! for me here, then. Folding is fine if you pick up some vibes of strength from SB's shenanigans.

I think 3bet is fine (not to "test the waters" since that would indicate you are bluffing, and we dont bluff with AJ preflop. We're 3betting because we assume he has worse). And I think folding to the 4bet is fine because nobody 4bet bluffs small stakes live.

Having given this more thought:

If V is not particularly good he might be sat there with JJ+ contemplating a big isolation raise (which would be best IMO) but then change his mind at the last moment and make the fish play small raise with premiums OOP and MW.

We should also be assigning the greatest meaning to V's largest bets so even though tiny iso-raise doesn't make sense for premium hands the huge 4bet makes total sense for premiums and is more meaningful to our read because it's a much greater % of V's stack so it is more meaningful to V.

I think essentially it comes down to this: V is contemplating raising big or raising small (or even checking) and then ends up 4 betting half his stack. So we face two realistic possible ranges:

1) V has TT-
2) V has JJ+

AK- and any Broadway or connected cards always raises big because it never ever wants to go MW OOP and every loose and aggro online player knows that or they'd get wiped out very fast indeed.

We can weight these ranges according to the action, what we know about V, population tendencies and also basic poker logic.

Evidence supporting TT- range:

- Pot sweetner raise is bad choice for premiums OOP or any other hand apart from TT-.

- TT- has a real decision preflop; complete, small pot sweetener raise or large iso-raise and V obviously did have to think about his action.

- V 4bets smallish and likely wide IP 3bet from hero. The massive size of the 4bet combined with hero's potential wide 3bet range suggests V wants folds. V doesn't want foldss with premiums but does with TT- which are essentially flipping with all of hero's wide 3bet small range. That's because hero likely flats all his pairs TT- to set-mine in a MW pot for max implied odds so everything he 3bets small like this is likely to be big and unpaired: AK-AJ KQ. JJ+ probably go bigger than this 3bet so V can discount them to some extent.


Evidence supporting JJ+ range:

- Big 4bet is pot-committing and low stakes players prefer to only commit with value hands.

- Bad players abound at low stakes so pot sweetener raise OOP with premiums isn't impossible and same goes for over large 4 bet mistakenly maximising fold-equity.


I'd like to know more about V's raise sizings and any other reads but with the available info that V is LAG preflop I'm going to make the following assumptions:

V will always raise everything he plays here and will attempt to isolate most of the time unless he has range 1 or 2 above. In those cases I guess that he skews his sizing towards the pot sweetener with TT- more often than not while only skewing towards big iso with premiums half the time ( rather than 100%: because he's probably bad). Therefore:

70% of TT- gets the pot sweetener raise
50% of JJ+ gets pot sweetener raise

Then following the 3bet V will always 4bet JJ+ but not always go so large, mostly he'll go to just over 2X, say $75 to get max calls and set up a close to an SPR of 1 on the flop. Because he's likely bad we'll assume he spaz 4bets half his stack 50% of the time. However, it should be noted that 2.5X is a typical online 4bet size so I'm doing V a disservice in suggesting he goes to 4X so often with his premium pairs here.

Facing the 3bet with TT- I assume an aggressive player who is moderately bad will mostly flat to set-mine rather than go maniac 4betting (because his original plan was to juice the pot, not gii preflop). I'm guessing V flats 70% and only thinks to do the big 4bet 30% of the time.

So I roughly estimate V's range for this 4bet as:

1/4 JJ+ combos: 6 combos
1/5 TT- combos: 11 combos

Weighting JJ+ to QQ/JJ and TT- to TT/99 AJo has 39% equity vs this range.

Pot is 9+30+125 = 164.

We can either shove or call but if we call we have to shove all flops against a range that's 100% pairs and if we shove preflop we have to assume we have no fold equity since if V is 4betting like this with TT- he's only doing it on the assumption we have what we have and he's happy to stack off pre vs our range as he sees it.

If however we do flat then V has to reconsider his read of our range and start thinking we have a pair ourselves near 100% of the time and he might abort his gii plan with his smaller pairs but conversely he won't hesitate the shove an A high flop with KK- because he won't think we'll call with AX here because it's such a terrible play.

If we just gii preflop Vs his entire range with 39% equity we risk 250 to win 250+30 (losing 9 for rake):

Must win = 250/(250+280) = 47%

So we can't shove preflop anyway because we're adrift by 8% equity.

If we flat and V x/folds >8% of time but still gets it in on all A-high boards (because fold equity vs our bigger pairs) we make a profit.

If he does have TT- 11/17 times then he'll be facing overcards with TT- 90% of the time which is >8/17 times. He has to chicken out and x/f 2/17 times to make us profitable.

That is if V chickens out 1/4 of the time he has TT- and faces overcards on flop then we're profitable.

So my final opinion on this hand is: 3bet is fine but if probably go to $36 minimum to avoid V reading anything into my small sizing.

I would not shove over the 4bet because it's -EV to shove even if V is doing it with TT- a good portion of the time.

If I'd did continue I'd flat intending to call all shoves and shove Vs all checks. I think it could be just barely profitable in a vacuum but it's also going to give you a spewey/gambling image you can exploit in future because it's such a ******ed line to take. How much that image is worth depends on hiw many big stacks are controlled by observant players. If I took this weird line and list I'd feign being massively tilted and buy in as deep as possible knowing I can get a big win in the near future if I hit a big hand.

Nevertheless, folding to the 4bet is the safest and most sensible option and I'd be doing that 100% of the time with my roll and most of the time even with a big roll.