Sorry I missed that part about sizing tell.

In all fairness, The main description doesn't talk about the sizing tell but it does mention he has only 3-bet once. I would go with how a V is playing TONIGHT, versus what you have observed in the past.

But if your read is that rock solid then it looks like your V has capped his range to a hand we crush or are flipping with.

If that's the case, then I would 4bet rip it in. A whale will hero with Ax a lot to a jam so we get max value this way. He can also find a fold with 88-TT.

If you're 4betting then you are committing yourself anyway so jam for max FE against middle pairs and max value against Ax.

If he isn't aggro post flop, I still like flatting pre. If he just checks back all his whiffs then we can win at showdown.

Plus, No matter how good you think your read is its still not a total lock that he isn't nutted.

If Your plan seems to be to try and milk his KQ/AQ/AJ/AT that may call a 4bet and not a jam. It seems reasonable if these are the only hands that he has here. But you said you wanted FE pre so I'm actually not sure what you are trying to accomplish with the 4-bet. The bloated pot will give you less FE against 88-JJ than a jam would.

Its still pretty high variance to 4bet/commit when the guy could be nutted. Your own description says he doesn't 3-bet a lot. This narrows his range but whatev, if you really have your read down lock and he's a big gambler whale then jamming against his weak premium range should be the most +EV.

Rock solid enough that i feel pretty good about attacking him with a 4 bet in this spot with AK.

Now, you can of course make an argument for flatting for various reasons if you want to do that (and i will listen to your arguments)- but you cant argue to flat because you are convinced villains range is QQ+/AK as pr usual from the typical LLSNL villain.

I am trying to attack what i believe is a weak capped 3 bet range when he uses this small sizing, a range that is consisting of 66-JJ+ different broadways like KQ suited, AQ off or AJ suited. I am trying to push my preflop edge with AK, instead of flatting OOP where i will whiff the flop 2 out of 3 times, and having to do a whole lot of check-folding to him when i miss flops.

Flatting pre ensures we lose the minimum when we miss flop and still have potential to make the maximum when we hit.

But if he is capped to a weaker range here then I have to 4-bet this.

The only dilemma is how much? And is jamming better?

This spot is gross as played. Jamming helps avoid these spots but that doesn't mean its more +EV. I still would probably just jam...

I try to avoid spots where I am forced to bluff a whale. Have gone down in flames too many times...

Not having the goods against a whale is the nut low.

Jamming pre doesent seem very appealing to me. It would be a huge overbet. Especially i dont like it since i would never just jam like that with KK/AA, so infact its makes it easier for villain to put me on a hand if i do that.

I wanted to make it a sizing that i would do with QQ+ too, hence what i said about putting max pressure on his very likely capped 3 bet range. Against people i have played alot with/plays alot with on regular basis,i believe thinking about balance gets more and more important. If i just overbet pile pre with AK here, and 4 bet a smaller sizing when i am nutted, i am developing a big sizingtell myself very fast.

Preflop is completely fine. All the people saying stuff like "jam pre" or "4bet to $200 pre" are just being incredibly results-oriented. Yes, we happened to get called and we happened to get a flop that isn't great for our specific hand, but that doesn't mean we did anything wrong.

I guarantee they wouldn't be saying "jam pre" if we ran into KK/AA and I guarantee they wouldn't be saying "4bet to $200 pre" if we faced a 5bet jam of $550 preflop, or if villain tank folded AQ face up instead to our $200 4bet.

i like this reply

i think jamming pre is good. we only need to increase our stack size by 10% to make it a profit

otherwise i think we need to make it a little bigger pf to have a natural jam on good flops like this one

as played i think i like a check/jam, or just a check is fine, we have showdown value. but i also think we have FE vs small pairs so jam could be better but its an awkward stack size and i don't mind check/raising and having him check behind is not a bad result

Why do you think jamming pre is good? Like, kind of a waste of AK to just overbet pile huge pre for $550 over a $50 3 bet? We are gonna get a huge amount of folds regardless, so in theory we can do that with alot of weaker hands instead, if all we are aiming to do is to pick up dead money and risk the maximum if were up against it?

+1 more for bigger pre. 200

What’s so bad about winning $50 with AKo?

While AK is obviously one of your most profitable hands, if you looked at a large distribution of hands in which you won large 200-300bb+ pots, AKo is probably pretty low in frequency compared to hands on which you hit sets, combo draws from SCs and other non-TPTK hands. AKo generally only wins huge pots when you share trips with another A or when you both have 2p by the turn.

I’m disappointed when I win the blinds with AKo but if I can take down dead money from a 3b I’m generally perfectly happy with it. If I’m in LP and I have a read that the BTN or a blind are often putting in a 3b with a weaker A and also overvalue their hands, then of course I’d be happy to flat and let them vauetown themselves post-flop. Otherwise, I’m OK with winning $50 here pre with AKo if that’s what happens.

you realize that the $50 you will make when he folds is 10bb. I seriously doubt there is a single player in the world who averages +10bb with this hand lifetime

in fact it would be fun to break down the math of this but we have to start with villains 3bet frequency, which by description seems high

but even with a perfectly standard 3bet range, it is still breakeven to shove as long as villain has folding hands we flip vs like, say, 77

Sure, i am just interested in hearing different arguments and different angles to the hand/spot. I am not neccesary saying that shoving pre is bad, just playing devils advocate a little bit.

just fyi, there are other hands we can shove with here too to balance our range, i've been in similar spots where i shoved QTs and villain folded QQ face up because he didn't want to flip for stacks

so it's kinda hard to balance this shove but in a way it doesn't matter as long as villain folds enough times, also if he calls with AQs or worse aces then obv that is a profit for us

only problem i see with shoving pre is that we don't have hands to balance it out with but you can sometimes shove 87s here or even hands like 99 and if you have the right image even AA

I guess i prefer it the other way around regarding balance. Like, when i am 4 betting here in this spot when my UTG open gets 3 bet,my 4 bet range is crowded with QQ/KK/AA combos. With these hands i would not shove obviously as a default, cause i want value.

Then its important that i dont fall into the pattern of 4 bet smaller with QQ+, and shoving "to end the hand" when i have AK everytime. Thats why i choose the sizing i did here: its what i would have done if i had QQ+. If i go smaller with QQ+ and overbetshoving with my AK combos that is another example of developing a sizingtell that i dont like, it makes it easier for my opponents in my relatively small playergroup to read me, and easier to put me more accurate on hands in tough spots.

Alright, time for results.

Hero decides to finish what he started preflop (made my bed, now i have to lie in it or whatever they say), and jams the flop. Villain looks visually frustrated, after a while in the tank he flashes the table 1010 and announces that he folds. Other winning reg sitting next to hero asks hero to show his aces,hero obliges and tables the bluff. Villain gets red like a tomato in his face and proceeds to go on serious tilt for some added value. He goes on to dump like 400 BB to the table in the nexte couple hours.

i will never show them that i can do this with AK, people remembers this.

I wonder what his range is to 3b and call a 4b. If there's junk like T9s and stuff then I like a shove a lot, but if it is tight like TT+, AK, AQ then it becomes a lot more interesting. I also wonder how much we can discount AA, KK from his range when he flats. Nice hand and nice result, thanks for sharing, I've been thinking a lot about this spot.

Its no big deal if my opponents remember this. I have a pretty tight rep in this game overall (for many reasons, one is that most players plays ridic wide pre), and i have played with most of these players for hundreds of hours during the last 4-5 years.

When this kind of spot occurs against a whale/callingstation, i dont mind at all showing. Its good for the game, its good for my image in terms of keeps creating doubt in my opponents mind regarding what i am capable of/not capable of- and this whale is a known gambler with tilt issues wich was an extra motivation to show.

As a general rule though i can agree that not showing cards is smart choice in vacuum.

My read/profile on this villain is that he takes pretty much his whole 3 bet range for this sizing to the flop facing my 4 bet when he is sunrunning like he have done this game so far and feels invincible.

Maybe he can find some folds with the weaker broadways like AJ/KQ some portion of the time, i dunno. But he _loves_ to see flops, loves to fish for the right flops and try to hit his hand regardless of the prize if he is in the right mood. Like he is the guy who can setmine for 40 percent of effective stacks,and fold if he dont hit+ faces alot of heat.

I think his range is really PP heavy from my experience of playing with him. He often chooses this small 3 bet size with 66-JJ to take the lead in the hand for cheap, build a bigger pot if he hit his set and to have the betting lead heading to the flop. Regarding KK/AA i was really confident in my betsizingread that he didnt have those hands in this particular spot, but that would for sure been a concern if i didnt have that read on his capped 3 bet range. But then i again, i might not go for the 4 bet either if i didnt have the strong read that he was on a weaker range- i am not really sure.

Well you found the only V in the world that folds a pair in a 4b pot when AK whiffs, so congrats on that

I got into this same spot the other night but we were slightly deeper. I think it’s really close between downbet flop to around $90 and then evaluate and likely jam turn for ~$300 into the $500 flop or check/fold flop. I went with downbet flop jam turn but definitely close...also don’t hate jamming flop at all.

I think the downbet jam turn is a better representation of a big hand and we can capture a little value while bluffing as well. Downside obviously is he might feel committed after calling flop.

What do you think his 3 bet/flat range looks like? I was thinking something like 99-JJ, AK, half combos AQ, and then maybe 10% of suited broadway combos?

Edit: NVM he’s 3 betting wider than I thought. If he has hands like 66 in there I’m definitely going with downbet flop jam turn or jam flop.

Yeah, depending on the villains perception of what smells of most strength the downbet small flop sizing and shoving a healthy amount of turns is a good option too.

I dont know about the villain in your case, but my profiling on villain in this particular hand made me think shoving (slight overbet due to stacksizes) was the best move in order for him to see the writing on the wall. If the bet(s) is too small, he is probably just gonna station in position and be sucked into the pot. Wich is amazing obviously when i have value, but not when i need max fold equity.

If i go smaller i think his stickyness will keep him around to the turn, and feel comitted to a bigger degree because he have put even more money into the pot.

I have to say though against a less sticky reg, for example an OMC or a tighter reg even- i prefer your the small flop bet/shove turn line,wich i also believe is higher EV against those kind of opponents with a bigger fold button.

heh heh, there is no accounting for the mistakes people make, it's not an easy game

VNH

I don't think i'm ever going to fold TT here as villain so it's kinda hard to say exactly what to do vs specific opponents

i mean we can say what to do as far as the math is concerned but we all know the math isn't always the best way to go, the math just tries to break even over time

looks like your smallish raise made it look like a bigger hand than it was, i generally can't get away with this because I have smallish 4 bets with QTs and and biggish 4 bets with stronger hands

anyway, good hand, your image probably got you this value from AKo, but he seems to be set mining with terrible odds here and we can't really tell you what mistakes people will make. we should pretty much understand that any 2p2er worth his salt isn't set mining TT on this effective stack and will probably beat you into the pot on this flop

this hand is pretty interesting for a lot of reasons...first of all, villain didn't play sticky here-, he folded which is pretty much a spectacular result for you, you actually got him to change his style, when people change their style they lose, the stove in poker is always hot, i imagine you were lying in wait for him and playing tight, which is obviously correct vs a loose player behind you

the flop in correlation to the sizing pre is interesting. i don't think we have a betting range on this flop vs a standard opponent on this stack size. i believe we should check our entire range here with no reads with a plan to check/jam the flop, or bet both turn and river

also pre flop is interesting because our range to 4bet should be something like QTs, KJo, A8s and pairs as low as 66 (depending on v's 3 bet frequency which should be high here)

That’s not good at all that he dumped 400 ‘to the table’ because you showed it. Nor is it good if you played AA this way and he folded, but to might just bet exploitably smaller otf I would imagine

You essentially tried punting your stack here becasue you weren’t sure exactly what line to take. You really can’t expect to have or use FE here and it’s not like you see this and start thinking you have to bluff more often... shocking result that he folded. I prob just open to 15 and 4b smaller or even call. Just not going to have a bluffing range against this guy as initially described - of course AK can still be played pairless for value, but probably not once 4bets are called and there’s a Q on board.

Wrong. I had actually planned preflop to shove most flops if villain called the 4 bet, regardless if i hit or miss. Like, if you decide to 4 bet AK or play AK fast, you just cant give up everytime you whiff the flop wich happens 2 out of 3 times. Sure there are some of the worst ones that i would not shove on, but a dry one like Q-2-5 certainly is worth playing aggressively when villain is PP heavy below the Q. And why cant i expect to have any fold equity in this hand? Like yeah, villain is sticky and like to peel flops, but its not like he is felting for close to 200 beebers with any pair all the time.

Dont get confused into thinking that just because i posted the hand for discussion in this forum, that i was just clicking buttons here and didnt have a plan mapped out preflop of different scenarios.

Except the vast majority of V's will say "ace king huh? why so much? ok I call" when there is no A or K on the flop. You got lucky and found one of the few that fold here.