2/5, been at table about an hour and have had a series of good hands. Have a solid aggressive image, but only those who know me (I don't think villain does) will know that I play quite tight. 1400eff.

Villain is a late 20's early 30's black guy who I don't really know. I think I've played with him before but I can't recall how good he is. I think he's at least competent though. Covers.

Villain raises to 25 UTG+1. 4 callers. Hero in BB with AQ and raises to 150 (too small? I think it's okay. Ideally I want everyone to fold, but 150 is nearing a PSB -- I think it's about right).

Villain (raiser) calls, others fold. NOTE: Villain was a bit annoyed with the 3-bet, but called pretty quickly in a "well **** it I'm not folding" manner.

Flop (375): 688r

Hero c-bets 185. (sizing? why?)

Villain goes into the tank for a minute. He starts cutting out and re-cutting out calling chips. Then he puts these red chips back on top of his stack, is still for a moment, and decisively shoves out a stack of greens (500) in a strong gesture. He then goes stock still for about 25 seconds. Then he starts shuffling 4 chips, which seems like a self-conscious decision to me, but can't really read much into it.

So, folding is the safe play here. But his line makes no sense, and his body language suggests that he wants me to fold/is uncomfortable. I think I can exclude KK/AA from his range, while I obviously have both hands in my range. The top of his range is probably JJ or QQ. MAYBE a set with 66 is possible. AK is possible.

I fold. I don't have the heart to 3-bet all-in here, and don't know villain well enough to know if it's really wise. But, you know, I wanted to. This raise looks like bull**** to me.

First, I think that 3! OOP in this spot is pretty spewy since it leaves you in tough spots post flop. Also, his physical tell could easily because he thinks his JJ is good, but knows you won't call with worse, so don't talk yourself into a bad call.

Good fold.

Feels like a shove. Even if he has a pocket pair is he calling off another $800? Still have 25% vs underpairs. Should have a good bit of FE when he doesn't have trips. Is he even raising trips on the flop? Is he calling your shove with AK?

What kind of a range are you assigning to villain's UTG+1 opening range? Is he AK/pocket pair heavy? Is he opening/calling suited connectors? How does AQdd stack up? What do you think his range is when you three bet and he calls? How does his range rate on this board?

The mistake is pre. Against a tight UTG range AQdd is a fairly big dog. I can get behind a 3-bet for light value if there is evidence villain is opening light from up front and/or will only continue when youre smoked or if the villain had opened from a later position. In other words if he is folding AK and pocket pairs to our 3-bet, go ahead and 3-bet. But there's no evidence of either so in a bubble, 3-betting here is less than ideal.

Against 5 players' ranges, AQdd does fine and without tighter reads, I'm calling and playing post.

Edit: as played, I assume very few players are capable of raise/folding. So I'm gonna just fold here and move on.

So how much was the raise exactly? Did he raise by 500 or did he raise to 500?

I'm not sure why some of you are discounting AA or KK here. I've smooth called a large PSB 3! with AA in a similar situation before such as this one when I've seen other players coming in light on PFRs but fold to re-aggression. This is also a great flop in case he did have AA or KK, too. You can't exclude it from his range.

If you re-raise you'd better hope he has TT, JJ or AK because he's not folding otherwise.

Not a fan of the preflop 3! given you are nearly 300 BB's effective and OOP. I don't expect V1 to fold much of his PFR range except for the weakest RIO hands like AJo and KQo, if he's even opening them that light when deep. As previously mentioned, he can also set a pretty great trap with AA/KK if he thinks you are going to follow up with a sizable c-bet.

Lately I have been looking to avoid the high variance spots with questionable +EV when sufficiently deep. Yah picking up that $100 pre looks enticing on paper but you're generally just picking up nickels in front of the steamroller until the music stops.

His flop raise is worse than your sizing, but we're not concerned about him. Readless, you'd like to hold a hand stronger than AQo to 6x a 5x open. Same goes for the cbet, where I'd usually ck my range unless I had reason to do otherwise.

AQo is like AKo in this hand, since we whiff the flop. Does that mean that we are not 3b AK in this situation? Would this be because of stack depth? Or would it be because of sizing?

EDIT: wrong thread *facepalm*

Readless is the problem in this hand.

Kind of feel like this is spew. How often do Villains raise/fold on the flop in a 3bet pot? I don't think he would 3bet without a pair so once he raises he has decided to go with it. We can't completely disregard AK but I'm not so sure that this type of V would fold it once he raises!

Its possible hero got owned by a reverse tell. Why would a V show "frustration" if his hand was only marginal. For what it's worth, I've found black guys love giving off false tells.

Normally a Villain would 4bet with KK+ but hero's image and his line looks like such an obvious squeeze that I think V is licking his chops being able to get to play a 3bet pot in position with a nutted type hand.

I'm actually a little surprised that the consensus seems to be that the 3-bet pre is a mistake. Flatting certainly isn't great either as I'll be playing a 5way pot OOP and I'm basically just hoping to hit the flop, x/call, then maybe get one more street on turn or river. Or do some of you like leading a favorable Qhigh or A high flop (e.g. Q57dd or A57dd?)

With the deeper stacks people will call a 3-bet with more speculative hands (basically good, though folds are better) but I'll get into RIO spots (bad). I don't know, I'm still thinking it over. Flatting is easier and safer I guess. But usually when I don't know what to do I just fold

flat pre. your hand plays well post flop and makes the nuts sometimes, when you'd like customers. Being OOP and with this many opponents, play small ball, see a cheap flop, play post flop poker.

As played, AA and KK are definitely in his range, and he's not folding either hand. Shoving flop is spew. Good fold.

The delayed reaction by V, and the determined chip shuffling: I've seen this from all kinds of players, all races, and it usually isn't a bluff, it's a big hand.

Pre: a bit bigger
Flop: smaller as played and with your whole range. On paired flops like this it's difficult for villain to hit and he's not going to have almost any hands that can float with decent equity

After you get raised folding is fine imo if you are actually playing tight like you say you are and not squeezing with like K5s and ****. You aren't really getting exploited if he is making a play because this hand is probably the absolute bottom of your range.

Uhh what? If we are squeezing with AQo here we have 32 bluff combos vs. 18 value combos of AA-QQ. If we add AJo to the mix (and why not cuz "lol blockers" and "too weak too call") we have 48 bluff combos vs. 18 value combos aka extremely unbalanced.

3! AQo virtually readless here is simply button clicking because "folding feels weak" and "playing AQo OOP multiway is hard."

It's entirely possible that folding > calling > raising in this spot.

There's a pretty big difference between AQo and AJo here pre-flop, I think. I would expect UTG to fold JJ more often than QQ, so a Q blocker is better. Also, AQo will have better equity against a continuing range.

Also, I think it might be okay to squeeze with AQo but call with AQs, since the latter plays better multiway.

Anyway. this flop is really good for our range, and we should probably be able to c-bet close to 100% for half pot depending on how wide we squeeze pre-flop.

48 bluff combos on the flop vs. 18 value combos is not unbalanced. It's actually pretty close to being theoretically optimal here, I think. If we were betting a perfectly polarized range where our value bets have 100% equity and our bluffs have 0% equity over three streets for 1/2 pot on each street, we would be able to have about 25 bluff combos with 18 value combos on the flop. However, the fact that our bluff combos have closer to 25% equity and our value combos have about 90% equity means we can bluff more often. Since our opponent probably shouldn't employ a raising strategy on any street that doesn't put boats in his range we will get to realize the equity of all of our bluffs.

Like johnny said, you have more bluff combos [even if you add JJ] than you do value hands.
Makes it kinda' hard for him to fold JJ.
I like your 3! sizing pre with a value hand.
You're getting 5.25 on your money [after a $7 rake] if you call pre.
You have 12.7% hot/cold equity vs. the ranges I gave the players, making you a 6.87:1 dog.
If I have a winning image, I'd consider calling with AQo & play B.I.N.G.O., otherwise, I only call with AQs.

The fact that you don't know V well enough to put him on anything but a generic range that he'd raise pre with, I think fold>call>>raise with AQo OOP.

However, I hate playing OOP & I know for a fact that the bulk of my long-term profit comes on the Button, HJ, CO & Steal seats.

OTF: It's not in my DNA to bet.

NOTE: You 'd get better responses [unbiased] if you didn't give results of the hand in your OP.

This isn't what being balanced means. It's more complicated than I make it out to be above, but it is possible and usually correct to have more bluffs than value hands on the flop if we want our opponent to be indifferent to calling/folding with his bluffcatchers (in this case JJ-).

If our opponent has JJ and we bet 1/2 pot on the flop with a range of {QQ+, AQ+}, that is 18 value combos and 32 bluff combos, but I think JJ is a -EV call despite getting 3:1 and being a slight equity favorite against our range if we are going to bet each street with a balanced range.

If we are 3! AQo here we are also 3! KQo for the same reason which adds another 16 bluff combos. When we c-bet this flop it is not as a value bet and we don't want to get called so AQo is fairly identical to KQo. So now we have 48 bluff combos with AK, AQ, KQ and 64 combos with AK, AQ, KQ and AJ.

Nobody is folding JJ-99 to a single bet on this flop.

How many bluffs for every value combo do you think we should have on the flop?

You can make an argument that KQo plays essentially the same against UTG's continuing range as AQo if you think UTG is usually folding AQ pre (AQ is still better if he just calls pre with KK+ sometimes), but AJo is much worse, isn't it? Where do we stop? KJo? ATo? A9o?

I said we could c-bet close to 100% of our range "depending on how wide we squeeze pre-flop." Of course if you add a bunch of junk we will need to be checking the flop sometimes.

You are giving 16 combos to each of AJ, AQ, KQ. If KQo is a profitable squeeze, then obviously KQs is, but are you 3-betting a hand that works well as a call?

I agree that villain isn't folding 99-JJ to one bet on this flop, but he also can have hands like AQ/AK in his range which may fold the flop, and we can double-barrel to get folds from 99-JJ sometimes. I wouldn't triple barrel because most V's commitment point is probably on the turn with these stacks and if he calls turn he's calling the river much more often than he should be.

I think villain in the OP has AA/KK which decided to just call pre. I don't see him raising you on this board with JJ for protection/value or AK as a bluff.

If you're going to squeeze pre at all with a nonpremium hand (maybe not, readless), and if you think AQ is close between calling and folding (which I don't really understand but w.e) than surely this is the spot to do it with two excellent blockers no?

Actually, you want more bluff combos on each prior street, because a bluff combo can turn into a "value combo" on a future street.

Rule of thumb (assuming we bet psb otr and are perfectly polarized)
2:1 value:bluffs on the river
1:1 value:bluffs ott
1:2 value:bluffs otf

basically you want to have more combos of bluffs on the flop then value, less on the turn, and even less on the river. By the river, you should always have 1 bluff for every 2 value bets, assuming you bet pot.

AQo is a fairly easy fold pf unless you have a strong read on the villain that he raises light in EP. Also, his raise on the flop is less than 1/2 pot. It isn't big, it is actually on the small side. Unless you think he would call a 3bet with AT and bluff raise you on this flop, it is even an easier fold now.

Any info on the other players that called to 25 but folded?
If they are the type of players that villain knew was going to fold to a big raise then just calling IP with AA/KK isn't a bad idea.
After you c bet on this flop I can see him raising here with JJ+ just for the fact that most people are going to cbet this flop with 100% of their range after 3bet pre.
As for the preflop if I had some solid reads on the villain then I can get behind a 3 bet with a bit wider range than AQo with all the dead money out there and I had position but you don't have any solid reads and you are OOP
I don't mind just cold calling and play poker yeah you are OOP but your hand is pretty strong that I would continue a lot of the time here.
Imo given reads calling then fold then 3 betting is probably the line I will take

Sent from my HTC 2PST1 using 2+2 Forums