I just think it's a plus EV play.
Maybe Hero had little FE in this instance because of his image at the time, but it's still profitable if V is folding QQ even a fraction of the time. I've 4-bet shoved AK for 200bb, had them fold QQ face up, and then rack up and leave the game in frustration before.
Against a field of random tourists, I could pass up on the play.
I play vs mostly regs and I can tell you this play is hugely profitable here, because I get snap called by TT when I shove and they are crushed, when they know I'm capable of showing up with AK, and they're donks and don't recognize the value of AK. I love it when they say " but you didn't even have a pair" when you snap thier QQ/ JJ. I know for a fact they remember it for a long time when this happens to them.


Also, I recommend actually reading art of war, because I'm not sure you get it. Defensive poker doesn't mean playing weak, or passive; that IS losing poker. It just means protecting yourself when you feel V showing super abundant streghth. Like, you flopped the nut str8, and the board pairs the river, and you get away when you KNOW you're beat. Or, you flop a set, and the draw comes in, and you don't pay off. good players do this.It doesn't mean it's a weak play, it's a strong play.
If Hero didn't feel like V had AA/ KK this time, and we all know he's a dog to have it because of card removal, and he's therefore not showing super abundant strength, it's a great time to go on the attack.

It would be sick to play AA/ KK the exact same way, because you're repping AK, once they know you're capable of having it, and it really puts QQ in a yukky spot where they can't get away.

Sure, you may run into AA/KK, but you use your read, and I think hero had a decent read this time in order to make the play.
I open folded AK recently to a tight players raise, because I saw no value in the hand that time. Someone else paid him off, he had AA.
Other fools, I am 4- bet shoving into them w AK.

Someone calculate my EV with the hand ranges I use b/c I use a program for it and can't input .5 hand combination's

shoving >> 5betting nh imo

i guess i should understand why the consensus falls to shoving here outright which for me i hope doesnt change for a long time i guess. (and i say this honestly and not as a stab)

I see so many internet player types jump in the game, get slightly deep, and decide over and over again that AK is the hand they can use to muscle the table. Over and over they get in vs QQ KK AA etc, and i hope it doesnt change anytime soon since these guys are usually pretty damn good otherwise.

IMO hero played with villain for 1 days play and speaks of we havent seen any slowplayed pairs etc. lol, we only get a big pair once in 221 hands. Im sure we have a solid read on that by 4 am for sure. No other reads were given on villain either, which means to me he is a standard (non reg) just player at the table type of guy. If everyone wants to try and shove the "average" guy off of JJ or QQ once the person has taken the line to flat and backraise it, especially now when it is like a penis measuring contest between blinds, then i guess that is the 2+2 accepted consensus.

Myself, i still stand firm that forget about real results here, i think this is -EV at least -225 and to say that villain can never have KK or AA here is just flat out incorrect knowing villain for 8 hours or whatever. Thats just my answer for OP and i stick to it. I see this play so much its pitiful, and actually its this very reason that even live regulars (who really suck actually) will make fun of young internet types who continually get their AK in vs the live regs AA etc.

(dont get me wrong, if we have even the slightest info. that this villain will raise/fold medium pairs etc, then all bets are off i love it. But we dont. So now we are just winging 200bb on out there and hoping like hell he will folda pair that we really honestly dont know what size it is, but we are fairly sure that it is at least decent sized.)

If you play 8 hours with someone and are readless then you need to pay more attention imo. Not hard to stereotype a player after an hour of play let alone 8.

UTG limped so by flatting in the SB you're saying that villain wants to play a family pot OOP with AA?

well, i just disagree thats all about the readlessness. Villain may not have had a big pair in 8 hours. And you will have a solid read on that by then? Sorry, i just disagree but thats fine. Did OP say that he had seen other big pair hands and how they were played. Nope.

UTG limped. Villain raises button. Im going to have a family pot here if i flat AA? And i m not saying that villain has it often, but there is no well in hell we can say villain will never have maybe one or two combos of 6 of his AA or KK here. I mean, if ur gonna say emphatically he cant have it, well we can just drop it as difference of opinions. I say he can show up "occasionally" with it, but he WILL show up with JJ or QQ a huge portion of the rest of the time and we have zero idea of what he will do with these hands. And at live poker, we call know that calling is far greater the flaw of live players than folding is.

I dont get myself into tight spots for 200bb+ with villains i know i can crush at will. There is no need whatsoever. I dont have to worry about balance and image with about 95% of the players i play with since they will usually call it all off when i have no doubt that my play is +EV. The funny thing to me here is this. Nobody here can make a case that this play is a VERY profitable play for hero im betting. Since most people here are in the shoving camp, i would challenge them to show me on paper how this is a truly profitable play for hero, other than just the ballzy feeling of shoving AK and playing "power poker" and all the hullaballoo that goes along with that. When all the dust settles, this just is not a good play to shove. Not without more information.

I did the math to show it as profitable, but put my combination's and fold equity up for debate. Of course AA and KK are possible, but I find them extremely unlikely. I gave them a total of 1 combo combined. Maybe TT is never 4betting here, idk, but for damn sure they're never calling, agreed? JJ calling half of the time I think is fair, and I think once in a while you can get QQ to fold. Obv KK and AA are never folding.

I'm still pretty on the fence with what the right move is. Obviously after I got in 200BBs flipping I wasn't thrilled and would rather have folded.

Im really not trying to be combative here honestly, going back and forth. We actually are getting a lot closer than you may think. Very close in fact.
You see, i say he wont 4 bet the TT, or the JJ hardly. I think when he 4 bets X, he isnt planning on folding X. Now that is the standard thought i am placing on a live 5/10 player who i really have no reads for this specific type play on, nor other spewy or tight info. to speak of about him, and he is not a reg at the table.

So i agree AA and KK are few in combos, i happen to think more like 2 or 3 out of 12, but thats just me, and i dont think he will fold the QQ half the time if he happened to 4 bet it to 550.

So if in fact there is a tiny % of FE i would think certainly it would be terribly offset by the few instances of us being crushed by KK or AA.

Once again i dont feel the need to get involved with deep pots when i feel that at best i may eek a fraction of a % of EV out of the play. Live villains play so terribly (even many of the regs) that there just is no need for it other than if you want to just display macho lagginess or whatever. I do that enough by doing things like chk shoving turns with huge equity vs a known weak top pair and when caught looks like i am a spew monkey. But those spots i know to be high EV spots, on paper as well as in practice.

Now, since i believe that villain wont fold after 4 betting hardly ever (without knowing different about him) , how long did villain ponder about making the final call? Im just curious.



And one more question for a honest opinion of yours. If you could make this exact play 100 times over, after the fact, do you think that you would be money ahead or behind? (and what i mean about after the fact is not knowing anymore really about the villain when making this move)

5 handed I would 4 bet 99+ against hero...this is why I thought hero made the right play. He thought he was flipping and can fold out the bottom of villains range to make the play +EV.

I agree with Aintnolimit even though he kind of sounds like a jackass when he posts. No offense sir I'm sure you are not a jackass in person. Why would we toss in 200bbs on a flip when we are badasses that can outplay a live table in our sleep. Fold. Move on.

I've stayed out of it because I don't play 5/10. In fact, I debated moving this thread up, but it is reasonably clear this is a classic internet QQ back raise.

If the villain calls a shove, we are -300 EV against QQ.

If the villain folds to the shove, it is +625 EV.

If "F" = fold, then 625*F = 300 - 300F
F = 300/925 = 32%.

The villain has to fold over 32% of the time to be profitable.

From his perspective, he's BE if your range is QQ+, AK to shove for him to call. Since there's a 10% you've got air (there's always a 10% chance of air), he should call. My thought is that a villain sophisticated enough to do a back raise is sophisticated enough to know to call a shove in this situation. In fact, he's priced himself in to do so. Therefore, you aren't getting a fold 32% of the time. The information he has is that you aren't a nit.

A thinking player you are i am assuming already. Let me assume some more. When you 4 bet 99 and TT+ vs hero, i assume you already have a plan to fold TT 99 JJ to a shove, and snap with QQ+. That to me, is fairly high level thinking (more like online players) that i rarely see at 5/10, and i especially wont even consider thinking that a non reg in a routine 5/10 game is capable of this planning. I feel fairly sure (even though i wasnt there) that this villain when he 4 bet didnt have thought one about what to do to a shove. But since he 4 bet for value only, the only move for him was to continue on with the hand. That is what i assume. And im waiting for OP to tell me how fast villain snapped his shove or did villain ponder a bit and consider folding. Im betting villain stopped for just a brief period and said CALL.


(note: i personally do not like this wide a 4 bet (99+) because at this stacksize, if i were hero and knew you were capable of doing that this wide, then i would be flatting your 4 bet fairly wide and you will be in a tough tough spot regardless the flop unless you flop a set. That is if i knew that was your possible range). 25% of my stack and position plus knowing you 4 bet this wide, i have all the room i need to have a ton of fun and make life completely miserable for my villain. I never hardly get this chance though (except online) since i never run into villains at 5/10 live with this type of planning and forethought and wide 4 bets deep. (which might fold)

This is knowing that he has QQ, which is the absolute top of his range though.

haha, dont worry, ive been told that i come across like a prick too many times not to know it must be true.. I honest to god dont mean to, but I must have some character flaw that comes out in my typing that i apparently dont see, even as i re-read my own posts. Now i gotta run and kick my dawg and bitch slap my wife before heading to Bellagio.

and actually you summed up my thoughts in all that typing above of mine, in just a couple of lines. Nice job.

Out of absolute pure curiosity, for all the 5/10 players here, how many pots can you think of in say the last 30 days have you seen where a villain who was not in an image war, tilted, etc, just play a routine standard straitforward pot and raise to 500 and then fold when ~2000 deep?

I was just pondering this as i read Venice's post, and i cant think of a one. Im just curious. Do you see this happen at least every now and then?

if vil has seen hero 3-bet light, surely his range is wider than QQ+ here?

i agree that making this play in the hopes of folding out QQ is terrible, but i think people are discounting 99-JJ too hard considering the action

this looks like standard fishy play to me: vil flats button raise with a medium pp, gets 3-bet by an aggressive player who he has seen 3-bet with 53s, it folds around to villain. he 4-bets. why do these villains 4-bet here? because they "think they have the best hand." so i think 99-JJ are definitely in vil's range.

still not sure if the shove is profitable, though. i think he folds QQ pretty much never here and looks you up with 99-JJ more than you'd like. absent some great read on villain i doubt you're getting the FE you need, and obviously it's marginal at best no matter what.

I guess I have seen some big raise folds post flop much more often. OP I need you to get these stack sizes right for villain (maybe you did but I didn't look at other page). I agree in that we aren't getting a fold here very often. I think we can fold out just enough to make this play. The fact that villain is OOP makes me think he can 4 bet wider to try and win the pot pre. My short handed game may need work tho...I play these spots really really aggressive. I have seen many times this 4 bet out of nowhere when it's short handed and there aren't many players in the pot. Villains would rather take a big or marginal hand and try and win a big pot than win $30 pre ect.

Not really. The story is starts with him flatting a BTN raise.

Unless unless quite good, he's not happy about flatting 88-TT oop to a raise. He'll flat an smaller pair to mine, but he's raising a hand that figures to be ahead pf, but is going to be an under pair on the flop a lot of the time. AA and KK wants to get value and will raise. With a 160 raise, the villain is getting 20:1 IO and will think a better play is to call and set mine with small pairs. Only QQ and maybe JJ will think that they have too much to lose to see a flop.

Can we all agree that my options are fold or shove and mark up a std 5bet as a bad play now?

I see him waking up with AA and KK here probably about as much as he 4bet/folds QQ - close to never.

I think it's important to remind everyone that this is 5 handed.

That being said, this thread isn't about AK vs QQ, it's about the FE against the top and bottom of his range

At least for me anyhow, shoving or folding sums it up. And at the end of the day, since there are posters who believe there is a "range" for villain here where he may fold a portion of it, and others who do not,then yea its left to the individual hero as to whether he believes a fold portion of villains range exists at all. For me it doesnt. But thats neither here nor there.

Now, if we were 2600 effective at the time of our decision, then i might like the shove since i do believe villain can find a fold with even QQ and hell maybe even KK if the risk is deep enough. I have seen that action too.

This is why you don't post results. Everyone is trying to decide if we have FE against QQ which we don't. QQ is also the very top of his range. Given your previous hand history he's showing up with bluffs here, and he's turning decent hands into bluffs, some of which you might even dominate. AQ comes to mind. He's got AA or KK here almost never so you are almost never drawing slim, either 50% or dominating. He will fold sometimes, and sometimes you run good and win a flip when he does have the equity to call. Who knows maybe he'll even spew off a stack with a dominated hand.

I have a question (nice discussion btw). If hero is 100BB's deep and all things remain equal pro-rata do we still have the same considerations or do we snap-shove?

FOR MYSELF, i am shoving this less the shallower i am, and more the deeper i am. We just are not deep enough for me here yet in this case.

that is completely backwards

BLUE, everybody here knows you and i are complete opposites. It goes without saying so you dont have to post it.