Late on this one but 3b pre, the SB flat is pretty odd from a range perspective.

i. Sounds like V1 isn't backraising all that often and your hand prefers being HU against this reg you have a bluffy dynamic with. When V1 does backraise it's probably with a pocket pair or something anyway, which you want to knock out of the pot with a 3b.

ii. You want to reduce the depth with a 3b so his positional advantage is less. You're less than 200 straddles effective so you aren't all that deep in the first place. IMO this isn't a spot you aren't used to so no reason to be fearful. You're playing a range of hands not just AK so having a hand that misses the flop sometimes is irrelevant to range vs range. Your hand and range has the overwhelming advantage.

iii. I don't see much merit in having a SB flatting range, the reg isoing a fish lends itself to a raise or fold strategy since he's just going to use position, check behind turns a lot, has initiative, etc. Having a spaz behind you postflop is not going to be good in a single raised pot either, you get blown off equity, and he's deep in position so it'll be hard to realize.

hate the fact you showed A9
could get behind your logic had you not done this

hate the non 3-bet
here's why
you showed the bluff A9
now flatting and 4-betting looks stronger so V shoving feels like AA KK only

doesn't matter to me if its $1-2 $2-5 $5-10 or $25-50 NL

I hate calling off with AK ; much prefer to be the aggressor.


unless you got some meta-game read here that made you play it that way ?

assuming you called off your stack here (after all you got what you wanted)
granted its only 1/2 your stack

just because you got out of line doesn't mean V did

Sorry appears I didn’t post results

didn't read results spoiler yet.

I'm in the 3b pre camp. Especially having shown a 4b blocker bluff recently. We can make it 280-300ish here and V2 has room to put in a 4b/fold if he so chooses, and presumable he saw your 4b bluff earlier and noted it if he is an aggro winning reg. That said we will definitely have a tough spot if he does 4b us, but we can't avoid all tough spots in poker.

And he shouldn't be folding the AJ-AQ in his range here either so it's not like you are turning AK into a bluff. I think the most likely result is it folds back to V2 who folds his airball iso, or he flats with 66-JJ, AJ-AK type hands and we generally take it down post with a cbet, or sometimes get 2 streets of value on A high boards.

If it folds to V2 with the 3500 and he 4bets it's up to you if you want to stick it in. Vs the description you gave of V2 as a winning aggro reg I probably would because I would expect him to have some 4b bluffing range here that folds, and the times we get called by his JJ+ AK range we have ~40% equity vs that range which is just fine with the dead money in the pot at this point.

If BB cold 4bets our $300 3b with his $5k stack then it's probably folding time. I don't think we will expect to see anything less than QQ+, maaaybe some AKs combos in that type of range. (we have ~35% equity vs QQ+, AKs, and only 30% vs QQ+, so not a stackoff with 5k eff) Yes he saw us do a light 4b HU earlier, but in this spot he would have 3 people to get through with his cold 4b so it will likely be rare to see him just pop it up with A5s as a blocker bluff.


So based on the above, you can profitably 3bet this hand. The real crux of this is whether it's better to flat.

Some pros to flatting include not blowing the UTG fish out of the pot, and some % of the time we induce BB to squeeze. However when BB does squeeze we don't actually gain much as we will be playing ~250bb effective OOP with AKo vs a murkier range than if we had 3bet ourselves.

So if we backraise or call it we are in a tougher spot handreading wise.

The only time I'd prefer a flat here is if saw a clear reliable telegraph tell that the BB was planning to squeeze, then we get to see how V2 reacts, and give ourselves the option to make a committing backraise and mostly win the dead money and sometimes get into a slight dog 5k flip (40% equity vs that JJ+ AK range).

If we don't have that tell and we flat I think we often end up in a 4way or 3way pot with the worst position, and worst relative position to the pfr. Sure we should still profit from this spot with a hand as strong as AKo but we can do better.

starting with point iii a lot of people these days are migrating to a 3b or fold strat from the sb for good reason. Especially in this configuration you are going to have a hard time realizing your equity and getting value vs being in position with the same # of villains.

I think a better overall strat is to 3bet this hand, and just fold those smaller pairs in the described table dynamic. You are getting squeezed off of them too often. Adding AKo to your flat range isn't going to help that much, and it costs you money vs playing it more profitably by 3betting it.


As to point ii, you have to start getting more comfortable playing spots where you miss. That's the bread and butter of NLHE. 3bet pots OOP are hard but there are ways to navigate them.

point i sounds like a nice reason to flat, but how often do you really see a squeeze from BB, or a backraise from the UTG limper. Ignoring what actually happened from BB, just estimate a % of the time action gets reopened from one of those 2 guys after you flat. You are costing yourself some money by flatting here so it needs to be often enough to make up for that.