I’d start with a flop check with Ac.

Fold to the flop raise. Your equity here is very low 6-way vs the raise.

Ott not a huge mistake to call off and not a big as a mistake lf the flop call. But i’d probably still fold, pretty sure it’s -EV in a vacuum

Villain shouldn't have KK here. He flatted multi-way in LP.

Without KK your equity drops quite a bit. Your hand is probably no better than even money (somebody can do the math).

If he shows a bluff wait for a better spot (and hope that he carries several rebuys).

The more multiway it goes and the more IO we give our opponents preflop, the less we are thrilled with having to commit preflop. We just gave 3 opponents 21+ IO preflop and now have to commit postflop; that's not good. Now admittedly some of this is opponent dependent and if everyone is a moron and is going to stack off with their lol pair or whatever when it's obvious what we have then that will help make up for the times we stack off against people who outflop us. If your opponents aren't that terrible, then good luck.

The deeper the stacks, the less important it is getting in money postflop with the "big hands", especially if the amount of money we eventually get in is trivial (in this case even $50 is a fairly trivial 5% of stacks), especially if that turns our hand face up on the table for non-moron opponents for the remaining 95% of our stacks postflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG


We're $900 deep. Our 3 opponents just got IO of 21+ even if we make it $50. They easily have the IO to call with setmining/etc. hands, especially since we just created an SPR 4 pot where it will be impossible for us to fold postflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

GG, we are $900 effective versus 1 opponent.

If people are calling $50 pre then you make it $50 with AA. It's as simple as that.

You're always assuming our opponents aren't morons, even in threads like this where we have a description of just one guy, which is "This opponent is extremely loose and is an older, European gentleman. He raised his straddle with 76o and led out on the flop with bottom pair with all diamonds. He also called a $150 river bet with a counterfeited two pair in another hand."

He sounds like a moron if ever there was one. I really don't think he's going to properly range us no matter what we do.

ONE guy is $900 deep and he's a loose moron. Who cares if he has some sets? Like I said yeah we lose sometimes but it's always in our interest to pump money into the pot pre-flop with AA. Betting less doesn't eliminate the problem of setmining BTW so this kind of seems null. And high SPR pots create dumb situations like this hand where we probably should fold but might be good but WTF really knows, because the stacks are such villain can blow us off our hand easily if he feels like it. Maybe we should just limp the AA UTG+1. Hmm...I'm suddenly recalling a thread where you actually advocated limping AA in UTG if I'm not mistaken.

Why would it be impossible to fold just because the SPR is 4? If somebody james a flop of QJT (many others) I'm folding.

Fair enough. If this guy can't do a reasonable job of ranging a $50 preflop raise in 1/3 NL to play for $900 stacks, then yes, he's part of the moron crowd that I mentioned above where we'll do ok thanks to him getting in lots of money postflop with lol hands.

FWIW, OP is unclear whether we are only $900 deep against this guy and what the other stacks are.



If one of our goals is to get the most money in preflop (or more accurately the biggest percentage of stack to help prevent IO against us), the best way to do this is by limp/reraising, not by raising.


Sure, on some boards you may be able to get away from you hand more easily that others. The point is overall it's going to be very difficult, especially if opponents just call their monsters on the flop. You'll be OOP, where stacks can go in trivially by the turn with 2 PSBs, or even put you to a commitment decision on the flop (and good luck making the correct decision because it's the only one that's going to matter this sesssion).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Wtf? Worst advice ever. Pretty much everything in this post is poker101 wrong. You have the nuts and you'd rather play a smaller pot or take down a smaller pot preflop??????

Right, though due to the comma I'm assuming the others are not as deep. They probably aren't since 900 is 300BB, but who knows.

Yeah that's one of our goals. Limp/reraising is problematic for a lot of reasons in low limit games. If half the time our limp just gets limped around that's terrible, and in a lot of games it may happen more than that. If we do get a chance to limp/reraise, unless we're doing this with a lot more than AA we better have some moronic opponents. Even the fish usually know the limp/reraise is usually AA. Which is why I sometimes limp/reraise hands like AXs.

Making the correct decision OTF is not necessarily as problematic as you may think. Compared to a scenario of raising $15, when we raise $50 and get the same number of callers (which was the assumption) we have an extra $140 in the pot. So our EV in the second scenario post-flop would have to be $140*(our equity share) worse, and our equity share should be around 60% so our EV would have to be $84 worse in the second scenario due to all the dead money, and it just isn't. So we may make an incorrect decision not optimizing our EV but still end up with a better scenario.

Though I'm not accepting the premise that it's somehow worse to have a bloated pot with AA than a small pot since most of the bloated pot belongs to us.

I have an aggressive image and double barrel a lot so if I can GII by the turn I do not remotely see this as problematic, OOP or not. Villains simply have more TP and hands that call the flop and fold the turn than hands that crush us. Even on boards like T98tt we're only crushed by 9 sets, up to 32 straights, and up to 27 2p (against which we have 8 outs). This is a bad flop but we still beat 12, maybe 18 OPs and 51 AT/KT/QT/JT with $200 already in the middle. And many more hands will call the flop and fold OTT. And most flops will have fewer 2p, perhaps zero, and fewer straights, against perhaps zero.

I don't accept people call only monsters OTF. They also call with strong (sometimes weak) draws (and TP, OP, but let's assume monsters and draws). And if opponents only call these hands OTF, this is also not necessarily bad because we pick up the $150 in pre-flop calls extremely often and they fold the turn extremely often so we pick up another say $100 * number of callers.

And this being 1/3 if we bet the flop and someone does have a monster they probably raise (usually a lol minraise) and let us know they hit their set.

All these considerations I think more than counterbalance the times someone hits a set IP and passively calls down. Again, why is it better if someone hits a set with even more IO? If we open to $15 we might bet flop, turn, and river, only to be raised OTR by a slowplayed set or w/e and have to fold.

None of this is to say I generally advocate raising to $50 with AA, but the idea that you're better off in a small pot than a big one with the nut hole cards is just crazy...I don't care what the SPR is. If we have the nuts, we make money by getting money into the pot.

People in this thread are overrating "having the nuts" preflop when 300bb deep.

GimoG

We are 300 bb deep, sure, but if we get 3 callers here on a 17 bb bet, the SPR is barely under 5 against one opponent out of the three. This is a dream. You're way overthinking it.

Big pocket pairs get misplayed when stacks get deep, but that's in pots with SPRs of like 14, because you find yourself getting 200 bb in pretty bad when you start calling huge bets and raises postflop.

You are missing the difference between these two scenarios and giving awful advice.

Also, it is not at all clear that the other two callers are this deep. In all likelihood, the other two have much below 300 bb effective, which makes this an even better idea. If guys sitting with 50-170 bb want to call 17 bb preflop raises...we're printing cash

It's not possible to overrate having the best hand regardless of stack depth, unless you're one of those people who is only comfortable deep when you've flopped the near-nuts. Which you might be.

This discussion has centered around a scenario of the hand going 4 way with an SPR of 4, so characterizing this as a typical 300BB deep situation particularly when we only know one guy is that deep is grossly misleading.

For example, suppose we raise to $17 and get three calls by guys with $300. The pot is then about $68 and the SPR is (300-17)/68 = 4.16, so basically the same post-flop situation, yet we've started with 100BB stacks.

As you well know the relative stack depths post flop are much more important than pre-flop when determining how to play a hand like AA. And I don't know how many times I have to say an SPR of 4 with an overpair (especially AA) is fantastic. We have a hand we can typically bet on all three streets and wouldn't you know it, it takes just two PSB or three 1/2 PSB to GII HU, and we're multiway so if we get more than one caller OTF we can just jam the turn.

I don't think GG is content until he's made it to the river with the absolute nuts.

While I don't normally pile on or get as critical to some of GG's strat, this one is pretty bad. Anytime we have a better chance of winning the pot than our opponents and can shovel money into the pot, we take it. This is not a difficult concept. Playing small ball preflop because we are afraid of playing a big pot with AA postflop is just plain bad.

Limp re-raising is not a bad plan at the right table, but a limped pot is a disaster and happens way too often at these stakes, especially after we start the limp train. Just stick to ABC. Raise to an amount that gets 1 or 2 calls and play good poker postflop.

Also, if you're going to argue that making a large PFR turns our hand face up...limp reraise does that even moreso

Yes, but then with the limp reraise you can get a lower SPR- wich is GG biggest obsession by far.

I'll let the OP tell us whether everyone is $900 deep or whether the other guys are much shorter. Yeah, if the other guys are much shorter, then I have zero problem with the large preflop raise idea because even though we've turned our hand face up on the table we can still comfortably commit postflop against the shorter stacks (although we're still in a dicey spot against the big stack).

As for Shai's example of a raise to $17 with $300 stacks and producing a SPR 4 pot against 3 opponents, again, we're going to have to agree to disagree. This is a terrible result *unless* all our opponents are really bad and will commit a bunch of chips with lol hands. Otherwise, the more multiway we go all we do is uncomfortably commit ourselves; we only got in ~5.5% of our stack preflop, offered 3 opponents 20+ IO to stack us, and yet setup an SPR of 4 where we are going to have a really hard time getting away from our hand. What about the case where we raise to $15 and get called in 4 spots (which is like *completely standard* in any 1/3 NL game I've ever played in); this will produce a 5way pot with an SPR of 3.8; are we supposed to be loving life with this result? Hey, why not raise to $12 and go 6ways to an SPR 4; again, we're loving life? This is all about the IO we're offering our opponents in pot that has a small SPR (which we'll have a difficult time getting away from); if we offered everyone poor IO, then we're fine with this; if we didn't (the last example we offered 5 opponents 30+), then I have no idea why we should be loving life. Again, this is a super common disagreement I have with most of the forum, so we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this. Whatever floats your boat, imo; a lot of this forum seems to be of the mind that they can accurately figure out where they are in a 6way pot in low SPR pots where the first bet is almost committing, and so if that's you, then you'll have no problem in these spots; I have difficulties in these spots, so I aim to avoid them.

Gil already answered why we don't care if we turn our hand face up with a limp/reraise: because we get in such a huge percentage of our stack we literally don't care if anyone calls us to ~speculative hand mine because they simply won't be getting the IO. And if everyone folds, whatever, with a raise and few calls we just took down a decent sized pot with 0 risk (and $0 rake in my game), and the less moron filled our game is the more awesome a result this is.

GcluelessNLnoobG

How much lower are you going to get it than this if you're in a game where you can raise to extortionate amounts anyway?

Thats a fair point-and i dont disagree with you at all. I was just simply pointing out that GG is totally obsessed with the concept SPR, wich shines through in all his strat posts.

Its like a wheelchair he cant let go of, and his whole game is based around SPR it seems like.

NL is all about IO. SPR is simply a tool that helps put IO in perspective, but even as can be shown from the examples above (i.e. SPR 4 in a HU pot ain't remotely close to SPR 4 in a 5way pot with regards to IO) "it depends".

Ignoring everything that SPR is concerned about is more-or-less ignoring IO. Good luck doing well in NL ignoring IO.

GcluelessIO/SPRnoobG

Nice exercise in putting up strawman arguments. This is you on your familiar homecourt. As if this is black or white with zero nuances. Our only options available is to either 1) be totally obsessed with SPR, or 2) to totally ignore SPR and implied odds.

Math is great for most situations
and this site is built on it.

making reads or going with your gut as I like to refer to it means sometimes I go against the math and I'm ok with that.

keep posting it opens up debates and points out differing views and allows for more in depth analysis!

My arguments are clearly laid out above, Gil.

Gfightingeveryargumentwitha"strawman"retortistires ome,imoG

You are the only one who manages to build another strawman on top of the first strawman. I mean, you dont see it yourself because this is a fully integrated part of your debate technique.

Ive never said anything close to that every argument you put up is a strawman argument: i simply pointed out in my last post that your statement about GL ignoring implied odds in NL, was a gigantic strawman. You are putting up fictive statements that nobody have comed up with, and then you are argueing against those fictive arguments: wich is the definition of a strawman.

Other opponents were much shorter. Other two opponents were hovering around $250-300.

GG what kind of games do you play where playing Aces 4-ways with an SPR of 4 is really such a nightmare scenario? Does anyone else think this is not a profitable scenario? Anyone? Or if someone has odds to setmine it's the end of the world? Over half the time nobody else even has a pocket pair. And when they do they miss 8.5/9.5 times. OH MY GOD WHAT A NIGHTMARE! And you've still never answered why we would rather have an SPR of like 12, where villains REALLY have implied odds, in that case to call with not just PPs but SCs, one-gappers and AXs, compared to a situation where at best they're getting 4 times the current pot size and only have IO with PPs (ignoring the critical difference that in the former scenario we've already put in $150 in calls with a massive equity favorite, and in the latter scenario we've only put in $45 in calls).

You often talk about how tough your games are, yet apparently these same guys continuously fall for your limp/reraising nonsense and call you off post-flop. I don't get it.