Hi all,

1/3. Hero is TAG but on this particular day is wearing a banana shirt, so his image may be a bit looser than what it actually is. Playing $300. Last time hero 3! it was to $50 with KK and won at showdown. V should have seen that hand.

V is TAG regular at MGMNH. Young BG. Wears hello lol kitty stuff and pajama pants. Lol! Playing $280.

Anyway OTTH. V raises UTG $12, one call, hero has A4hh in MP. There is a 10h exposed preflop. The caller in between has $90. Hero?

Fold AINEC. You're not deep enough to play post versus a strong range and a potentially protected pot due to the shortie being in there.

ok so that sounds like one vote no for a 3!....

Yeah snap fold...... calling or 3b is so bad

You'd need some hardcore reads for UTG and the players (how many of them btw?) behind you to make 3 balling A4 suited a remotely good play. Not to mention the shortie may just "go with it" with a range that should be stronger than our hand.

3! here is a big leak IMO.

We’re 9-handed.

It’s a good 3-bet squeeze candidate if a shorty hadn’t called and a heart wasn’t dead. Just fold.

Ok. So hero did what you all recommended against and 3! to $50. Folds to V who clicks it back to $100. Shorty folds. Hero?

wow, this hand...

I think everyone here knows that folding is correct and much better than raising. I suppose we can say that raising is better than calling preflop (although that might not even be true if there are a bunch of loose people behind you).

Anyway, plopped into this spot as we are, I guess jamming preflop is defensible if you think villain has a fold button after the 4-bet (probably unlikely and would be better with $400 total behind rather than $280). I don't really even want to flat here pre.

Just muck it, imo.

Snap fold again.
But I know Justin who is known as Hello Kitty (he always wears that clothing)
He is INSANELY aggressive and one of the best 1/3 players in the room.
My opinion is biased because if the history I know from him as a player.
So to be honest he might be far wider than the average 1/3 player, but I still fold to him out of position.

But even against a random reg I snap fold to his $100 bet.

We’re IP this hand but I doubt that changes your decision. If he’s a reg then why not start building a 3! bluffing range against him so when we have the goods we get $$?

I’m confused by snap fold when we’re getting such a good price and block AK and AA. We have 30% if he has a big pair. Call or jam no?

Fold the first time. Next hand.

We have 30% against a big pair but only with the whole board. we don’t have 30% just based on the flop.

A big pair might find a fold on a A high flop and doubt they let you see turn and river for free.

So you kind of have 18%ish on the flop...
Not great to three bet to $50 and then get called IMO.

With the shorty in the pot, we need to consider the fact we will be committed against him if he decides to get AI pre. That means we should select bluff candidates that make sense, given that factor! If UTG folds, and shorty gets AI with a range of {JJ-66, AQs-AJs, KQs, AQo-AJo, KQo}, A4s has 38.45% equity. AJo, a not too unreasonable bluff hand in this spot, has 44.7% against that range, KQo has 41.2%. Not only do these hands have more equity, they also have better removal effects against the stronger hands in the opponents' ranges.

Min 4-bet looks mega strong with how little stack we have behind. Flatting again looks like a real bad option, we won't be able to realize our equity or bluff effectively at all with an SPR of 1. 5-bet bluff shoving is purely a math problem, but folding looks best unless this guy is a real sicko.

Grunch: Fold and /thread, imo, though you obv didn't do that, or this doesn't get posted. Give more credit to TAG UTG opening ranges, imo.

Post grunch: You got your hand caught in the cookie jar. Fold again, AINEC. Calling is so lool with a hand you are going to have to fold OTF almost always, and shoving is only slightly less lool. You prob have about 30% against his range. Your shove of $230 effective will represent over 40% of the $572 pot when you're called. You need a lot of folds to make up that difference, and V is UTG and min-4bet. I doubt you get many folds.

Also, PAHWM threads don't go to next action in an hour. They go in about a day.

Villain sounds awesome!

^^some reads dissonance going on ITT

if he is indeed a TAG, insanely aggressive or not, he shouldn't be opening wide from UTG very often. if he is insanely aggressive and one of the best 1/3 players at the NH, we have additional reasons not to get involved in this pot with A4s.

3betting is likely the worst option. ask yourself why you want to attack a good player's UTG opening range with a sub-par hand?

as played, still a muck. at this point we are likely crushed and villain is owning our soul.

Obviously this is a bluff to balance my 3! range so I don't always have the nuts when I 3!. I understand the criticism that it was unwise to bluff a UTG open, but that should only make my hand look even stronger. This is one of the best hands to bluff with. I wanted him to fold. Oh well.

Bad villain to choose to do this against. Even though he's wider than most he's also not as much of a folder than most. Plus it's an utg open so even spazzes are tighter.

Came in to bash this hh but changed my tune after reading all the geniuses with the snap fold every spot responses and will applaud the effort of trying something different. Still a bad spot including positions and villain and Th exposed and short dolt in-between (although to utg that should make your hand seem stronger)

This hand still not as bad as 97o hand.

Balance is tremendously overrated especially when it comes to the perception of others.

Probably picked one of the worst card rooms to do this at. MGM regs are pretty nitty so you're likely against a range that crushes you. Your only hope is to keep repping AA I guess and shove because you're going to whiff most flops.

If you're playing strictly to make money though I'd stay away from the best player in the room in general especially when they open EP

Fold. OP makes me highly suspicious that hero is in fact not a tag.

Hero should probably also fold to the minraise so as to not chase bad money. Even if hero has 30% equity, he can't count on seeing the river and realizing it. The exposed t card is also quite bad as in addition to reducing the chance of making a flush (not high anyway but much lower now) it also means a good villain should not be taking aggro lines with suited connectors, kq etc type hands because it will be harder to make straights

If someone asked me what the best 3! bluffing combos are pre-flop in a vacuum, I would say suited wheel aces. However, in this case I would not use them. Short stacks can and often will GII light after they have already committed a chunk of their stack. 3-bet a less polarized range using hands like AQo for "bluffs" so you have high equity when you GII with the short-stack.

You also have a heart dead, so there's no reason to use hearts as bluffing combos when you can use spades, diamonds or clubs.

I don't think the original 3 bet is bad as long as you are not doing it very often. I don't particularly like it either. In practice I'm more worried about the short stack call then the opener. If short stack shoves you will have to call but are going to be behind.

You should study villain for a while first with conservative play until you have some idea what their opening range is and how they will react to a 3 bet. Lots of low stakes villains call far too often and you don't really need a 3 bet bluffing range.

There are 2 problems. First, unless you have seen otherwise you can assume a min raise or near min raise is super strong. Villain's range is likely something like AA/KK/AKs and you are not doing well against that sort of range. Second, it's a hard situation to make money but you can easily lose money. If you flat call villain is more likely to know where things stand on the flop then you are. If you shove villain is going to mostly call with hands that have you in trouble and fold the hands you are doing OK against.

I don't mind squeezing A4s, but here there are no less than 4 reasons not to:

1) IR is UTG
2) The caller in between is shortstacked
3) You're not even 100bb effective with IR
4) IR is apparently a decent, aggressive player that doesn't like to fold.

I also know this Villain and have history with him--albeit from a long time ago.
But I think your read on him is off, and also you should be folding both times.

The way you exploit this guy, if I recall correctly, is to go to war with a wide value range, not to try bluffing preflop.