I love when a noob comes in and makes declarations of how to play optimally then disappears in about 2 weeks. There are like 4-5 poasters ITT that crush live pokering (I think including ANL).

Slow down and take a breath noob.

This is a "Solid TAG" who is going to cbet certain textures with air, + he folds to 3b a lot, including all hands we crush. What station are you talking about?

ive been here since 05 u scrub.

A much more complex situation for a different day. Let's stick to the basic stuff for now.

Why do you feel the need to troll this thread? We are having a good discussion here, and your negative commentary seems way out of line.

I would think that was pretty obvious given the join date and this comment

Daniel,

Great thread, IMO. Next time, though, use the poll feature at the bottom of the new thread page... It would have been cool to see the numbers somewhat officially before the back-n-forth gets too frothy.

As it is, I did a very quick (and probably imprecise) count:
Flat -- 13
3B -- 12
Balance -- 11 (this is a catchall for all the folks who posted something other then "always" or "like almost always" one or the other)

A truly amazing result!

(I'd appreciate if someone else would take a count and see that I didn't make some huge mistake in my counting. As you can see, I had to use both hands and one foot to make the final tally for each category.)

If we are Villain in this hand, we probably should eliminate 1/2 to 2/3 of the available AK combos from Hero's range when 3b against us. At least, for when we consider that Hero is "competent".

If I may go out on a limb here, we can learn something unexpected from this thread:

We are likely significantly overestimating the number of AK combos our villains have when he 3b or 4b against us -- probably by a disastrously large amount.

I can't think of a time I would size my bets like this, especially with a fish in the blinds, but if I did, I would just never bluff. Just like when I bet a smallish amount on the river for value, expecting to get crying calls from third pair or whatever, I don't balance that size with bluffs either.


Be careful not to jump to conclusions. This hand is a pretty specific example, with a mediocre TAG opening and folding wayyyy too much to 3bets AND also a fish in the blinds. The only thing we can really conclude is that the better regs in the game really consider a lot of factors before making a play and if we want to range them properly we need to also consider every aspect of the hand.

Hopefully none of us would end up in this specific situation because hopefully we are continuing with a range that is at least slightly less exploitable.

Yes Daniel. That is the point of 3betting AK in the first place.

If your opponent doesn't flat any hands, but opens a wide range, you can start 3betting more often with AK and 3betting smaller and smaller amounts. those smaller amounts make it insanely profitable to 3bet SC's and bad aces that block. So he has to actually fight you to not make the 3bets too small. He actually wants you to 3bet bigger than 2x to make it easier to have a folding range and strengthen his calling range.

The point being, he HAS to flat some of his opening range. When he refuses to, you can start having suited connectors and bad aces in your range to 3bet, therefore, your AKo becomes MUCH stronger.

You basically can sculpt his calling range by your sizing, to where he can't win without having a flatting range. As soon as he develops one, your AKo becomes the monster it's supposed to be.

No need for the condescending tone, especially when the question didn't even get answered.

The question is, what is your specific plan as far as 3betting AK small?

Are you 3betting small with bluffs as well with hands that you know are behind against his opening range equity wise and have 0 fold equity preflop just for the sake of balancing AK and other premium hands?

Or is your plan to be completely exploitable and only min 3bet AK and never min 3bet as a bluff with worse?

Or perhaps you are min 3betting AK and 3betting big with bluffs in an attempt to gain more fold equity?

Keep in mind we're playing against a competent, aware opponent who we play with on a near daily basis.

Can we call him a mediocre TAG instead since we can 3bet the **** out of him and print money?

Read the op... If his narrow continuing range after hero's 3b is due to hero's image then we cannot call him mediocre.

Just because the TAG chooses to not defend the bottom of his range OOP against the other guy at the table who is just as good or better than him doesn't make him mediocre.

It's past my bedtime and I don't feel like counting combos, but he isn't just folding the "bottom of his range," he is folding like the bottom 90% of his range. Maybe hero should 3bet this guy more often, just not with this hand, in this spot.

I think someone did the math earlier and it came out that he was folding somewhere around 70% of his range, which makes 3betting him with ATC slightly profitable.

But maybe the TAG chooses to cut his 4bb loss and fold AQ, TT, ect. now rather than to play bluff catcher with it the whole way for a 100bb-200bb pot in which he'll be in a pure guessing game. I don't think that necessarily makes him mediocre.

Fair enough but keep in mind this is still an exploitable leak in his game and we should take advantage of it.

This is SO very true. OP never said anything about his 4 bet bluffing which i assume is nonexistent - thus - his folding too much "should" cripple him. These type dynamics at 2-5 and below are so few and far between that it screams for good players to take advantage if they only would.

We definitely should and will take advantage of it in future spots. But do we 3bet AK here in this particular spot, knowing we are ahead of V's opening range but, even with AK, behind against his continuing range?

No, don't three bet. 3bet Q3s later instead. In this hand, flat and take advantage of both utg and the fish.

I don't really agree with this. If we want to balance our range there are better hands to do it with than AKo which is doing very well against his opening range (and there are a number of hands in that range we can win large pots from) and is losing to his 3bet calling range (which we basically never win a big pot against). I would much rather balance using a hand like 89s (which is going to be a +EV 3bet since he folds such a huge percentage of his range to 3bets).

Another reason I would rather balance with weaker hands is the villain is a lot more likely to remember it and adjust to us. If he is just a "decent" TAG I don't think he is adjusting much to us having AK if we get to showdown. I think he probably just shrugs and moves on. If we 3bet 89s and show it down he will remember it and widen his perception of our 3betting range.

The last reason I don't like a 3bet for balance here is we almost never actually show this hand down. Think about it, if he can only have JJ+, AK when he continues, realistically we are probably only getting to showdown when we chop with AK (which probably only really happens when there's an A/K on the board which also won't happen that often).

Which is all just a long way of saying, if we are going to turn something into a bluff for "balance" reasons I would rather not do it with such a strong hand.

However, I'm not really sure we should want him to adjust to 3bet calling range much. As it stands, his opening range is pretty wide and his 3bet calling range is super narrow. I would be perfectly happy if he never adjusted and we could just continually 3bet him light.

Either hero isn't as good as he thinks he is or the "bottom" of villain's range is too large.

You can't let him open that wide and then fold so often to a 3bet when you're in position. He probably doesn't want to be playing a lot of those hands OOP, its true, but then you should be 3betting him relentlessly. Someone is playing mediocre (at least preflop) if he is opening that wide and folding that often to a 3bet.

A hand I played recently popped into my head while reading this thread - might be interesting...

V was similar to OP's - opened kind of wide, but I doubt he continues light after a 3 bet. V opened in a $1 $2 over one limper to $18 - which said to me "big pair" as that was the biggest open of the session from him so far.

I'm figuring I'm out of this one, and look down on my BTN at AK, and think, jeeze, can I really fold AK AND the BTN? My thought process was certainly not as deep as all the points being made in this thread, I just thought AK + BTN, raise.

Raise to $55 (yes would fold to a 4 bet), V gets a disgusted look on his face, stares me down a bit in disbelief, and calls.

Low raggy flop, V bets $20, and based on demeanor and betsize I decided I do have the AA he fears and raise to $60, he snap folds QQ face up.

This type of thing may be an outlier, but I thought it might be interesting for the thread.

Sorry, but... lol, no.

Just because we want to exploit his 2b/f tendency doesn't mean we should do it with complete trash.

3b him wider with a hand that can flop well when he flats.

if your read is right, then yes. According to your pf ranges, he's folding about 60-75% of the time. He's leaking money out into the table and you should clean it up whenever you have AK and get him heads up for dead money.


The GTO opening range for UTG is around 12%. So if he raises the range you stated above, he's opening about 20-25%, so more than half the time you clean up dead money. Some of the other half you flip vs.

Re-raise this guy 100% and win dollars

If he is 3bet/folding as often as he is there is absolutely nothing we can't profitably 3bet OTB. In fact, it may well be better with the complete trash hands since we may be able to more profitably flat hands that flop well postflop.