If he 3bets AK he can also 3bet TT, JJ, AQs, or even AJs or even 99.

If we had any other hand (except aces or kings obv) I would fold.

And where did you get "Tight passive player"? I'm only going on the reads from the OP. Just because he limps pre doesn't mean he's tight and when he takes stabs at 853 with 9T, he's definitely not tight.

antialias, you have to include the dead money in the pot when calling the 3b, not strictly the equity of the hands in a vacuum. It's still pretty mediocre either way, though.

OP said:

I mean, c'mon guys, we've all been on these types of tables a thousand times. If I were OP, I would have left it after 30 minutes, and if it was the only game in the room, I would have just went home and figured I'd live to fight another day. These are the most awful tables to play on.

So what's a reasonable 3bet% for us to want to continue with QQ against? Let's say it's 8%. You open up your calculator, and you type .92, then you multiple it by .92, then you press = 23 more times. That's the chance of someone with 8% 3bet 3betting 0 times over 25 hands. The answer is 13.5%.

Now that may seem like a low number, but there are 8 other players on the table, and you play many hours of poker. The chance of you running into a 8% 3bettor 3betting no hands in an hour is almost a certainty after very few hours.

Finally, if you reduce the 3b threshold (let's say you continue this hand against 5% 3bet), or if you get fewer than 25 hands an hour, then the chance is much higher.

5% at 23 hands is 34% chance. Pretty high.

Good point...didn't think of that.

Still...that's only 4$ of a 300-350$ stack...which adds roughly 1% equity, right? (which would leave us with a villain range of JJ+, AK still a 53:47 dog)

I read the rest of the thread, and, well, of course we fold the flop. Like, it's okay to play a hand correctly and call preflop, and still have to fold the flop when you get one of the worst flops for your hand. That doesn't make your initial call bad. You're not supposed to win every hand you play.

... you're not going all in on every flop. If you continue on boards that are favorable for you, then your equity becomes more than your hot/cold equity preflop.

You would have to factor in realizability, but generally at low SPR, position matters less than equity. What matters is equity distribution, and QQ distributes a lot better than hands like AK (it has good visibility, and has a rough distribution, so it doesn't underrealise)

OP is describing the table. We're playing against one player in this hand, not the whole table.

Zero 3bets in one hour is meaningless.

I'm not folding QQ for $45 in 1/3 unless it was against a nit, a true OMC, or a total recreational sunday school teacher type of player.

Extending on this. There may not even have been many 3-bet opportunities. Oftentimes the pot is not raised before it gets to you. It’s possible that he only even had something like 10 chances to 3-bet in that hour.

I've been thinking a bit about this. I'll throw out a thought process. Maybe someone can pick this apart:
1) Flop comes with an A or K and villain bets -> OK, we fold. There's only JJ (maybe) in villain's range that we beat. If we don't fold we're pretty much pot comitted and all-in on the turn or river.
2) Flop comes Qxx with no A or K and we bet or trap -> if AK is in villains range I see us only realizing any big win in under 50% of cases (only against 12 combos of AA and KK...but not against 16 combos of AK)
3) Boards with all low cards and villain bets -> We're still in the preflop position of not knowing whether we were ahead or behind. If we decided preflop to call then nothing has changed -> we call again and it remains a matter of villain's range vs. QQ

So we are only realizing our full equity in case 2 with the villain holding specifically AA or KK (or maybe JJ if he decides to get sticky...but then he would have to put us on AK or TT or worse and that is unlikely given how this has played/will have to play to get all the money in )...and in the very unlikely case of a (A/K)Qx flop when villain holds AK or specifically the AA to the K-high flop which means: we are effectively set-mining.
And as noted before, I don't think we are getting the SPR to do so preflop.

Not donking top set would be a good move to add to your repertoire.

In this particular spot (with the super narrow range of AK, AA and KK I'm putting villain on) I would donk. Hero only bet/called pre. He could have a lot of stuff besides QQ that would do this and could bet this flop...AQ, KQ, QJ, KK to the villains AA... That's a lot of combos that villain beats with an overpair vs. just 6 that crush him.

Against AK: I'm not gonna get any more chips anyways unless a lucky A or K shows up - and then I only have 2 (or just 1) street to get it all in which would mean really big, big bets. Folding TPTK is surely in the repertoire of some people against such play so I might not realize much equity. I'd much rather lead AA or KK slowly into it until he can't really get away anymore on the river because he feels comitted.

..and don't forget: I don't know he has AK, so do I really want to get it all in when an A or K shows up and he could just have made a bigger set?

If he's the type of player that folds against a single bet with a lone Q on the flop when he holds AA or KK then I'll call any 3-bet by him and will start betting any high card on the flop and not even bother looking at my cards pre.

And along comes the wild card ....
1) How often has OP been opening? Didn't see it in here, may have missed it. How possible (and how wide) would V 'finally' push back, if ever.
2) Op gives us little/no information on V tendencies when he opens or when a Flop (and Turn) check through to him IP.

3) Pretty much flatting here PF on this passive of a table. If you do get coolered how are you going to get your chips back? This V may just rack up and leave after a double up.
4) Why can't we min-click back the Flop? (Told you it was coming) This almost surely gets us a free River .. which gives us 2 cards to catch if we are behind. Yes, we are folding to a shove most likely, but at least we may get some holdings to fold out in what we are deeming a 'deer in headlights' moment.
4A) Why can't we min-click Donk a blank Turn? Would an Ace really min-raise the Flop? Yes, in fear of our V hitting his set. But an Ace also wouldn't let V check through the Turn to get to the River either in most cases.

Yes, it's off the reservation, but it's poker. I don't have a good enough read on the V to not consider these options in an attempt to WIN the hand. Yes, no 3-bets would indicate some tightness. Yes, passive behavior post-Flop would indicate some tightness. Tell me something about V when he has position or thinks he's ahead!!

I'm probably calling a min-bet, hoping to see a free River. I'm already struggling with how I'm going to get chips back out of this guy, so I might as well invest at a pretty good price and see how he handles the next card. GL

PS .. And if you really want to go extreme .. we Donk the Flop.

Petrucci ftw. End thread/

Why is this extreme? I don't understand this reservation people have against donking (applied in judicious doses).
Donking a really strong hand can have a lot of neat side effects. People start giving you a lot more credit for your c-bets in the future...which in turn means you can start opening up stuff like 67s from EP for a while and have two chances to win: C-bet any A,K or Q on the flop because people believe you more, or hit your super disguised hand and really stack someone.

Also the very fact that currently at first no one expects a donk because "donk is bad and only fish do it" tells me that this is a preconception that is eminently exploitable against average players.

Lol

To make it plain: If I was up against a regular player who 3 bets with a wider range than KK+ and AK and who has some 3bet bluffs in his range...or the preflop action went bet/call instead of bet/3bet/call then I would not donk bet top set.

But against the described player with the described preflop action - absolutely.

It's not .. those that read my posts know that I'm an avid Donk bet advocate, especially on the Turn into a c-bet on a 'bad' Board for that V. But for the reasons you have indicated the Donk is still considered extreme for the same (non) reason that folding to 'too many' 3-bets is .. it can be exploited!!

In this case here I think from the outside looking in either player could have an Ace so a Donk shouldn't be too much of a surprise ... other than it's not 'classic' poker play. The issue comes in that we may face a raise and we wont get another card to catch a set with .. unless we are already committed to GII.

The issue is that we know we don't have an Ace when we do this, so out of a 'supposed' 10-14 cards our V has (4-A/K/J, 2-Q) one could be an Ace.

What I like about the Donk is we set our own price for the Turn and our opponent may show just how strong he is if he chooses to raise. It also may get us a free River card if we check the Turn after V flats Flop. Sure, we may get folds out of JJ/TT, but we also may get folds out of KK/QQ as well. GL

Donking small, like 1/5 or 1/4 pot with your nutted hands is super super strong against a good player. I know when someone donks me at that size, and I have a good hand behind them, I'm always raising without hesitation. I've been trapped a few times this way because a small donk flop bet in front of me is almost always weakness, so I've been caught a few times. But, in the long run I'm ahead by treating it as the weakness it usually is. If more players started doing small flop donks with huge hands I'd have to adjust.

Fully agree. If a tight-ish opponent comes over the top again in a situation like this (not the particular hand/table of the OP, but some other combo of 3-bet pre and donk-raise post) then we might also stand a reasonable chance of getting away from a hand at our price.

Yeah. That's one of the tricks that have worked pretty consistently for me.

Antialias, one thing you’re not factoring in is that AK has a lot more combos than AA KK.

Even if you just call and donk shove every flop with no A or K, you’d still make more money than going all in pre vs a range of JJ+ AK, providing villain never folds pre, and JJ calls as overpair always.

And that’s assuming taking a very suboptimal strategy.

If you want, bust out notepad and a stove software, count combos, and do the math. Shouldn’t take half an hour; if you really want to learn, this is how to do it.


Also with regard to donking, yeah we should do it sometimes, but if you do it too often in situations with no equity advantage, you end up either being unbalanced or your check range becomes very attackable.

points from Venice and Petrucci about exploitability are good. i don't remember the last time i had to put much thought into constructing 3bet ranges for a villain. (that said, this likely changes as you move up in stakes.) interestingly, players who LAG it up at 1/3-level games don't usually do it by opening up their 3betting ranges. usually it's just they open a lot, call to see flops a lot, and bet aggressively post flop.

anyway, usually against a random player this is a flat just based on what average 3bet ranges contain.

seems fairly trivial. i think the bigger issue here is the leak that is revealed in the way you talk about these spots. if you're "tired" of getting 3bet with QQ, you may struggle to last long term in poker. much shyttier things will happen to you over and over again for likely a much longer time at some point. this feeling where every time you have a hand everyone folds and then when there's action you're card dead for like 300 hands straight, that has to feel so standard to you that you don't even think twice about it.

16 vs. 12. Yes, I factored that in.

Well, I don't really agree that JJ is in that range, but let's run with it:

Note that I don't advocating going all-in pre but folding pre in this case - so that will be my baseline. Also note that if we plan on going all in post on a non-A/K flop then this is, IMO, worse than going all-in pre because he might call it off with AKs pre, but not post..., but I will try to show that call-shoving on a flop without an A or K is already worse than folding

Assumption:
- Stacks 300 effective before the hand started
- We call the 3-bet pre.
- Villain plays AK and JJ+ (16 combos AK, 6 combos AA, 6 combos KK, 1 combo QQ, 6 combos JJ...I'll omit the QQ in the calcs because that hand is +0 EV against ours. It has a tiny effect because of the antes. So the end result should be a few cents higher.)
- A flop without an A or K happens and we Donk-shove. Villain will call it off JJ+ but not with AK (omitting the fact that villain could flop the nut straight or the nut flush with AKs..which would skew the end result a tiny bit against us...also omitting that he calls with a flush- or straight-draw because he's not getting the right price to do so).

Probability we make a set or quads on the flop: 11.75% (actually it's a tiny bit higher because there are more boards that have 1 or 2 queens on them that don't have an A or K as compared to such boards without any queens. In the former case there are 2 (1) slot(s) that can have an A or K in the latter there are 3....so this is a point of contention. But as we shall see the difference is so large that I think this will not change a -EV play into a +EV one)

Villain Range distribution (omitting QQ):
AK 16/34 = 47.1%
JJ 6/34 = 17.6%
KK/AA 12/34 = 35.3%
...entire calloff range (JJ+): 17.6% + 35.3% = 52.9%

So we have 2 cases
i) We hit a set (or quads): 11.75%...in this case we are ahead of his entire range
ii) We remain unimproved: 88.25%...in this case we lose to AA and KK; AK folds and we win on the flop (+49$); against JJ we win his entire stack (except in a further 11.75% cases in which the villain improves to a set of jacks on the flop)

Baseline win/loss from just folding pre to the 3-bet:
-15$

Win/loss for villains range after calling and shoving a non-A/K board:
11.75% * (52.9% * 304$ + 47.1% * 49$) + 88.25% * (47.1% * 49$ - 11.75% * 17.6% * 300$ + 88.25 * 17.6% * 304$ - 42.9% * 300$)
=
21.6$ - 57$ = -35,4$

Please someone check my math, but if the above is correct then the fold pre at -15$ is +EV compared to the call/shove strategy on a non-A/K board at -35.4$

Note that redraws on turn or river are not factored in, as we have as many redraws to beat a villain with an overpair to our QQ when we're behind as he does when we hit a set. So that effect should cancel out somewhat (the JJ case is a bit more tricky because we or villain could have a reredraw to quads....but the probabilities for that are really low)

Well you never want to donk-shove because that's just ******ed.

Mathemetically that strategy is dominated by check-raising boards with no overcards, as you get to make more from whiffed c-bets.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

I'm tired of getting 3bet when holding QQ and NOT knowing what to do. Because most of the time, I'm behind vs these NITS and feel too sick to raise/fold QQ. Whereas at 2/5 and higher, this is OBV never ever a fold to a single 3bet.

You 100% nailed it. Which makes it a clear fold preflop. Even if the flop comes all low cards, we have basically NO IDEA where we stand and calling a bet on flop/folding to further aggression seems like burning money on fire consistently with shallow stacks. I'm pretty sure it's unprofitable. And if by chance, a nit wants to get frisky and double barrel shove AKhigh on turn making us fold QQ, it's just more disaster.

I guess I'm just lucky the flop came A high so I could end all my suffering. LOL. If he had JJ, good for him.

My biggest mistake is to continue playing on these ****ty a** tables when there's no other game running, rather than just getting the F up and going home.