Grunch.

Just calling should be your standard @ basically anything above 90-100BB iyam.

4bet or fold w/ really good reads only.

Final question: What are we doing with AK in this spot preflop? Are we treating it the same as QQ?

I think AK, in a capped game environment, is even more player dependent, & I'm even more inclined to fold it readless nowadays, unless I have reason to think a 4b or flatting has value.

AK is better to 4b/fold with. It depends.

AK is a different beast. villain dependent. if i think they're capable of folding JJ, QQ, and AK to a sizeable 4bet I'm inclined to 4bet, especially 200bb deep. AA/KK will almost always come over the top, so we usually have good information if we have to take a flop.

at low stakes games many players will not fold those hands, especially QQ and AK. so i'll flat and see a flop in those scenarios usually.

Why do we want to 4b this guy??

1) most situations are 100bb deep so what about those spots?

2) if we’re flatting, isn’t V getting to play perfectly anyway? we will c/f low flops to their cbets and when we flop an A or K, they will check behind QQ/JJ and lose minimum or if they continue betting, we could be up against AA/KK and lose our entire stack

I mean, I don’t like any options in these spots and it’s such a dilemma

AK I'd call and see flop with and then take it from there. Yes, I'd fold the QQ and go with the weaker AK, because it's much easier to get away from AK when you don't hit than from QQ. I don't think I'd get stacked nearly as often with AK as opposed to QQ.

4bet might be an option because there's realy only one hand that has us crushed (though against a player with such a tight 3betting range that line feels iffy - even though we have an A and K blocker)

I said it's a better hand to 4b/fold than QQ.

At 100bb though, that most games play at, where’s the scope of 4b/folding AK?

ya it definitely changes things. it's villain dependent. it really depends what range they 3b with, what they fold to 4b (cuz some villains it's 0% of their 3b range and some villains it's all the way up to QQ), how they play post, position, etc.

but yes the shorter we are the more a 4b is basically an all-in, so consider stacks as well. i think you have the tools you just have to work through it. the reason AK can seem frustrating or tricky in spots like this is because it's a close decision. with AA it's easy because it's not close. the 2nd best way to play AA in most preflop spots 100bb deep is much worse than the 1st best way. with AK that's not the case. none of the choices seem 100% right. not to mention that when we see flops AK is much harder to play than big pairs. it has a lot of equity preflop against almost any range, but realizing that equity post is more difficult than with a big pair due to the fact that AK is not a made hand.

just learn to live with all of that and make the call based on the info you have.

my AK strat is somewhat binary against average villains. i either:

1) play it aggressively pre against v's that can fold JJ and potentially QQ as well as AK, meaning we either realizing AK's equity preflop or get stacks in with good equity and see all five cards, or
2) I play it like a strong IO hand and try to see a flop without paying too much. one nice thing about AK in 3b and 4b pots is that when we make a royal the flop connects well with JJ and QQ and we often get stacks in. i'm also more inclined to play AK suited this way if we're quite deep, because we often flop well enough to continue even when we don't make a pair.

in gameplay i lean towards option (1) because AK is only in really bad shape against a range of specifically KK+, with no AK. even just adding QQ for a range of QQ+ we have 31%. so you have to know your villains. some villains will never include AK in the same lines they take with KK+. many will. that's perhaps one rule of thumb you can refer to if you're on the spot and a little lost with AK. try to decide if villain could be holding AK too. if the answer is yes, it's probably never that bad to just always 4b/GII in those spots. over time you can add more nuance to your strat.

i'm not always c/f low flops to cbets, sometimes i'll peel. again this is very villain dependent. villains who won't put much more $ in with QQ/JJ when an overcard falls are also in the category i'm more likely to 4b pre and try and get folds or stacks in.

at 100bb we're not folding AK to a 5b all-in. at 200bb we can.

This is not a bad table. When people don't 3-bet enough you get to realize equity much more often on your opens.

Playing short-handed also allows you to play a lot more hands profitably in position and focus your attention on fewer players, allowing you to exploit harder.

i would also add that until you've got a shyt load of hours under your belt, playing at meh tables or nitty tables or whatever is out of the ordinary for you will help you become a better poker player. it'll force you to think about the game in terms of fundamentals rather than rote lines and standard moves. unless you got somewhere to be or some other reason to leave, i tend to stick around and think about what my adjustments should be and play accordingly, hopefully getting into some interesting spots that wouldn't happen that way in my "normal" game.

as someone who still has a **** load to learn in this game, I tend to force myself to do this from time to time (or at least I did when I was playing regularly. which will hopefully start back up again soon.)

even very experienced players likely benefit from this type of shake-up from time to time, and i suspect the best of them seek it out. the game of poker is and always will be in a state of constant incremental change, so you should never lose your ability to adapt and think about the game in terms of fundamental principles.

+1. I find myself staying at "bad" tables from time to time for that very reason. At the very least hang for a couple hours minimum & feel it out. Definitely will make you draw on a wider spectrum of fundamental concepts to generate EV & strengthens your mental game a ton long term.

The bolded is for sure my experience too. I spent a weekend in Gothenburg Sweden couple months ago, grinding the cashgames at the casino. This city is a wellknown pokercity for us scandi people, it have always had a big poker environment with many very very good cashgame grinders and also several wellknown players worldwide through the years comes from Gothenburg.

I had a very tough table saturday night, with a table that had like 4 good winning pros or part time pros on it. Fearless, extremely good at exploiting the ongoing table dynamics at any given time, used to playing very deep like 400BB+ all the time.I can never have my biggest winrates at such a table obviously, but as you mention i always feel like i evolve alot as a player after such sessions once in a while so i stuck around 3 hours longer than i intended.The amount of things you can learn and make you a better player longterm is also a form of EV, even though not moneywise at that particular game. Also i had probably the best player of those 4 to my direct left, wich was a challenge i felt comfortable dealing with at the time. + i got into some friendly chatter/conversation with the crusher to my left, so we ended up having a drink when the game broke and discussed some of the hands,poker in general.It just forces you to think about some many complexe dynamics, ranges and adjustments that you dont really have to do in a "normal" LLSNL game with 8 rec players.

Honestly, I have over 4000 hours of live experience killing the game at almost 10bb/hour, but I just cannot play short-handed. I’m just so used to table selection that I don’t know how to think beyond ABC or exploit anyone. I try to do that and end up spewing money left and right to everyone when playing loose ranges. It ends up ruining my profits for the night and leaving me upset and mentally tilted.

that's probably enough hours that you don't have to worry about it so much then. the flip side of what i wrote is that you also have to have self-awareness and understand what kind of games you enjoy playing in and are the best at. if what you say above is true then ya maybe just pick up when it goes short.

personally i enjoy short handed play a lot. back when i was playing graveyard shifts some of the best games were full-ring games that went short and deep into the wee hours of the morning. was great to have short-handed adjustments in my back pocket.

I feel that if you approach short handed play as fundamentally different from full ring, you're approaching one or both of them wrong.

Short handed is just full ring with the first few players folded. There is no fundamental mathematical difference. If people play differently because of it, then that's something you can adjust to, the exact same you would if you're playing against someone who is too aggro in a full ring game. No inherent difference beyond their tendencies and ranges being different, the same way any player's tendencies and ranges could be different.

Ya it works for loose opponents who like to open up their ranges and play some poker.

I always think that way, but still doesn’t work. I think the blinds hitting constantly works your mind up.

So the only difference is the player's mental game, it's not inherent to the rules of the game. It would be no different than going to a new casino where everyone is more degenerate and want to gamble more (or something similar). I think it's essentially a fallacy, like people thinking that if it's mulitway you can play worse hands because of better pot odds.

This is such a good post that deserve more love. Very accurately described.

I think this is a slippery slope, the implication is that because UTG through MPx have already folded we can go into 6-handed thinking in a full ring game? I think the math 'is' different, you can't just ignore that other players weren't dealt into the hand (or folded). The likely hood that multiple players were dealt a pocket pair doesn't change from full ring to 6 handed just because the first three players folded? I don't think you can look at that math in the same light. The likely hood does change ... there are less players.

I think the message in general is very good, but the bold phrase above within itself is .... "It's the same ...except it's not". Tendencies and ranges are a huge component of PF play. So the implication is that I should treat a UTG range 6-handed the same as I treat a MP1's range 9-handed as long as the first players have folded? I don't think we want to 'exactly' make that statement.

I think in low stakes games you should lean towards ranges 'not' changing short handed and try to take advantage of it. (And by default be 'more' aware of it when a 3-bet rolls around.) What's the first thing you hear when a player leaves a full ring game? "Seat Open, move someone over." This tells me that players don't want to change the way they play as the table empties out.

I'm playing a little bit of devil's advocate here, but

i don't agree. there is a mathematical difference in that hand values inherently go up. the value of KT in a heads up cash game is inherently higher than in a full-ring game regardless of what your opponents are doing in either game due to the probability that a better hand is out.

this is falacy?