aggressive and lively 2/5 game, hero has 575 behind, villain in the sb covers; hero is viewed as tight player, villain is a good, tough regular; hero has already limp 3bet once before successfully, with 2 players folding after opening to $60 about an hour before this hand:

Hero has AK offsuit in utg+2; hero limps, loose aggressive player opens for 20, 4 callers including villain; hero 3bets to 125, all fold to sb who pauses for a few moments, then calls.

Flops is Q Q 8, 2 hearts.

Villain checks.

Hero bets 150.

Villain pauses, then reraises to 325.

Hero?

As played: villain should have either 1) middle pocket pair and puts hero on high cards that whiffed the board; 2) flush draw (possibly hitting the middle pair); 3) queen

first two, and hero gets close to proper odds to call (unless villain also hit a pair with the fd). Third and hero is drawing nearly dead.

Also - please comment on bet sizing. Reviewing now, I think perhaps it would have been better to raise to 150 preflop and then simply shove the flop. My fear, however, was that villain would recognize this as clearly AK and snap call with any pocket pair.

Fire away please.

Limp 3betting is terrible, please stop doing it.

Your 3bet pf is pretty awkwardly sized sized in terms of SPR, either make it less so you can bet flop/shove turn or I guess you could make it like $160 pre so that you can just open-shove most flops but that's pretty bad for a whole other host of reasons.

As played you have a naked ace high in a bloated pot where you have zero fold equity if you shove and considering the relative strength villain has shown, minuscule showdown value. Pitch the hand.

+100

If you really had AA, would you want a fold pf? Your 3bet sizing is too big.

You missed the flop, cbet and got raised. If he has 22, he's crushing you. It is the easiest fold in history.

i love the limp 3 bet / but would 3 bet to ~105. (if the LP villains are aggressive and light)
Hero can raise this amount ad abandon hand correctly, or make other moves post, all depending on tons of factors.

Limp 3 betting AK is a nice balance to limp 3 betting AA etc. It also settles late position players down when hero limp 3 bets / they allow us to limp more successfully in EP. (and in a lot of games there are plenty of weak players who we want to limp around and create an 8 way flop with say 33, but one aggro player in CO wouldnt allow it UNLESS we show a fair amt of limp 3 betting.)
i limp 3 bet ATss AK AA AK 98ss if the gameflow is right and villains are right for it, and you cannot believe how after a bit of it, most aggro players just back right off if limp in pots. Knowing when someone is about ready to play back at you is the real deal here.

As played this is a horrible flop to cbet. And now that hero did, i fold.

yes, if you L/3bet enough, you get reasonably good players to get tired of it and overplay 88 and stackoff when you have AA in this spot. Gameflow and recent history etc are necessary. Not doing this IMO just shows a lack of game involvement, since limping is important in full ring fishy games and always getting blown off your limp is no good. Therefore a limp 3bet range has to be formed and somewhat balanced at least.

Can someone explain to me this limping AK up front thing?

I like the bet on the flop, but this is an easy fold to the raise now.

I thought limp raising was good for this game because virtually every pot was raised with several callers. If I make the standard raise from ep, i would have to play against 4-5 callers out of position. Or I could limp reraise, most likely take the dead money without a flop (since I was viewed as a tight player), or play heads up (or, at most, 2 others) in a bloated pot with a premium starting hand against a much wider range (depending on the caller). I would do the same with AA-JJ, and, on occasion, 10s and AQ, or middle suited connectors depending on the dynamics and how long I'd been inactive.

I made a little less than a pot sized raise preflop, so the pot stands around $330 ($80 dead money, plus the raise and call). I cbet $150 on the flop - and with the villain's raise, assuming I have to shove (rather than simply call, which would leave me with only about $140 remaining), - I would have to add another $300 to the pot to win a total of $930.

At better than 3:1, I am getting proper odds to draw to my overcards if villain has middle pair. I am also getting the right odds if villain decided to get fancy and thinks he can push me off my overs with some kind of suited connector flush draw.

I am much worse off, however if he has the flush draw with a pair (something like 7h8h), and drawing dead nearly dead if he hit the q.

I struggled with whether to cbet this board. But is checking and giving up control of the hand to a tough villain really the way to go? When he presumably bets any turn that misses me, do I really just have to say, essentially, nice call preflop - now I fold?

If villain hit the q or flush draw, so be it. My problem was with the 8 - which might have hit all kinds of suited connectors for pairs or gut shot straight draws. That would give him enough extra outs to raise. I would have been more comfortable if the 8 had been a deuce.

Anyway - still trying to decide if the occasional 3bet with ak out of position around 100bb deep is a good balance that allows me to play off my tight image, or a chip burner when situations like this happen.

limp 3bet is nice when u know for sure someone is raising like someone with a very shortstack looking to get it in or something.

I think in certain spots limp 3-betting can be +EV, but the reason most players with a clue have a hearty disdain for it is because it basically will only work on total ******s since otherwise anybody that knows anything at all about poker will realize the extreme strength that it represents. You're just giving up loads of value against the field when you could just raise-bet-bet-bet instead and not only make way more in the long-run (and, rarely, correctly be able to fold), but not have the crazy-high variance that limp re-raising entails [edit: when playing big pairs up front, that is].

You could balance your limp 3bet range, but then it'll put you in dumb spots like this where the pot is bloated and you have no idea where the hell you're at.

The theory is to polarize your range for the l/rr beyond just AA or KK. You've got blockers, so you can call the 4bet shove. Avoids all that icky post flop play.

it would take 3 pages to tell all, but i will give a few headers on it.

full ring fishy games with a few aggro players, we need to be able to limp
hands up front, without getting raised and isolated. limp 3 betting settles players down real quick usually.

BUT, you cannot just limp 3 bet junk. So we need to polarize it. AA being on one end, and junky stuff on the other end. Normally i limp 3 bet various hands that i wanted to see a cheap flop with first. Like 33. If an aggro villain isolates button, his range is NOT that strong, so we cannot count on stcking him if we flop a set. thus, flatting OOP is not great. So i elect to take the dead money if i can preflop. His range is wide, my range is seemingly strong, voila, we take down the pot often with a hand that we would call and check fold a bunch.

THEN, (timing is everything) when i feel agro villain has had about enough of this crap, i dont limp 3 bet til i get AA KK. Ive had villain float me pre, float post and shove turn with pure air vs my AA due to this. And that is a lot better when say 200bb deep than raising and bet bet bet.


limp 3 betting AA right off the boat, IS a waste of a great hand. Limp 3 betting AA other specially setup dynamics is awesome. For one thing, if you limp 3 bet much at all, you have to limp 3 bet with strong hands occasionally too vs players you play with regularly.

It is to create a more dynamic range with your l/rr hands, so when you l/rr with AA you get more action to make up for the money you lost by limping AA and not being able to rr in the first place.

I think some people call it FPS.

Limp, then 3bet into a big field is horrific

curious, you always just give up your limps when there is a 4 or 5 way total field? Or you have a limp 3 bet range at times?

I have no limp-3bet range.

ok, there is a start. Now, for all hands such as suited connectors, small pairs, AJ KQo and such that with a majority of weaker players (but some aggro who will isolate in late positions) .......you just limp and let them have it always?

OR, you only raise with them in EP? Or just dont play them at all?

it would depend on the table ^^

Yes it would depend on the table, but by and large I just don't play those hands from EP. If I peek at AJ or KQ from UTG I muck it and don't think twice.

To those who do not limp reraise - ak or jj in ep, you would make the standard open (say 5x bb), knowing that you will get 4-5 callers in certain games? Or do you open for a larger raise (say 8-10x)?

Specifically ak (and aq is far worse), I would almost rather open fold in ep than knowingly have to play oop against so many players. Even with a safe board (a72 rainbow, for example), if anyone calls a decent flop bet, I am at a loss how to continue, unless I know the player well enough to suspect he could stack off with a weaker ace. And with a coordinated board, it is even more difficult - having to judge if I am way behind or only a slight favorite to some kind of combo draw.

There's just too much value from AK/AQ to open fold it from early position. Yes, you're going to whiff and have to check/fold some percentage of the time. Yes, you're going to occasionally run into a big hand when you flop TPTK on an otherwise innocuous board.

But the times you get value from weaker aces, draws, etc. will greatly overshadow the times you lose money. Plus since there's so much dead money in the pot, you don't have to take it down as often statistically to net a profit just for the PF action alone.

Basically, you're still going to make money playing those hands in EP, but your variance will certainly be higher with 4-5 callers each time, and also be put into more difficult spots. But no reason not to raise with them if they're profitable in the long run.

just open raise, bet/fold the flop., check fold possibly if its 3+ to the flop

there is no real argument here over open raising etc, and for my view limiting what i play in first 4 spots just decreases profit potential IMO. In full ring live where there are many weak players BUT a few aggro players in CO and BTN when hero is early, its going to be difficult to limp a lot of hands which have value (unless we want to call raises OOP which i dont)

Having said that, hero must then have a limp 3 bet range in order to keep the late aggros in line. It works very well for me, and allows me to play a more unpredictable style. But theres nothing wrong with just keeping it basic.

Just a quick FYI...

In this post with some of the ranges that people have thrown about, some people have mentioned having a hand like 87hh.... The flop is QQ8 with two hearts... I would be concerned if he can flop two pair and a FD on any hand...

Anyway, fwiw I have a very narrow limp/3 range that only comes into play if Im in a game where I can limp/shove more then limp/rr with deeper stacks. Im missing value from just raising when I play in games with lots of fish, who arent going to bother hand reading and assigning ranges anyway, and when Im in better games, Im going to be super-nitty up front anyway that people will realise when I open from UTG that my range is thin...

You made a move that says "hello I have aces" and villain said "I'm calling > 20% of my stack with a small pair anyway?" I don't know how he can have a pair + FD here unless he's completely terrible to call that much with suited cards and he's cheating as well. None of the hands you think he has makes any sense.

I think you're way way behind.

+1
I am a regular live 500NL player at Crown, Melborne which have the most loose live games ever.
I regularly limp 3bet with AA-JJ, AK and AQs when UTG and UTG+1 and find this approach highly profitable.

In this situation I would 3bet to 110 in this spot to with effective stacks of $500.
This denies the correct odds to be set mined.

It's not a disastrous flop with AK given the pf action but I couldn't give up given the money in the pot. I would have to donk bet this flop for $120 as I would if I was holding AA and KK. More often than not you take down the pot but if called it's time to give up even though you have invested 2/5 of your stack which I know in most cases it's a mistake.