To balance out your flat range.

Especially if deep stacked, why play a big pot out of position with a drawing hand.

[Edit] To add, I'm not saying call 100%, but call some of the time.

Your bet sizing in a 3 bet pot should never be close to full pot. You should be betting 1/4-1/2 pot on the flop. The pot is already inflated because of the 3 bet pre so it's much easier to get stacks AI. It also allows you to commit less chips when you are bluffing in this spot so you are laying yourself better odds for the steal. Another benefit is you still have enough left in your stack to fold so you don't get yourself committed when someone raises.

AK is not a "drawing hand". It can easily win unimproved.

There are plenty of other hands in my flatting range- I don't need AK to be in it.

Personally, I think this is a good spot for a 1/3 pot-sized bet. I'd go about $150. Maybe even less, like $135.. One of the biggest reasons for a 1/2+ pot-sized bet is to help ensure you're giving the wrong odds for someone to draw to a flush or a straight. But, in this case, in a 3bet pot with the Ac being out -- it is highly unlikely that anybody has a hand to draw with.

So your plan should be: Extract max value from a worse ace, maybe get a single street from a big pocket pair, and hopefully find a fold at some point if you can suss out a set.

Occasionally, a Q will peel and you'll be hating life and wish you had bet more when you lose to AQ, or worse yet, QQ... Whatever, betting more than 1/4 pot is plenty enough to give horrible odds to anyone peeling with 2 or 3 outs. You absolutely want these calls! Even if you go broke when they hit, you're more than making up for it from the times they don't.

When you bet $400 or even $200+, you're giving yourself very little chance of getting worse hands to call. And you're setting yourself up for a very difficult time getting away from your hand when you're beat.


When pots go multiway (4 or more players) and in 3bet pots, I generally ignore the 1/2-full PSB ideal, especially OOP. For example, on the flop, I will rarely bet more than 2x my preflop raise size when I'm betting into more than 2 villains. I'm not scared of being called or raised; these only present further opportunities to make the correct decisions later in the hand, as well as more opportunities for the villain to make a mistake.