V: very good player. I think plays bigger normally. Definitely very active 3! A lot and playing aggro.

H: should have a good image we both have about 1500 effective. v probably thinks I’m tighter than most. We really haven’t been involved in many hands against each other

OTTH I open KhQh UTG+1 to 15 two callers v makes it 75 on button folds back to me I make it 250.. thoughts on this??

V can be squeezing a lot here and most people don’t play well against a 4! Obv we would like a better hand ideally one containing an A

Others fold he calls

(530) flop 7h3d7c

I bet 150 he calls

(830) turn 8h I bet 500 thoughts on sizing and hand as played so far


He folds if he calls I’m probably checking river unimproved

OP: could you clarify the preflop action please? H is UTG+1, V is on BTN, but I cannot tell if H is closing the action preflop after V's re-raise. I cannot see how H is closing the action ("folds back to me" after two callers? after BTN re-raise) at UTG+1 but perhaps I'm misunderstanding the sequence.

I think this is pertinent to the analysis, so forgive me for dwelling on this detail. Thanks!

I am not closing the action pre. Once he makes it 75 on the button everyone else folds I make it 250 and the two cold callers (HJ AND CUTOFF) fold… they originally called the 15

Without the callers in between, I definitely prefer the flat call to the 3bet. With the callers in-between, flatting the 3bet is a more tricky proposition and KQs is a fine hand to 4! in this case a % of the time.

AA usually isn’t being slow played pre-flop enough at these stakes and you have removal to KK and QQ so flop bet is standard and turn bet is also standard/necessary to fold A highs and 99-JJ.

However, the turn sizing is pretty iffy. If I’m doing my math correctly, the pot is $830 on the turn and you have ~$1,100 behind before you decide to bet $500. If he calls this $500 he’s essentially pot commited and has to call off on most rivers (pot would be ~$1,800 on river with $600 behind). I would have either bet small again on turn to jam river ($250 into $830, pot is $1330 on river with $850 back) or just jam turn. As I’m typing these numbers out, I think the best play is to jam turn as played, or bet slightly bigger on flop to jam around pot on turn, the stack sizes are a bit awkward either way here.

I think this is played well. I am going to offer some advice on this hand and 4betting light in general.

Preflop we are 300 bb deep, but we did raise 3x. I like to 4bet this bigger deep though. $300-330. As far as your hand selection, this is very tricky. When you are this deep, your 4bets from early position should be heavily weighted towards AA, KK, AKs, and AKo. QQ doesn't need to 4bet here a ton and can do so at small frequency. You might do it more in practice since the cold callers will be so wide and you want them out.

In theory with the callers, your hand is probably a 4 bet or fold, and mainly a fold. Your value range is so narrow that your AKo is more like a bluff. If you raise AKo to $300 pre, it might have an EV of like $5-10, and you are happy for villain to fold when you are 4betting with thay hand. In theory, a hand like KQs should be close to 0 EV. Maybe 4betting KQs 25% of the time here is okay. It also depends what we are doing with the rest of our range, especially our suited wheel aces, suited broadway aces, and pocket pairs.

Just throwing numbers out there, but our AA, KK, AKs, and AKo should probably make up 60-75% of our 4bet range, and we need to consider a few things there. Do we flat AKo, AKs, and KK here sometimes? Not so much at 300bb deep, but do we have a 4bet jamming range with hands like AKo and KK, which narrows our 4bet non- all in range? When thaybis the case we need to be careful because if some of our value is going into the 4bet jam line, then our 4bet non-jam line does not need so many bluffs or it will be very weak.

Also, villain sounds like the kind of guy thay will 3bet light, but if villain was really value heavy and doesn't have enough 3bet folds, we don't have to 4bet bluff. We don't even have to call him honestly.

Bottom line, the 4bet is fine, but just make sure you spend some time making sure your frequencies are good.

Now that you get called on this 4bet, you are kind of in an spot on the flop that probably isn't well studied in theory. That is, 4bet 300bb deep after raising 3x with 2 cold callers facing a a button squeeze, now heads up with the 3 bettor. So your strategy on the flop is not going to be well known. In general 4 bet pots are going to have very high frequency c betting, usually for small amounts like 25% or even 10%, occasionally for 50%. This is one of those boards that gets 50% cbet when really deep. In theory this board also has checks, mainly looking to check raise value and also hands like KQ as a bluff. I think in general going 25% as a default on the flop as the 4 bettor is going to be fine though. Your bet is a little bigger than that, but approximates 25%.

Turn barrel is good. The sizing I would use would be 50%. You go a little bit bigger, probably not a huge difference. Villain is incentivized to call a small flop bet pretty wide. I think you will fold out a lot of his A highs now, especially since he won't have AhKh and AhQh. He may also start to lay down hands like QQ, JJ, TT exploitatively if he thinks you are really strongly weighted towards AA and KK. So I think this turn barrel is going to be good. With the small amount behind you probably have to call it off if you get jammed on though.

On the river I think check folding is fine if you don't improve because it is unlikely he has much left that would still fold on the river. Thankfully, that means when you have value on river you are likely to get paid off, and when your river bet is small, you don't need a ton of bluffs anyways. You might tripple off some hands like KQs without hearts, especially if you were a bit deeper, maybe if you didn't go as large on turn. But I think exploitatively underbluffing river in general is probably fine.

Wp imo. Only real issue is turn sizing imo, I think half pot or a bit less makes most sense.

Preflop: I'm not looking to create marginal spots for myself oop against the aggro/best player at the table. Meanwhile, we could be squeezed one of the callers. In theory we 4b or fold I guess. I'm just not good enough to manage these spots oop so I'm folding. YMMV. Here we are.

Flop: Our c-bets are mid-pairs in need of equity denial. I think we check the top of our range. We are uncapped, which is good, as it gives us a lot more options with our line.

Turn: I prefer the more polar sizing here. We need to fold his Ax and maybe his 99/TT. So I'm good with this especially since we turned more equity against the top of V's range. I might even go a little larger, given the need for FE and our redraw. We will have no FE on river given pot size.

Agree with Mlark that you should 4! bigger. Maybe even more bigger than he said, as you are OOP, deep AND V is better than you. IMO, there is no shame in charging a better player more. Like, if you had KK here you could raise to the point where it's just profitable in theory, though maybe not reality, and be like "oh crap, here we go" as you head to the flop. Or you could bump it up to like $330 or 350 and if he wants to pay that, cool.

Of course, do the same thing with bluffs and kind of for the same reasons. I disagree with Mlark a bit in that I would bluff a little more freely here. V is a winner at higher stakes. He wouldn't be human if he wasn't squeezing the button too light. It's one of these one off situations that occurs more or less in a vacuum. To him you are some random lower stakes player. He can't really think, "this guy knows I'm a 5/10 crusher and he's probably trying to play back at me." He doesn't know if that's true or if you think about anything other than your own cards. I think he just has to fold a lot to a rando 2/5 player's UTG 4!.

I don't fault anything on later streets, though the turn is interesting. You should be able to fold out ace high, 44 etc. for less. Your bet size sets up a smaller all in on the river so it really looks like you want to play for stacks. Does this make 99, TT or even JJ fold? I don't know.

I think you do want to bluff an Ace on the river. You can still rep KK or QQ there as he shouldn't have any aces and it's like a 1/3 pot all in. And, obviously, you could have some aces too. Including AA. It becomes pretty hard to call with JJ or TT.

The hand is pretty standard, if it was me I'd prolly raise alil less to 225, and would just jam the turn (if I decided to bet irl) it's only 1100 into 8 something, since if he raises the 500 we can't really give up all our equity so easily anyway so I would rather spend all the money on trying to fold his med/upper med PP's out, we're definitely folding out AK which we don't wanna got to SD with, and if he thinks we're tight and we just raised/4bet from UTG+1, his range is gonna be strong flatting us in position too.