Avarita, then I you flat the 3 bet you're getting stacked on a 9 high flop. You 4 bet to gain make information about your villain's range. The villain knows your incredibly strong and very unlikely to fold after a 4 bet so he's not jamming in with AK. Hero has 2 blockers to AK so that leaves us with just AA.

Please explain rationale.
Even when the 3! may be 50/50 squeeze/qq+, and we are no where close to being committed?

First off, 1k hours of live poker is nothing. And being in that situation 4 or 5 times in that many hours would almost be a lot i would think

4! is a must because of the other players in the hand and our bad position. OP just sized it too large.

Oops. I mean your 4-bet, obviously.

This isn't true at all...what you mean to say, is never bet (1/2/3/4/5 doesn't matter) without first considering what you're going to do when an opponent then re-raises. It's perfectly fine to bet with the intention of folding to a re-raise, especially when you 4 bet kings and get 5 bet all in for 700 more.

There is no unwritten rule about not 4 betting if you're going to fold to a 5 bet. That's just dumb.

This

I done a thread last week where I folded AA and the exact thing was said at the table. Even the guy who had AA said how can u fold lol

The answer to the bolded is the underlined.

I agree with both of these statements obviously. I can actually only recall 2 specific instances of me wanting to fold kings pre, round to 5 for arguments sake.

Again yes obviously.

Snowball, poke me in chat tmrw if you would like me to shed more light on value 3!/4!'ing in llsnl

Everyone else, keep 4!'ing for information.

This is on the list of times where I let KK go

Fwiw in a vacuum I like the 4b pf and I don't mind the fold but 4b/folding versus omc nit is bad relative decision making.

Like without any reads I think flatting here is better than folding but not as good as 3b to 175.

disagree mang. Although he prolly could have gotten away with a 4! to 205 or so its no biggy. Think about how phucking strong he looks here cold 4! out o' the blind appearing to be committed...then dude stuffs it in his face. That is AA all day long or a total nut job

That post was not directed at this HH, but the idea of 4!/folding strong value hands in general.

This was my original post in regards to this specific HH.

I don't think it's a 4-BET for information. As someone else noted, a properly-sized 4-BET can get value from hands like QQ and AK. Also, a smaller 4-BET saves us money when we have to fold to a 5-BET, because that fourth raise is either AA or a psychopath.

Jesus I'm getting leveled hard in this thread. I AM that person.

The idea that a smaller 4! saves you money when you have to fold to a 5! is lol though

11t has given the reasoning for my statements, if you can't deduce from there, god bless.

grunch

i would 4bet smaller and probably fold if im playing my A game, and call if I'm playing anything less and be pissed when he shows me AA like 80% of the time

I'm not intentionally leveling; just haven't kept track of who has posted what in this thread.

I don't think it's the goal. In other words, I'm not saying to myself, "I'll only reraise to 180 so I can easily fold and lose less money when he ships it." However, I do think it's a welcome side effect of making a 4-bet that is reasonable enough to get AK, QQ, and JJ to call.

would you really go broke with just an overpair when someone is shoving for 180bb post flop?

Well if you are OOP with KK you are pretty much forced to call all 3 streets if villain fires. If you donk out on the flop or check raise and villain comes back over the top what's your plan there?

fold obviously. but it really depends on the flop but we're never forced to call. If it was a very wet flop and we were the ones doing the firing, we could even outplay him ourselves. it's all relative to the flop and the other player.

I'm in the camp of 4! for less and then fold, sick as it is.

I just cannot agree with the sizing discussion.

OP's sizing is spot on, IMO. Pot to OP (including his call) is (20+20+20+85+85=230) His raise is just slightly more then pot sized.

I have a real hard time with the notion that a pot sized raise is ever a bad thing with a huge hand. LLSNL players just call too often not to go for pot.

Now...

Given OP's description of villain, I don't really see how we're supposed to be putting him on AA only.

Give this guy 1 combo of QQ, 2 combos of AKs, KK and AA... Hero has 37% equity.

Pot is giving us 35.7%.

20+20+20+950+950 = 1960... 700/1960 = 35.7%

All you guys saying Hero should have 4b smaller are making the case for calling the 5b.

If we are planning to 4b/f with KK, a priori, then yes, our 4b should be smaller. But in reality, going for a pot sized raise should be our goal with our entire 4b range here (which should be at least as wide as [QQ+,AK], plus a very small amount of junk). This is only because this is a button 3b. Had the 3b come from any other position, I would have almost no 4b range.

Finally...

Rather then 4b smaller, why not flat and see if you can get a caller or two? When Hero flats, the pot is $230 to UTG+1 who need only call for $65, 13bb.

If we flat, and get 1 caller, the pot to the flop will be $295 and we can be pot committed with lots more dead money.

If we have two villains, where only 1 has an A, then we'll see an A-high flop about 20% of the time (~6% * 3 cards). 80% of the time we can b/GII on the flop with lots more dead $$$.

+1 this

The argument against that is that he didn't go out of line preflop. I think he only 3 bet twice.

I think an argument in favor him having a wider range is my table image. I had raised his limps a number of times and by that point he probably and correctly thought, I didn't just do this with premiums.

So perhaps, I can see a scenario where he's got QQ and he's thinking "screw you raise guy, I ve got a hand this time, let's see what you do about that".

And you re absolutely right, that he only needs to be shoving only a fourth of his Queens to make it an EV+ for us. And this is true regardless of whether I raise to 250 or 195 or something. It's not easy to exclude with certainty that he doesn't shove his QQ 1/4 of the time, though it's not a given either. But this the spot where the hand hinges on being a call or a fold.

Last but not least, I can see the argument in favor of flatting. KK is easier to play OOP than AK, because let's face it. Without an A on the flop, you get committed under more scenarios.

Plus, I don't think this becomes multiway as the MP callers are very loose and probably have already called with junk. Another 60 has already become a pretty steep price to pay for them.

May be EP raiser calls though and that's a mixed bag. The hand becomes slightly harder to play, but we get more dead money.

OTOH, the argument against it is what I do with AK if I flat with KK at that spot. Only 4betting AK becomes a tell. I am not enamored with either 4betting or flatting with AK there tbh.

No, actually.

Say you 4b to $175. Now its 39% equity required. You should not 4b/call a shove unless you think his range is much wider then [KK+, AKs, and 1 QQ]. (Although, all it would take is just adding in AKo and you're good.) But generally, a smaller 4b means you probably would not be technically getting the right price to call.

The thing is, in real time, I'm just not going to be folding KK preflop. Certainly, I'm never doing the math to enough precision to make this kind of decision. And I'm fine with this because, in reality, it only takes a very small amount of "non-AA" hands in villain's range for it to be correct to GII with him and any reasonable amount of dead money, when you have KK.

As a sidebar, I just personally think there are a few things in LLSNL poker that you should not do for less then 300bb. 1) is folding a flopped set. 2) is folding KK preflop.

~~~

OP...

I'll say something about the LLSNL forums. Today, the consensus is that you should not get KK in preflop for 180bb when your opponent 5b shoves from the button, given the situation you describe.

You will find though that the advice can change over time, or as a result of a few minor details which change. Of course, in poker the answer is usually "it depends". But it amuses me when the details on which it depends are de minimis.

For example, in this thread I was thoroughly flamed for advising against getting it in with QQ facing a 5b shove. Certainly the situation is a little different -- and apparently straddling makes our opponents 5b-shove range super wide . At the risk of opening up myself to the flame throwers again, I'd just like to point out that on another day, you might find yourself reading advice that is contrary to the gospel you read just a few months earlier.

Anyway, even though it looks like the advice ITT was to fold your KK to a 5b, in reality, folding there would almost certainly be a tremendous mistake, even if you had 4b smaller and "didn't have the equity", because all we need to have happen is for Villain to spazz out 1 time in 20 (5%) for you to get enough residual equity to make it right.

Bullseye, i agree with pretty much all of this Lapi.


I mean, maybe i have a leak: but with less than 200 BB i am not folding KK preflop, simple as that. I have seen too many tilted spazzshoves and other sort of unexplainable things that i am worrying about this sort of a "problem". Many very good players are even saying that folding KK in live low stakes games with less than 200 BB is a mistake.

When i work on my live low stakes NL game, all other issues than how to get away from KK preflop playing 180 BB stack is taking my focus.


But interesting discussion ITT for sure.