+1 for mostly folding pre. We aren't very deep and we're OOP with not a great hand. Yes it has blocker effects for 3-betting but this is 1/2 and these players aren't raise/folding nearly enough. 3betting is fancy play syndrome vs the pool here imo. That said, with some meaningful reads we can peel sometimes since it's only $10 and not say $12-15. In a more aggro reg infested line up I can start getting behind the 3b.

*Edit- I agree with whoever said nitting it up pre-flop is one of the best strategies at this level. This would certainly be a prime example of a marginal spot where you fold under that strategy.

+1 all of this.

I used to squeeze hands like ATo, but I've basically decided it's not that profitable. I mainly fold this spot if the opener mainly opens only strong hands, which is many players. I also call this spot sometimes. I used to 3bet this, but I've eventually concluded that large pots out of position with marginal holdings is not generally profitable. You get into problems of when you hit, you mainly win small pots, and when you play big pots, RIO comes into play and villains have you dominated

What does GG think about this hand?

This is a joke right? If GG gives any other advice besides "turbo muck" i'll eat a shoe.

I lol'd.

I hope GG replies.

He has the power to make Gorgalosk eat a shoe.

Esp. vs an unknown he will prob say fold. Honestly, all 3 options could be argued here which is why the thread is as long as it is. i would air on the side of fold as well to avoid making a "I 3 bet an unknown oop and hit my card and got raised" type thread. Watch how he plays, let other people make mistakes against him.

err, not air

If we're going to pick only one hand to play a big pot OOP with, why not the better one?

I'm 3betting ajo if I have any reason to believe V's CO opening range can possibly contain weak hands (not even total junk, but just like, broadways or unsuited connectors). Which is going to be true of most 1/3 players who aren't total loose/passives. Definitely taking my chances with a "young Indian guy".

Against the average online player or a GTO solution AJo is a 3bet most of the time.

The exploitative adjustment against an unknown player in 1/2 given our assumption that the vast majority of the pool doesn't raise as much as it should and isn't positionally aware is to flat. Even if we assume that player is raising a tight range, we also know that the pool isn't aggressive post flop unless it has a big hand and AJ has enough equity that can be realized.

Folding in that spot is overadjusting to the point of losing EV.

Flat against an unknown, 3bet against a person you know that raises a reasonable range from that position.

+1

This is kind of what I was trying to say originally when I talked about calling if a guy is old and potentially 3betting given other reads and that folding is a huge deviation from what I think is optimal.

I think you wrote it in a much clearer way than I did though.

Usually flat pre, sometimes 3 bet, if he’s an old man coffee then fold.

The only thing that’s worth noting is online we are defending ATo+, but online people aren’t opening 5x. But then again, live recs are also typically really bad.

Think 3b or flat both seem pretty fine without reads. Worth noting that we literally never get 4bet off our AJ in these kind of spots unless we're crushed -- nobody's ever really 4betting AJ/A5s/76s or whatever and making our life super awful and we'll be able to take it down with a flop bet a pretty high freq.

Think anyone advocating for a pre fold with such limited info is making a massive overadjustment, average villain will open plenty of worse hands here, play straightforward on turn/river, and we should have postflop skill edge vs field anyway. If you aren't willing to play srps from bb vs lp open with top 10% hands, what are you even doing at the poker table?

Playing 1/2 where you don't have to get yourself into tough situations with dominated hands out of position in order to make money.

50 pre. Calling is also fine. But we want to get some folds preflop if we’re bloating the pot OOP.

35-45 on the flop. You should get a decent amount of folds here.

Edit: I see some people advocate fold? That’s insane. If anything, people raise wider ranges than what you’d see online, even at 1/2 NL. Loose passive limp machines make themselves known fast and OP would surely let us know if he’s open limped 3 times already and is now bumping it up.


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1) Having the lead in poker is a massive advantage. Something we dont have here.

2) We are OOP against an unknown. At least 33% of the threads on this forum start with "V is an unknown".

Im not saying its an easy fold, but imo all 3 choices cant be that bad in this spot.

I think this is probably a 3! sometimes, a call a few times, and a fold others. Really gameflow and opponent dependent. Especially in $1/$2, 3 and 4! pre are generally extremely tight from 95% of the players I see, so if we do 3! here sizing is important so we don't feel compelled to call off if V does 4!.

In a vacuum against a total rando, I would think a good mix would be 60% 3!/20% call/20% fold or something like that. The hand sucks OOP given that our likely best hand on the flop will be top/top or top/good, both of which could be dominated when called.

Anyway, be interested to see what happens next.

There is absolutely no reason to have a 3 way mixed strategy vs a random at LLSNL. If you do, it means you think the ev of all 3 options is identical....in which case you should imo pretty clearly fold every time because you'll have less variance that way.

I think there's no way it's true that you have identical ev with all 3 options, but regardless of what single option you think is best going 60/20/20 is just nonsense in a spot like this vs a random in a live game.

Sure there is, because it is opponent dependent. YOu can't tell me that you play AJo the same way vs a nit/drooler/LAG/OMC. IF you do, then you are losing value somewhere. Unless you play in a room where you never see the same players again, even in low stakes games you need some balance preflop. Postflop I agree, but not pre.

Ok, if you're saying you might take any option based on the opponent, that's definitely true...but it's not particularly meaningful. We can all imagine an opponent who only opens AA/KK and against that guy AJo is a snapfold..but that's not particularly insightful from a strategy standpoint.

Further, I would guess it's probably <10%, and maybe even <5% of villains against whom this would be a fold pre. But vs these players, it's worth noting, our response strategy should be 0 (r)/0 (c)/100 (f), not some complex mixed response.

In my post I was talking about mixing all 3 options vs the same opponent, which I think is definitely unnecessary nonsense in these games. Mixing 2 options can sometimes be reasonable against somewhat competent regs, but there is no need to mix all 3 in a line like defending bb vs open.

Ah yes I see. That was not my intent (meaning if we played this hand 100x vs the same V that we would go 60/20/20) so I can see the confusion.

Problem is that vs an unknown, we really cant know what the best option is so we have to guess. And I think that comes down more to ST gameflow. I personally think AJo OOP sucks balls to play post unless we can get it down to heads up, so the default is 3! large or fold if we think that we can't get the pot HU without over-committing ourselves. But I would not fault anyone who just says "meh, screw it AJ blows" and folds 100% of the time here. I don't have hard data, but I would guess that 90%+ of the player pool lose $ with this hand from the first 3-4 spots left of the button (myself included).

This +1million. Some people in this thread get it.

When I recommend a mixed strategy vs random recs on this forum I’m not actually recommending you randomize. It’s just close in a vacuum so go with a live read/game flow etc. The only people I actually randomize against are reg pros.