1/3 match the stack.

Villain is an advanced player who is unfortunately sitting two seats to my left (I have the seat change button). He's a good LAG. His perception of me is that I'm a solid player on the nittier end of the spectrum. He's highly competitive. We're friendly and I had just been lamenting to him about how my 9x raise OTB over 7 limpers was called 4 ways.

This hand is $1500 effective.

Villain opens UTG to $15 and gets 3 callers, Hero raises to $105 in SB with AQo, Villain flats, fold, fold, fold.

Flop: 983 ($255)

Hero bets $90, V calls.

Turn: T ($435)

Hero checks, V bets $250, Hero folds.

My most significant read here is that Villain thinks I do not have a light squeezing range and therefore he will probably not have a wide preflop 4 betting range in this spot. In fact, he might have no 4betting range at all.

Secondly, the table is composed of very weak players, so I have no reason to assume that Villain has a very tight UTG opening range. This is my main justification for the preflop squeeze.

Is everyone okay with a 1/3rd pot bet with our entire range on the flop?

Obviously turn is a shitty spot for us. Villain has a significant nut advantage. This may actually be the nut worst turn card for us. My thought process here is that I will be checking my entire range, including all my overpairs. Given that strategy, AQo is a natural candidate to check/fold.

Everyone okay with a range check on the turn?

Other thoughts?

Do you ever 3b 99 or 88 here? That should have a large impact on your strategy. I think 1/3 pot is fine. Ran in through a program with 1/3 and 2/3 options. My range had 99&88 at 50%. It likes both sizings almost the same, though siding with larger a bit more. It doesn't like checking at all. I'd probably play similarly and give up OTT.

Calling pre is probably a far better option this deep.
AP pre, check flop.

I like the preflop action considering the effective stacks.

Flop is fine.

I would probably b/f the turn instead of x/f, especially since you bet small otf.

Meh... If folks are going to c/f pre as we see, ima 3b stuff.

75% of the time we probably win the pot otf.

If he does not have 88 or 99 in his 3bet range would that lead you more towards checking flop?

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That flop bet is so small. You're basically telling him that you're scared and know you need to cbet. If you're going to bet that flop, it needs to be in the 150 range at least. He sensed weakness and took advantage.

There was a very wise post here a few months ago that gave about 5 tips of this persons experience transitioning in live play from online. To paraphrase:

"You want to keep the weakest players in the hand, not push them out."

You 3bet a very good player who on average is at his strongest range. You are out of position and all the cold callers who are mostly bad players are probably going to fold and now you have a massively bloated pot OOP vs the best player at the table whos hand strength is wide enough here that he can still claim any piece of the board but possibly has you crushed.

Just call pre. Wait for an A or Q high flop and get 2-3 streets of value from the bad players instead of putting yourself in the most terrible position you could ever imagine. As played I x/f the flop and cut my losses.

Advanced player raises early. We’re extremely deep. This is going to create a significant postflop problem. Getting called pre often. Calling is ok.

Calling is fine and 3b is fine all in vacuums. Think I'm leaning towards calling from the sb and being oop. It's pretty much the worst hand and dynamic we can get here. If we choose 3b 105 is way too small for 1500 stacks.

As played you have to hammer, hammer, shove for sake of the exact situation and what your range is supposed to be.

Id actually like to argue for balance post flop but not preflop in this situation. Think pre is vastly overrated for balance here.

Lastly this hand will strengthen your flatting range tremendously here. Which means it serves better as the top of a flat range vs being the bottom to middle of 3b range, both oop and deep vs best lag.

I would cf flop here, not rly a board you want to be range cbetting on where EP has somewhat of a narrow/strong range this deep. This isn’t 6-max SB vs BTN where ranges pre and otf are uber wide and you can get away with cbetting here liberally

By betting small on the flop, I think I can exploit a LAG's tendency to float flop with a large chunk of his range. Any BDFD/BDSD for instance would call a small flop bet, hoping to either pick up equity or steal the pot if checked to on the turn.

My plan with the flop bet was to lay the hammer down on just about any turn card except for a T or maybe a J. I figured the T/J would add lot of equity to Villain's range and add a lot of combos of the nuts to his range. On a turned deuce, I was planning to bet close to $300.

Is it reasonable to assume that a decent LAG will be floating my 1/3 flop bet with a weak range? If so, will dropping the hammer on most turns be an effective exploit of his tendency?

FYI, I later spoke to Villain and learned that he had flopped a set of 8s in this hand.

This guy is a LAG in a very soft game. His UTG range is wider than what would be optimal in a tougher lineup (e.g., it includes hands like AJo and KQo in addition to all the usual suited broadways).

If we get called pre often then we will often play a heads up pot with initiative against a weak range. Seems like a decent spot to be in.

If we get folds pre often then we will often take down a decent sized pot without having to see a flop.

Isn't this a win/win situation?

Your OOP deep vs the best player at the table with a fairly marginal hand and all the fish are no longer in the hand. It sounds like a lose/lose to me.

I like discussing tough situations on this forum.

If the flop were 279, I bet 90, got a call, then bet 300 on a blank turn and Villain folded 88, I'd have won a nice pot. That event happens frequently enough to make this play positive EV.

You can argue that I'm wrong, but make the argument on the merits.

Your argument is just that it's unwise to ever tangle with the best players. I disagree.

We all like talking about tough situations but the key to poker is making money not to make sick plays or put ourselves in bad spots. I double/triple barrel at a very high frequency compared to most but I am doing this vs V's who have a very wide range whos ranges are also capped. This situation is nothing like that. In the long run you will lose piles of money being OOP against good players.

Wait, are you saying that you believe a solver would find that a 3bet preflop OOP with AQo against a range of {all PPs, KQo+,AJo+,all suited Broadways}, WITH $30 of dead money in the pot, is negative EV (i.e. worse than a fold)? That would be very surprising to me (albeit I am not well versed in solver strats).

If you want to GTO LLsNL good luck to you. This has been talked about a million times over and if you want to use pio to solve all your live poker problems there is no point in posting here. I gave you a perfectly understandable run down of the real life repercussions of playing the hand this way and I didn't even have to talk about ranges or any kind of math because the highest +EV approach is the simple IRL observation that you are going to make most of your money against bad players and you are going to lose lots of money in the long run against good players OOP.

We are in the beginning phases of a new dawn of mankind where people think they are smart because they are punching things into a computer and getting an answer. The person doesn't question the computer because pio/google/whatever are automatically assumed to be correct. If someone else questions the computer program they are wrong because it is assumed that the computer always has the correct answer.

Solvers play itself over billions of hands to find the best line against itself. Pio does not factor in when you just limp with AQ and the board comes A94 that when you pot it you are going to get called by 98o 54o and ATo and when you pot it again on the turn ATo is going to call again. This is imperfect play to put it in a nice way and no solver can factor in these situations.

Are you down-betting to ~1/3 pot with your entire range on this flop? I just re-read, and I guess you are. I'm not a fan of down-betting or betting so small, so just curious why? Edit: never mind. I grunched but now see your reasoning.

I'm fine with the 3bet pre. If I bet, I go bigger on the flop.

Turn is fine. If it were more of a blank, I'd bet it. This card hits him so much better than us, though, and I think he's continuing or even raising a bet from us often.

What you cite as a "simple IRL observation " isn't actually so simple to me. You haven't made a serious effort to explain why it is preferable to play a 4way pot OOP with AQo against 4 players (including a good LAG on our left) versus playing a heads up pot with significant amount of dead money in the middle. If Villain is a good LAG, he's going to make life difficult for us in either scenario. Let's recognize for a moment that he will naturally cbet the board textures that smack AQ (and naturally, we will have checked to the preflop aggressor). Suppose then that one of the bad players in position calls. From what I gather this is your dream scenario (namely, to play a hand against the fish). What's our play then? Can we profitably continue on a Queen high board? What if Villain lays the hammer on the turn and the fish folds because he's scared of getting stacked (which is of course why the LAG can be so profitable in weak games). What do we do then? You seem to believe these spots will be easy to play. Why?

Finally I would urge you to read venice's "How Do I Tell What Is Good Advice" (here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...-guide-902936/). The bolded parts in your paragraph fall into the trap of conveying the "What" but not the "Why". Your position is far from the consensus in this thread (indeed some of the more senior posters advocate a preflop 3bet, while some do not). You aren't making an attempt to explain the strategic benefit of the passive line. "It's obvious" isn't really an explanation.

I would never squeeze this hand OOP this deep. On the button or in position I would squeeze any suited ace or AJo+ and 88+.

As played either triple and rep QQ+ or x/f flop if we dont block NFD. If we do block it then cbet flop and only continue if we improve.

It's a pretty shittay spot imo mostly because you narrow utgs range while holding probably the worst offsuit hand you squeeze from SB with.

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Everyone in this thread seems to be worried that a good LAG has raised in EP and that this hand will not play out in a good way for us almost no matter what we do.

So why is no one considering that it might be OK to fold preflop?

Never? Isn't it true in theory we are allowed to squeeze a wider range as the number of overcallers increases?

Also by the way the board is rainbow, so by default the NFD is blocked.

Okay I guess AQo may be too marginal to be considered a value raise against Vs opening range. Actually I am often surprised that AQo has less than 50% against {KQo+,AJo+, suited broadways, 44+}. These numbers are sort of fickle: If Villain opens A2s-A5s for example, the equity jumps to 51%. Still, it surprised me, and this probably points to a leak in my game.

What I don't understand from the fold pre crowd is, don't we need to include some bluffs in our range against this player? I know A5s is everyone's favorite, but wouldn't AQo work nearly as well? As far as blocker effects go, it is actually even better.

If we don't include any bluffs, this is exactly the type of player who will catch on and adjust. So we have to have some bluffs.

So, even if we consider AQo a bit too thin for a value raise, wouldn't it still hold value as a merged bluff/value bet?

Advanced players have fold buttons, too. We can 3b strong hands which have an equity advantage against his UTG range, especially if folks are going to put some dead $ in the pot. Also, this widens our 3b range considerably if we decide we need to take advantage of history between H and V.

Presumably, we calling to flop a monster and try to extract. Against an advanced player, this will also be difficult. So might as well put him to pressure when we have a range advantage.

If V is going to open 88 from UTG, Ima 3b him when there will be dead $ in the pot.