$2/3 NLHE - only been at table for 40 minutes. Several break even regs and some break even or worse unknowns. Less aggro table than normal. Tourney circuit playing in town.

H $430 SB - 40’s WG. Should appear ABC.

V $500 UTG+1 - 40’s WG, reg. Thinks a bit but not tricky at all.

V opens to $15, 3 callers, H looks down at AKhh in SB. Goes $70. V calls, others fold.

V has most reasonable suited connectors, pairs say 77-JJ, Broadway cards, big suited A’s. Does not have AA, KK.

Flop ($178)
Th9s4h

What’s are plan?
A) normal raise, say $75-125
B) open shove $360 into $178
C) c/r trying to shove
D) check trying to control pot

H?

Interesting spot. I think you can go either way. But if you bet flop and get called turnplay might be tricky with low SPR and little FE. Also this would be a flop you d x/f a reasonable amount of the time. I would x/r, so he can stab Broadways and might even b/f Tx. Even if it gets in on the flop you are hardly ever in terrible shape.

Bet call off

Yeah surprisingly interesting problem.

1. Pre - with 3 callers, I'm making this $90 to $100 pre; I don't particularly want to play a big multiway pot OOP. Hardly a terrible result if they all fold.
2. Flop - I think if this was 2 or more callers, I'd definitely check. I'm really torn between betting, and check, shoving. Probably lean towards check-shove to generate some fold equity, though our hand may be a bit more face up.

The only bad option here is checking for pot control. With SPR 2 that has already gone out the window. Bet, shove, check/raise are all OK. Which is best is impossible to say without a better read on villain.

If this was multi-way it depends on how much you want to gamble. SPR will be well under 2 and you should be getting the odds to push with just the nut flush draw, the chance an ace or king will win is just a bonus. It will be super high variance though because one of your opponents will probably have a big pair and call.

I'd lean to option B and open shove. Given we aren't folding to a shove ourselves I want the fold equity.

Checking in this spot would be pretty awful. You turn your hand face up as a non-paired hand and give him a chance to realize his equity with hands that don't even connect with this board. For instance, a hand like 65 would go from a 4 to 1 dog on this flop to a 2 to 1 favorite if a non-heart 6 or 5 hits the turn. You also miss out on value from worse draws.

In poker, when you have high equity you should generally bet and when you have low equity you should generally check. Of course, we don't want to play our hands completely face up and so we can either remove high equity hands from our cbetting range or add bluff candidates to our cbetting range. The latter is generally a far better strategy because of fold equity (preventing our opponent from realizing their equity) and because it allows us to build a bigger pot when we have a hand. AKhh is the perfect candidate to cbet here. It's a bluff, a semi-bluff really, which can get value from low equity draws while at the same time get higher equity one pair hands to fold.

Just shove. If you check, the villain is likely to check behind. If you hit your hand on the turn, the villain is likely to x/f. If the villain folds, that's a good result and if called, you most likely are flipping.

Would we ever open shove AA, JJ 109 or a set? Im not sure that line makes sense?

I like a half pot size bet to fold out under pairs and jam turn. I think the line is much closer to AA than open jamming flop for 2x. If you hit the flush you can either jam turn or check and jam river.

Spot on. Bet $100 and jam every turn.

Open jamming is so bad and only gets called by a better hand. We have great equity vs anything. Why would we try to make a one pair hand fold? SPR is too small so we want the action.

I prefer a smallish flop bet and then a jam on all blank turns.

However, I disagree with not wanting a one pair hand to fold. One pair hands folding and not realizing their equity is not a bad thing. The lower the SPR, the more we would want 1 pair hands to fold. Theoretically if the SPR was super small like .01 then we'd want villain's entire range to fold (including unpaired low equity hands). If SPR was large then we have far more implied odds when we hit, and the amount of dead money in the pot would not be as meaningful.

I think a smallish bet ($75-$100) on the flop and then jamming most turns makes sense here. That's how you would want to play an overpair, right? I agree with Larry that open shoving this flop for 2x pot doesn't make a ton of sense. The nice thing about your hand though is there isn't really a bad way to play it, so long as you don't fold.

There are a ton of hands that will call flop and fold turn (QJ, KQ, 78, 88, 9x, maybe Tx every once in a while). When villain calls our turn jam, we almost always have a ton of equity. If he calls flop and turn with a hand like JTs, it is what it is. You have loads of outs and the many times that you have QQ+ you are loving life.

When you bet small on flop, you also give villain a chance to jam over your flop bet with a hand like QJ or a worse flush draw.

I would rather check-shove with AKhh if the board was JT9hh or something like that. That would be a flop where we actually might want to check a hand like AA or KK. I don't know if T94hh is really a board that it makes sense to check overpairs on. There are certainly many posters that would know better on this than I would though.

Edit: Ah, appears a couple other posters chimed in with the same advice above me while I was typing this.

A. Normal bet/call. Shove all turns.

85/90 pre

If we bet anything and he calls, the turn's gonna commit him anyway. I would wanna use up all my FE now and jam the flop.

lots of people do it all the time when they have aces or a set with a shallow SPR and a FD on the flop.

We only have 360 left and the pot otf is 175. If we bet 100 and he calls, pot would be 375 with 260 behind and he's not likely folding at all at that point after putting more money into the pot (which is why I don't like a c/r) so we may as well try to fold out the majority of his range especially since we're discounting aces and kings. If he calls with tens, we still have outs to win.

Per OP, villain's range is "most reasonable suited connectors, pairs say 77-JJ, Broadway cards, big suited A’s. Does not have AA, KK."

Against this range, our hand is about a 67% favorite, depending on how many offsuit Broadway combos he has. We basically have a value hand on this board, I don't think we need to be super concerned with folding out the majority of villain's range here.

As described, villain has plenty of hands that will call flop for $100 and fold turn when we jam for $260. That's a very strong line to take in a 3bet pot.

I bet like I have AA, so a chunky flop bet to say ~$110 then shove every turn. I'm not open shoving or check-shoving because that's not how I play AA here.

My thinking on the flop.

I figure I’m 70% or so against V’s range here.

V Continuing hands - 9Ts, 99, TT, QJhh, JJ, QQ - bet flop or c/r should be fine. Either way money is probably all getting in

V’s misses - 77, 88, all Broadway combos. I’m really far ahead of this group. FE here is great to gets folds from small pairs and potential chops w/ other AK combos. Bet flop, jam turn or c/r flop as I’d expect V to bet if checked to (he’s basic thinking - if I bet I must have whiffed w/ AK. If I c/r that’s got to be AA, KK).

V’s mid hands - suited connectors that flopped 1 pair and maybe some BD equity. Some as above - I’m fine playing for stacks here but still obviously don’t hate folds.

Question for me at table was what line best gets V to fold his 1 pair holdings, bet $100, shove turn, c/r shove flop or open shove flop?

Yeah but if our equity is in the 60's it's nothing to shake a stick at so I would rather not have to depend on hitting a flush to win, and if by chance he calls us we still have at least 9 outs to double up.

The stack sizes are pretty wack, which is why I like $60 on the flop and $300 on blank turns.

Yeah, that's def an option but if he raises the 60 our plan goes out the window pretty much. I personally prefer slightly deeper stacks to take this line so there's more room to maneuver later (while narrowing his range).

Check/raise seem too risky. If villain is thinking a bit he is going to check his meh value hands a lot. The other two I don't think it matters given your stack size. Stacks are in that awkward range where shoving flop looks too big but calling any flop bet likely commits villain to hand.

It's not like we don't have any equity. If he raises, then I'm more than happy to GII on the flop.

Yeah we're 43% against exactly 99 -> QQ which might be a pessimistic range for villain anyway.

Just make a normal bet and call it off. If we open shove we allow him to play optimally against us, he’ll only call 2-pair or better and fold everything else (and if he calls AA or KK we’re in not great shape).

I'd raise more pre. There's already $45 in the pot, so I'd make it like $100.

How would you like to face a $360 shove into a $180 pot with JJ or QQ? Pretty uncomfortable spot.

I've 2x potted the flop with AA and a tight image and gotten called by worse. With the popularity of YouTube vlogs, polarized overbets seem more common.