Yeah, you're right. I missed that we're in the SB somehow. In that case I make the three bet larger.

If we are b/f'ing (which is what we are probably doing) do we really need to make it bigger? $150 might be perfect.

Fwiw I think there's a ton of good pf discussion here and I'll post an update tomorrow when I get off of work

The way I see it we can play auto-pilot, which everyone seems to want to do:
3 bet to $150+ where we risk $150 to try to win $100 which would probably succeed around 50% of the time, but the rest of the time: when called are we firing a cbet on most flops or what?? and when 4bet we are auto-folding, great. How often do we expect the 4-bet with that range. I just am not that into building this pot out of position against an ultra strong range, or turning AK into a bluff. Poor use of it's equity.

Or we can have more fun and play beyond the dogma. I'm really interested in flat-calling here. We're OOP, but we're likely to see it cheap and probably getting 4 to one or more on our money, I vote for turning AK into a drawing hand.

+1. If we are 3 bet/folding (wich i certainly want to do in this spot), 3 betting somewhat smaller is a solid approach.

If we do that, villain is also much more likely to come out of his shell with a 4 bet if he does have aces or kings.

What i mean is if we go too big here, villain can be happy flatting us with KK/AA, and we can valuetown ourself pretty ugly- especially if an A or K hits the board.

It needs to be larger because we have the second best hand most of the time and are out of position and we need to be setting up a 3!/bet/shove (whether we are actually doing that or not)

Also while possibly perceived in a live poker game to be large this isn't large at all. $170 is a pot sized raise which should be your general sizing when 3!'ing multiway, esp OOP.

In general I agree with 3betting larger here, but this is a special case where we have some weird FE dynamic.

11t,

If we 3b to $175 (pot is already $100), what is UTG+1 going to do with the weaker parts of his range on an A-high or K-high flop?

E.g., do we get 1 or 2 streets of value from him if he has AQ on an As8c7s flop? I consider this to be the best case scenario against UTG+1.

If UTG+1 is going to give us respect on an A-high and K-high flop, why are we 3b here? As a bluff only?

Separately, if we flat here, what is the chance that UTG will try to 3b light? And if he does 3b (light or otherwise) how do you feel about stacking off preflop against him?

Given image in this session probably this. Under more normal conditions I would prefer the autopilot 3bet to $180.

agree w/ this, 3b to 175.

the only thing that makes this semi-interesting is that we generally prefer to have HJ/CO in the pot. all arguments for flatting here should be based around how bad they are/in what ways they are bad. if UTG+1 didnt fold so much that we have a really +EV squeeze spot w/ blockers here, i could imagine a situation in which HJ/CO will stack off light enough in a srp (and fold a lot to 3b) to make flatting better.

well, the assumption is that HJ 'not a very good nitty player' is likely to fold whereas the loose passive in CO will more likely call and we'll have to give him a far broader range of hands.

So, one of the benefits of 3 bet/folding is that we fold a large amount of UTG+1's range and get heads up against CO where we should get his stack if we hit an A or K

Fwiw if I throw in a big 3b and UTG+1 FOLDS then I think it will fold around like 99% of the time so a 3b is effectively blowing everybody out of the pot assuming I 3b large enough people don't go "lol pot odds!"

So then throw in a big 3bet. I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to collect the mobnies being that we are OOP.

+1. Winning 21bbs/10bbs uncontested preflop is a nice result for AK considering, on average, the hand makes way less than that.

3bet to $160.

3b! to 150-175, fold to a 4 bet. Plus, you might pick up one or two other callers in the hand that might call with worse such as the CO with AQ who is shown to be a loose passive regular if UTG+1 decides to fold the hand.

Since we're now bluffing with AKo, would you do the same with 87s?

Grunch;

Man this is pretty gross. First few thoughts:
1. Snap 3b because there is so much dead money
2. Snap call don't mind playing AK in a MW pot but we're going to have to play it pretty passively.

I think I wind up just calling. Mainly because we're stuck a lot and have a losing image, so it's doubtful we're getting JJ+ to fold (especially since this looks like an awesome spot to squeeze). I feel like even if we get UTG+1 to fold, we won't always get the other two baddies to fold. Not to mention if UTG+1 calls, then the other two are more than likely calling, which puts us in the most ******ed spot ever.

Calling seems super weak, but I don't like raising, and we're obv not folding.

Isn't our decision to 3bet or not 3bet also based partly on how much we think that we can get from the AQ/AJ portion of his range post flop on A high flops? If we think that he's likely going to pay us off for 2 big pot sized bets, plus any money that we might make from other people in the hand, then shouldn't we consider that?

In addition, how about planning to turn our hand into a bluff post flop in a bigger pots when we miss the flop? You say that we don't call off 3 big bets, so why don't we use that to our advantage and plan to ck/rs good textured flops after he cBets gets 1-2 callers, and we can ck/raise it and bomb the turn. This gets and extra bet from him, 1-2 extra bets from other people, and we can pick up a very large pot this way.

Granted this has the chance to get smashed occasionally by QQ+, but there's only 12 combos of those hands, and there's 15 combos of AQ/AJ and 9 combos of AK left. So, we can get extra value from those hands.

In addition, some of the time we get lots of extra value from AQ on A74 type boards from him or from other villains.

Thoughts?

No.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

63,355,248 trials (Exhaustive)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
AsKc	49.66%	30,829,896	1,260,078
TT+, AQ+, AdJd	50.34%	31,265,274	1,260,078

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

80,478,288 trials (Exhaustive)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
7d8d	28.19%	22,526,262	321,438
TT+, AQ+, AsJs	71.81%	57,630,588	321,438

We're not just spewing with random cards here. We have a premium hand. We're flipping against V's range. This also assumes that he NEVER opens up his range here.

This is live poker against a guy who isn't described as a nit. He's snug. He could be opening KsQs.

I'm calling PF, because I want to keep his worse hands in, AND I don't mind having one or two other players come along and see the flop with dominated Ax and Kx.

I don't think "being fine with it if everyone folds" is the same thing as bluffing. Also, our hand does way better against their calling ranges (assuming only one, and not a string) than 87s.

I am not worried about turning my hand into a bluff here. It's live poker and with these players the only frequency that is going to be consistently the same range is their 4b+ range. If they 4bet me, cool story bro. They flip their cards face up and we move on to the next hand. What I expect to happen though is they a) all fold or b) we get 1, maybe 2 callers. I'd much rather play HU/2 callers OOP with AK than I would against 4-5 like we will more than likely have here. Like lolpony said, we will be playing super passive post flop if we just flat. HU/2 we can actually play post flop poker even though we are OOP. There are still some boards we can cbet. Best case scenario is they all fold to our 3bet. Worst case is they all call, which is going to be really rare. FWIW, I like ATsai's $160 now.

I think we need to keep this super simple and that means 3betting. The more simple we keep it here the worse our opponents play against us. When we flat we are going in blind and most (all) of the time we are playing fit or fold post.

190 to 200

hard for me to think utg+1 has the blade when he opens to $30 when there's $17 in dead money already against a sticky straddler and a fish in the sb.

The small open and stradle has started the donkey train. If our plan is to 3b/f, then we need to make it a size where we will know we're not under-repped and go $175.

Re: guys running equity calcs vs w/e ranges....obv that's only if we see all 5. Plus, you're obv not considering our FE. Nor are you able to run a post flop decision tree where in cases villian flats w/TT, peels one and folds a turn. So, we just can't say we have 50.5 or 40% or w/e.

Let's not pretend we're bluffing with a premium hand here, or get mubsy and flat oop. All that leads to guessing games. We currently have a losing image, let's not compound that problem by flatting.

That depends mostly on how loose/wide CO would call the 3bet. The difference with those hands is that we don't mind a call from HJ or CO when we have AK(probably prefer a call from CO actually) and our blockers mean V is folding more often than not. My initial reaction is that it would be close to neutral or slightly -EV to 3bet 87s.