1/3 game

Hero (covers): Very aggressiveness image, will explain later in the post.

V1 ($1300): Table fish who has stated that he doesn't get to play much so he doesn't like to fold when he does play.

V2: ($225): Middle age housewife playing with her husband. Having fun, not too serious.

V3: ($1000): Super tight mid 20s white guy. Only seen him play a few hands and has generally played super straightforward.

Dynamic: Hero has been at table for about an hour and is being sociable. Has built up a lot of banter with V1 and has been three betting about 75% of V1's opens. Examples:

V opens for $25 on straddled hand, one caller behind, hero three bets on button to $85, both call. Flop 9 high and both V's fold to $180 c bet.

V opens for $15, one caller, H three bets to $55 from BB both call. Flop 964r, hero bets $85, V1 call. Turn Q, hero bets $140, V calls. River 9. c/c V tables 45o and is good.

V opens to $10, gets two callers, hero three bets to $50 in SB, V calls. Flop A63 goes c/c. Turn 4 H bets $50 V calls. River Q c/c, V shows 1010 and is good.

OTTH:
V1 opens to $15 from UTG+2, V2 calls MP, V3 calls button, hero is in SB and has red AA.

What's the move?

Ovious 3bet is obvious.
I think that I would make it $80 here given the dynamic.
I'd like to say $100, but I think that gets folds too often.

I'm assuming you can buy in deep in this game?

My deepstack sucks, but anyhoo...

We have super aggro FOS image. V1 hasn't folded to a 3bet yet, and postflop he looks to try to passively get to showdown with any piece, and hasn't gotten aggro/bluffy at all.

Typically when I 3bet, since it will usually setup a stackoff SPR at the stacks I typically play and possibly with a face up hand, I would like to raise to an amount that prevents setmining, which in this case would be to about $180. So *if* V1 is fishy enough to call that raise size, that's what I'd do. My guess is that is too much though as the other 3bets he has called have been more reasonable. Since our hand isn't as face up due to our constant 3betting, and since Villain looks to be fairly straightforward, we can probably risk offering good setmining odds. Although at the same time we really don't want to set it too small where we invite in the other 2 players (especially deep V3). My initial thought was something like $90 which hopefully would create a HU pot with V1, but even this creates an SPR of < 6 where stacks will be trivial to get in OOP having given fairly decent 17+ implied odds to call the 3bet (meh).

I don't find this trivial. With our FOS image I might lean towards the stupid $180, but I just fear we only pick up $45 too often. But dude hasn't folded to a single 3bet from us yet, so perhaps we should be pushing the envelope here.

GsucksatdeepstackG

I'd like a handle on V3s range and V1 is calling whatever - so no less than 100, prob no more than 110 in case V2 has a back shove in her.

V3's range before I three bet is probably 22-JJ, 78s+ connectors, J10o+ connectors.

I think he dumps the bottom connectors to a three bet and calls the suited Broadway, pocket pairs, AQ/AK hands.

$75-100

75 feels perfect

100 feels right. Given our chronic 3betitus we should have no trouble getting action.

V1 ain't folded yet and I agree no more than 110 also as Amanaplan suggests so housewife can reopen the action should she decide to go with it. Prob a 10% chance or so but worth considering esp. Since I think at that sizing >110 as GG suggests we may really start to lose some of v1's range.

I know I'll be outvoted, but the issue I see with $75 is that it creates a HU SPR of 6.8 OOP (i.e. easy peasy for Villain to get stacks in by river by simply calling us down) while offering quite decent implied odds of ~22:1. And if the other deep Villain comes along, the SPR will be a rather stoopid < 4 against him offering fairly decent 18:1 implied odds. My guess is this is exactly where this PAHWM is headed, so I suppose we all have a plan?

Gtaking$45andrunning/gettingin$180can'tbethatbad,canit?G

$90

Ty, though I meant aiming to get handle after 3b by sizing larger where he should be more 88-QQ, AQs+ that may have played passively IP against the fish the first time around. Ideally have him dump the SCs if he's nitty enough.

I'm making it about $95. I'm honestly not thinking too much about SPR at this point. I'm mostly just looking to get as much money in and get called as possible. I'll worry about awkward stack sizes when it happens because Thai guy seems bad enough that a weird stack size is less important than building a big pot right now. $95 feels like it gets called enough while maxing preflop value. We shouldn't have too much trouble playing for stacks if we want this way too.

I'm assuming we know flatting and folding are bad

I think $90 is good.

Problem with lower sizes is that we'd hate to get one call followed by a string of calls.

What sucks is that the one guy we want to fold (V3) is going to be closing the action and has position postflop, which allows him to play almost perfectly. He will set mine and play his suited connectors correctly, and also fold when his odds won't allow him entry.

Hopefully 90 does the trick of getting V1 to call. Sizing might discourage V2 from calling, which will hopefully make V3 fold, but I don't think he's folding often since he's OTB closing action against likely at least one fish.

If everyone folds, it's sad, but it's not as sad as being OOP in a 4-way bloated pot with AA imo. Way too easy to make mistakes. But your maniacal image should hopefully earn you a call from ultra stationey V1.

Why is this a problem?

It's not.

$95, then b/f, b/f, b/f looks good.

Meh I feel the opposite. Building a 300-400 pot, even OOP 4-way, is so so much better than folding the table out.

The issue I take with all of the different posts that you make that are essentially this same idea is that you are assuming that people never make mistakes with other parts of their range even if they are getting good odds and taking a big chunk of(or our entire) stack when they flop a set against us.

So yes, we may be stacking off to them when the flop a set after we make it $85, and then put in another $1000 behind that, but only some of the time.

But that's also ignoring all the times that they also have AK (which will almost certainly fold to a $180 bet) and would have lost $500+ in value to us drawing nearly dead after flopping top pair.
Or KQs/AQs that gets a little frisky and calls pre flop and binks top pair and decides to peel the flop and eventually folds to our second barrel on the turn. Against drawing very slim (10% or less street to street).

Or when he peels with 65s for a decent chunk, flops a pair and a bdfd, calls a large sized flop bet and whiffs his 14 outter on the turn (5 to improve to the best hand and another 8 or 9 to improve enough to put more money into the pot) while still drawing pretty slim to the river.

There are a range of situations where he can put a decent chunk of money in pre flop with hands that are not pocket pairs, only to lose more money post flop (or just ck/fold his 65s on a KT3r flop) that make us a lot of money that are not just him stacking us or him folding.

And almost none of these things can happen for $180.


Take for example two actual hands that the OP mentions:

If we make it $85 V may well peel with all of these hands and put money in post flop. If this plays out like H1 did, and we have AA we nice sized pot from V who was drawing very thin the whole way.

Same thing for H2, (albeit, a K high / Q high flop with the same texture otherwise seems more likely) where we win another nice sized pot.

These just won't happen with a sizing like $180 pre.
But they can easily happen with $75 - $100 pre flop.


This is also ignoring the times when V has like JJ/QQ and doesn't 4bet us and we end up taking a huge chunk of his stack on a 9 high board where he simply doesn't believe us because we've been 3betting all day long and our sizing was reasonably consistent with the rest of our hand histories.

This is either going to be a super high variance spot or a low variance "small hand small pot" hand. My first and obvious thought is to 3! for fat value, however a case can easily be made for flatting with an underrepped hand and relative position on V1, while also getting to see how the other deep V3 reacts on the BTN. Flatting would create an SPR of 21.5x vs. V1 and 16.5x vs. V3 which is only a better alternative when you can't get it down to the 3-5x range (which we should we able to if everyone comes along to our 3!).

Playing a face up one pair range deep and OOP is usually not a recipe for success. Perhaps this is a chance to pull a page out of our FPS playbook and go for deception and stack preservation instead.

Maybe I'm just regressing horribly/running terrible in high variance spots.

3-bet the max that V1 will call, SPR be damned.

OP, have you seen V1 call big PFR's? How large? I feel like $125 is the right amount as we already know V1 doesn't like to fold and we look spewey as is. V1 has opened up front a decent-sized amount which indicates strength. I'm assuming if we make a larger-than-normal 3-bet here, he'll call.

I'm kinda on board with this, unless FPS involves flatting (which it sounds like it does). I guess I'm more so on the side of the first part.
I think I must be too, since the overwhelming response is to hope we get called by everyone, when in reality, I feel like that's going to be thin EV except on the driest of boards.

Are we good enough to b/f? Aren't we making mistakes a lot when we do (esp. given our image), unless it's V3 who raises us?

Yup, very good points. My guess is the fish here will make many mistakes (especially with TP), so that the times he binks and stacks us will hopefully be offset by the mistakes he makes calling preflop / calling weakly on the flop / sometimes even stacking off with TP (although noting that in some of those cases he manages to get there). Although my guess is V3 won't be nearly as bad.

But my conservative mentality definitely leans towards low variance easy to play spots (which may be costing me in winrate, I'm not convinced either way). I wonder how much AA earns on average per hand? Is it more than $45 (which is the "worst" case scenario in 3betting stoopid big)? And how often does this guy who doesn't like to fold and opened in EP eek out a call of our stupid bet (ex. does he fold TT here?).

GcluelessdeepstacknoobG

3bet to 85

-> V2/V3 are no real concern because short/predictable
-> We want value from V1

Plan is to b/f on most flops, maybe GII vs V1 on boards where he thinks his range is the nuts. When he has JJ on 655 or something ..

I would way more be for flatting if likely HU or no semi-significant dead money in the pot.

Here, I think 3betting stoopid big (even shoving) is perhaps better than flatting cuz at least we take down $45 uncontested OOP with zero risk (shouldn't be undervalued, imo).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I think this is a good point. We can comfortably b/f against V3 so we don't mind letting him in the pot. We can b/f against V1 in a lot of situations but he's also going to put us in some tough spots if he decides to fight back this hand.

As I mention in SPR guesses above:

- if we go HU, on the river we'll have << PSB left (unless we're betting really small)
- if we go 3way, it's likely we don't even have enough bets left to make the river

ETA: In fact, those above SPRs were with a $75 bet. With a $95 bet, the HU SPR will be 5.5 against V1, and 3ways including V3 it'll be 3 - 4. About the only street you have room to bet/fold is the flop (and even then you could argue that's bad, especially with our FOS image). We're pretty much in a spot where if we 3bet preflop we won't have room to fold postflop, imo.

Gnotexactlyalotofplayleftoncewe3bet,imoG