Preflop: Is it a better strat to just 4bet this hand pre if we suspect V is 3betting really wide? 4betting gives us equity denial against AJ, AQ-type hands, but if V is gonna be blasting off OTF like this but folding a lot to 4bets and only calling all-ins with the top of his range then I can see flatting with my entire range, including KK+ and AK, being the most +EV.


Been seeing a ton of overbets recently. I know that there are lots of river spots with SPR <2 where OOP is basically playing an all-in or check strat with his entire range, I'm wondering if V's are misapplying some things they're seeing solvers spit out.

Anyway, flop we're never ever supposed to be in this node of the game tree, this is actually a high-freq check board for OOP according to PIO. Solver says, hero 99 is a call if two conditions are met: if V is taking a huge chunk of his range including all his A-high and air and blasting off like this AND if hero's range is capped because we're deciding to 4bet, not flat, the top of our range. Otherwise,we should have enough stronger pairs and better to fold 99 without being exploitable.

That being said, anyone calling it off here?

Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - 900/1,800 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 37,905 (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 28.57, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
SB: 1,212 (VPIP: 14.29, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 18.18, Hands: 14)
BB: 61,720 (VPIP: 32.56, PFR: 10.00, 3Bet Preflop: 11.76, Hands: 44)
UTG: 33,530 (VPIP: 28.57, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
UTG+1: 97,200 (VPIP: 21.43, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
MP: 27,240 (VPIP: 14.29, PFR: 7.14, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
MP+1: 19,780 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
Hero (CO): 72,736

8 players post ante of 220, SB posts SB 900, BB posts BB 1,800

Pre Flop: (pot: 4,460) Hero has 9 9

fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 3,600, fold, SB calls 92 and is all-in, BB raises to 13,552, Hero calls 9,952

Flop: (29,856, 3 players) 8 Q 2
BB bets 47,948 and is all-in, fold

Turn: (29,856, 2 players) T

River: (29,856, 2 players) 4

His sizing flop is very very weak. It's a levelling spot but I strongly lean toward calling because a bluff makes more sens than anything else and trully nothing makes sens to shove, KQ is probably the same thing as 99 against his range and I don't think we can ever fold KQ.

99 are a bit different than KQ because KQ blocks top pair. Hero having 99 means, all his QQ, AQ, and KQ are unblocked.

And if only a bluff makes sense to hero, then V can actually start shipping AA, KK, QQ, AQ, KQ, even JJ and TT, and expect to get called by worse and get paid to the max. So I don't think hero can call off all his pairs, especially if hero traps AA and KK pre (which he is a good amount of time)

Why do you say it only makes sense as a bluff? He has fishy stats--among other things, that could mean V is out of line, but it could mean he's a terrible value bettor who sizes his vbets way too big.

Oh yeah we definitely want to pile this preflop, in fact openjamming 21 BBs from the button might be a better option than raise/calling. As played, his flop jam is for like 80% pot right? Easy easy call.

Ah **** nevermind I thought you were button not cutoff. Let me reevaluate

Ok 34 BBs feels like a perfect stack to realize equity and put a 4bet in his eye. This is what I would probably do, but I'm open to listening if others say 99 does too well realizing equity as a call and we need to save our light 4bets for other hands.

Once we get to the flop, were really high up in our range. We should have no overpairs, probably no JJ and maybe even no TT. If we only call with our queens/sets i think we're folding way too much so I call.

I hate the idea of flatting AA just to protect our flatting range, jam AA and play poker with the weaker hands, which sometimes means we have to call it off with 99 on a Q high board.

Thanks. Yeah if I were CO with 21b this is almost always an auto ship pre but if somehow I managed to find myself OTF with that hand I'd snap it off. When V goes more than 1.5x pot and for 34bb it's a little different IMO.

You say we're high up in our range, but that's not exactly true. This is probably close to our median hand if we're playing a mixed strat (mostly 4bet) with our monsters.

This is such a rare spot postflop (At least, in theory it should be) that I think in this hand, in terms of importance, it's preflop decision>>>>>>Anything else

I think it's tough to say which preflop strategy is highest EV: flat everything preflop and give him the chance to spew postflop, or jam preflop and prevent him from realizing hot/cold equity or from constructing his range postflop (with what he perceives to be a range advantage) in such a way that forces us to fold the best hand sometimes. Or just flat AA and jam everything else. Or jam AA and flat everything else. Or some other strategy....

FWIW I've played around with the ranges in PIO in a bunch of ways and it's extremely hard to come up with any scenario in which 99 is a call. Apparently even if we're mostly 4betting our monsters, we still have enough AQ, QQ, 88, JJ, and TT to make 99s a pure fold. So calling here I think is totally exploitative.

At this point, I'm almost entirely convinced we should be jamming pre

Why are you so reluctant to ever flat AA? I think V's will make more mistakes postflop than preflop, and that's especially true when they're OOP. If V we're bluffing in this hand with like AQ or KJ wouldn't that be a pretty decent ex post justification for flatting AA pre?

When people are bad enough to c-bet jam almost 2x pot on that flop we need to be doing some exploiting. There's pretty much no way he's in any way shape or form balanced there.

I appreciate the feedback, but I'm asking why you think that.

He can be balanced, he has the combos in his range to make that happen. If he only jams AA and 76s here then he's balanced. If he thinks our range is all pairs and if only jams like AA and 22 (if he ever does have 22), then he's balanced. That doesn't mean he's maximizing his EV, however. But saying there's no way he can possibly have the right mix of value and bluffs is dangerous because he certainly has the combos at his disposal to do that.

Have you consistently seen this spot before and seen V's show up with air, or are you just going with a gut feeling?

As I said above, my first choice to exploit here would be to flat my monsters preflop. What are your thoughts on preflop strat for this hand?

You're right, he could possibly be balanced, it's just that he's probably not. It's pretty obvious that he's a recreational player clicking buttons with no coherent strategy, and either he thinks that's a good way to play his best hands or he does that as a bluff. It's just very weird to overbet shove AA and give you no chance to bluff or flat a weak hand vs his normal cbet and that's a pretty dry board with no real need for protection. Let's be real he NEVER has QQ/88 for exemple.

Then again, I mean, yes, he will have some nuts sometimes and folding the flop is not absurd but you'll see some random AK/AJ a lot there, and yes I'v seen that consistently. Even if we think he's 100% balanced and just shoving his all range he just needs to have a few 77/AK/AJ/AT and 99 would probably still be a call.

PF I would mostly just 4-bet shove given positions and stack sizes but it's tough to say without knowing how active/agressive you've been, how tilted V is, etc... Sometimes it might just be a fold and sometimes flat makes sens. A lot of people don't really 3-bet bluff in the BB and against them we shouldn't flat traps or really much at all and just fold or shove. Clearly depends on the dynamic, your image, your read on him and that sort of thing. Obviously if we know he has too much bluffs having traps is cool, but with no real info I don't think we should assume that because it's so easy to just defend the BB so people tend to have a very strong 3-bet range in that position. Also a reason to flat could be that you think you have a serious postflop edge and using position and our reads and stuff could be optimal (and we probably want to shove PF everytime against a wizzard that we suspect might make better postflop decisions than us on average).

But then again the wizzard will often be pretty balanced/polarized wich makes flatting logical.

If PIO says to fold 99 that's good enough for me, I guess I was wrong.

The reason I want to 4bet AA stems from a desire to try to play GTO unless I have a big reason to exploit. I know Libratus never flatted with AA over something like a 250k hand sample. I think the underlying principle is that equities run too close together preflop and you benefit both from often getting it in really well and from picking up some fold equity when villain folds (by contrast, once you see the flop with AA and it comes A94r, you gain pretty much nothing from folds). Of course, it also acts as a range balancer; 4betting AA also allows you to sometimes 4bet A3dd and get some folds, which is amazing.

Vs this particular villain who has a PFR of 10, I don't expect him to really spew a bunch postflop, so I'm sticking with the original plan of trying to get in as many chips as possible preflop.