$5K WSOP ME, early into Day 2. Still a ways from the money. Players have been pretty active. I am not sure if folding is too nitty here, but I am not liking a flat. We are 8 handed

Villain 1 (from England) seems to be opening a lot VPIP 20% over 60ish hands - 600K

Villain 2 (Euro) - has been a bit active. Seems to be 3 betting more than most but we haven't seen him 3 bet junk. His VPIP is 28% and it says he is running cold - 290K

Hero - Playing TAG overall, but my VPIP is 26% (small sample size), haven't really gotten out of line - 170K

Blinds 2.5K/5K w/ ante that works out to 5K in the middle
OTH

Preflop: Hero has A Q in UTG+1
Villain 1 raises to 11K from UTG, Hero calls, 3 folds, Villain 2 (Button) 3 bets to 46,500, blinds fold, Villain 1 calls, hero?

I don't always flat AQ here. Does anyone like calling the additional raise and see what happens? Do we shove and try and pick up the pot? I thought this hand warranted a second look.

Unless you think your image will result in folds, i would rather be last to act and call here.

There is already 105k in the pot, so shoving 170k seems unlikely to have fold equity. Idk what hand you represent by this move after your initial call - 99, 1010?

A flop shove on a blank board probably has more FE, if any exits.

I like the pre shove more if the villains were reversed and button was bullying. Aq offsuit sucks......

At this stack depth, I like a fold. You could back raise, especially if you have some big flats in your range as traps. You are going to be about 30% vs call off ranges, so jamming for your life isn't great.

I actually like 343s answer better. You put in 2.2 bbs and now are faced with putting 25% of your stack in preflop and, given the stack sizes, you have little fold equity. If the structure is super slow (like a main event should be) and the table play has not involved a lot of three betting, I would fold.

I would fold.

If we shove either of the two guys with AK will call.

If we call about two thirds of the time we miss on the flop. And even if we hit either card we could be behind. Really we are hoping for both an A and a Q on the flop (or trips).

We have to call 7.1bb to win 23.3bb, so we are getting roughly 3:1 to call. If we call we got less then pot behind and have committed about 25% of our stack. I don’t think we want to put ourselves in that position and then play multi way post flop & OOP vs the guy who 3bet. On top of that I don’t think AQo is looking to hot vs both V’s ranges. I am definitely in the fold camp, unless you have reads on both V’s and think you got a lot of FE if you shove (which seems unlikely given that our shove is not very big in relation to the pot size).

The result was that I did fold, but the flop was AJTr. Villain 1 checked, and villain 2 bet 1/3 pot, villain 1 folded.

Do you like that flop? What would you have done with the action of villains had you called?

It was a good fold, you're likely going busto on that flop anyway.

Damn ****** nits itt

If the $5k was too much of your BR to play optimally, then nit your way to a min cash. Be aggro bro!

I do like the flat and rip on many flops. I dislike the AIPF and fold pre options.

So now I'm left with ripping pre where our opponents can call many hands, or call and rip most flop textures that may have missed villain. Just my line and not reading PIO solvers.

Or close to doubling up

I don’t see how it’s nitty:

You are still behind ak and aa.
Now/still behind jj,1010, AJ, A10, j10
If you were dominating KQ pre, you are now way behind.

But you did outflop kk.

I would probably call but can't hate you for folding either. Jamming is also a reasonable option

I'm probably 3-betting this pre more often than not although I guess flat is ok too. If I'm flatting this pre I'm probably using this as a 4-bet backraise shove a decent % of the time.

I'm not sure I understand the merits of flatting, what other hands are we flatting to create a three-way pot with barely a pot sized bet behind? What are we hoping to have happen on most flops?

AQ has enormous deficits vs UTG opens. There really are no good options with this exact hand, especially with 34 bb's.

Raising puts us in the position of 4-bets vs many UTG opens (AK, QQ+) which will allow UTG to mitigate being OOP because the 4-bet will be a jam. And UTG will get away from AJ/ATs/KQs so really it allows UTG to play virtually perfectly.

Folding is awkward with such a good hand. Passes up an opportunity to play in position vs UTG who will have problems with hands like AK that miss.

So flatting usually allows us to play in position cheaply.

However when another player 3-bets especially >3x, it truly sucks. Their range should look like JJ+/AK. Or even QQ+/AK. If it is QQ+/AK we are drawing slim OOP (OK we have relative position 3 way or more) but there are virtually no flops that we really like. This flop is no exception. Yes we outdrew KK and whats left of QQ but we are going to lose to UTG's AJs/AK/TT/JJ and BTN's AK/AA and some TT/JJ played this way.

And I really don't like the 4-bet jam. We have zero FE vs BTN. We may get UTG to fold but really so what? We are likely 30% to win and maybe less depending on what UTG holds even assuming they fold.

The way this played out it looks like we might have won once UTG folds to the flop bet (relative position advantage) but we will have to put all our chips in to find out if BTN has AA/JJ/TT/AK or not.

Good post Rick. At least he is last to act if he does flat the pre flop re-raise.