Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas Bakker
If we make a four-bet to $240, the button will be getting around 3:1 odds and he will have position. Considering the range we assigned to him, it seems completely unreasonable to assume that he will fold many stronger hands. Considering that he has position, we are not happy when he calls our four-bet with slightly weaker hands either. Thus four-betting that small would simply be giving away money.
If he was three-betting a much wider range, then a small four-bet (still bigger than this 24bb, though) might have some merit, but it is a dangerous habit to get used to; in many cases, you'll just be building a huge pot while out of position while giving your opponent the choice when to play.
In what ways do you think position helps the opponent if he flats your 4-bet with starting stacks of 110bb's? Even a very small 4-bet leaves the stack to pot ratio at most around 1.6:1 and probably less for most 4-bets. If he calls, are you firing out 1/3 pot and folding when you miss, or are you treating it like a shove and just giving up, or doing something else? I just feel like it should be a fairly straightforward matter to deduce a flop line for every conceivable action which has us either folding or getting in, given our opponent has 3-bet us wide but then called a 4-bet.
But I don't see the power of position really playing a role in any context at all once we 4-bet with 110bb stacks. Anything less than 160bb's really requires that you know ahead of time exactly how the hand is going to play out once you make the 4-bet. Stacks are just too shallow.
Also, 4-betting and then folding to a ship with AQs is kind of terrible IMO, although depending on your reasoning it can have merits. The problem is that if he is 3-betting light, then 4-bet/folding basically allows him to play perfectly given our exact hand, and folding weakens our perceived 4-bet range even though it's a good hand. So we loose the value it should be adding to our range. I think if you've decided he's light, you have to go with AQs and just know that the equity you lose from being behind when you're called is made up for by the times you pick up the 3-bet uncontested. And if he's not light enough for you to be confident in doing that, you can simply 4-bet small with a polarized range and toss AQs in this particular spot. (Calling 3-bets oop just spews money.)
Now then, a potential reason to 4-bet/fold AQs is if our opponent is super exploitable, 3-betting wide, but only shipping with a very strong range. So like if we have datamined a guy and just sat down at the table and haven't played with this guy but we still know he'll be light--but he doesn't know how we play--I can see making a case for this play. But I can't imagine anybody in an online 5-10 game being difficult enough that we feel we have to 4-bet but dumb enough to be so exploitable as to 3-bet light but fold the vast majority of those hands to a 4-bet.
(Interesting, in Rush, a situation were 4-bet/folding AQs is OK happens frequently. Because it takes more hands to see how often a guy 4-bets than it does to 3-bet, if you have 40-150 hands on a guy, and he has 3-bet say 7/20 times, and you've only had one or two 4-bet opportunities and haven't 4-bet, you can 4-bet him and he is forced to assume without any other info that your 4-bet is strong. This is a very rare case that only happens in a game like Rush where you don't play with the same player and he has little enough info on you that the discrepancy between reliable 3-betting info and reliable 4-betting info per number of hands played can be utilized. It's obviously highly exploitable and thus once you have more than a few hundred hands on a person--and he on you--you can't 4-bet light nearly as often.)
Anyway, back to my original question! What uses do you think position has in a 4-bet pot 110 bb's deep that can't be accounted and planed for ahead of time given such shallow stacks?
Also, I'm reading your book, and I really like it.