Okay, so back in the days of yore, many of the books and posts I read about PLO had this common idea about AA hands:

If you re-raise preflop, you mark yourself as having AA, or likely AA, so unless you can get pot committed with the re-raise, be wary of doing this because people can play nearly perfectly against you after the flop when you do it.

Fast forward to today: Plenty of the Hand Histories being posted deal with an AA hand where the Hero re-raises with AA hands, and is not getting anywhere close to pot committed by doing so. I don't see anyone advocating against these re-raises in the afore mentioned posts, either.

What am I missing? Is this thinking considered debunked now? Did people just get so sick of pointing it out that they dropped it? Other?

I think many of AAxx posts stopped happening because people eventually caught on to the fact that if you have one pot size bet left, you're going to be getting the right odds to make that shove every single time with very few exceptions.

The term / response to such posts became "standard"


Update to today, where the emphasis is on broadening your 3bet and 4bet range to the point that opponents can't put you on an AAxx hand, simply because you made one of the above plays.There is still a ton of merit to reraising AAxx hands, but if you have a 3bet of 1, its going to be obvious you only do this with AA hands. Mix in some flat calls of your AAxx hands as well as a broader 3 and 4bet range, and you've restored the mystery to whether or not you have AAxx.

Thanks for the reply DingusEgg!

so I'm guessing Berman's strategy of not even open raising AAxx is out of date?

People used to say a lot of things...

ha, yeah. i raise them but i open probably too many hands so it fits my style. sometimes i will flat a 3bet with aa to mix things up, but that's about it for slowplaying them.

Pretty sure raising AA is going to make you money (compared to folding) no matter how tight you are perceived to be.

I think in most games that aren't very tough, flatting AA to a 3bet when you can get most of the money in or if you're IP is a very big mistake.

Well obv I dont fold them, haha

I agree, but sometimes if the other two cards arent coordinated and im not suited I will play them more passively.

If they're not good, then you have more reason to 4bet, unless you're extremely deep.

limp folding AA obv GTO