Villain is playing 23/19 and opens 25% from CO.
2.7 4bet range.

Views me as a tag, something like 25/20 with 8% 3bet and like 45% fold vs 4bet.

No real dynamic going, so jamming is out of the question to me.

Fish busted and table just broke, so rest are regs.


Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $4(BB) Replayer
SB ($512)
BB ($400)
CO ($768)
Hero ($404)

Dealt to Hero A 4

CO raises to $10, Hero raises to $35, fold, fold, CO raises to $72,

if jamming is out of the question, you shouldnt be flatting

Omg jam

flatting here is totally std and +ev if you have any postflop skills

Happily calling against almost anyone here with such odds.

Huh?

Flat ldo. And keep in mind you don't have to float every flop and spazz out just because you called this. You call because of the odds and because you will flop well a fair amount of the time, as in either you hit a hand or villain gets killed by the board.

Also, most people's brains don't work properly in 4bet pots oop from my experience so if you try not to be the one who screws up you'll get to look like this a lot --->

lol@flat.
Jam or fold. Fold is much better against this nitty villain.

"nitty villain" hahahah

Well...opening only 25% from CO is pretty nitty.

Flatting seems fine. You're getting great odds and have position here. Axs hands have around 30% equity against JJ+ AK anyway.

Super close between calling and folding. Doubt shoving will shove a profit versus this guy.

yep.

flat with plans for what??

get it in if we flop FD/OESD??

try to re KQ/KJ??? lol.

fold > shove.

You have 30% equity in the worst case scenario and something like 35-40% against a more balanced 4betting range. You're getting over 3-1 pot odds. If you're going to play badly postflop then yes, fold, but with some reasonably good picking of spots where we can continue we will be able to realize a lot of this equity. And people who hate flatting here seem to forget people let you have the pot on a lot of boards. Against a very strong player you would need to make sure your range covers the board reasonably well but at midstakes I don't find it all that necessary.

But this is all my humble opinion and I probably flat too many 4bets for the heck of it. This would not be a problem hand though imo.

I'm not sure what is going on in here.
1. Shoving - This would be lighting money on fire vs this guy.
2. Calling - Yes, you're getting 3-1 and you can't have much less than 30% equity but that doesn't really matter. You're going to the flop with a very low SPR, vs a guy that's mostly value here pre with a hand that will put more money in behind and/or fold to cbet the majority of the time.
3. Folding - Do this.

u dont realise ur eq as often as u think.

deeper than 100bb calling is a little better... 100bb. fold imo.

2.7 4bet range is pretty low...just fold

@grace: "You have 30% equity in the worst case scenario"

haha...wtf are you talking about? ok let's ignore AA (even though that's the worst case)...let's go with AK as being the "worst case". when you flop a 4 how are you going to realize your 30%? you gonna call a street and hope he shuts down and that he has AK?

here's a hint, if he is a reg and has a low 4 bet range, he probably knows that! and purposely bets small hoping people call him. When his 4 bet "bluffs" are AQ probably. go pokerstove 2.7% and see how fun it's going to be to call this and guess how often you get to realize your equity. count up the number of times he has QQ and KK and you hit an Ace and see how often you stack him. I'll count it up for you. zero. then how often you hit an Ace and stacks go in and you're good.


calling 4 bets has it's place but not vs a nit with a tight range when you yourself are a nit with a tight range (jkjk nirwanda)

@ nirwanda...your 3 bet size may be too high? i'd prob go 30-32...I think that's plenty and you'll have no trouble getting stacks in. not sure if you did this on purpose / for a reason but yeah...you don't have to go that high to get a similar number of folds...and him calling oop is usually good thing so don't worry about betting too low / encouraging a call.

Calling 4bets with this kind of hand is a topic I enjoy thinking about, as I do it a lot. In this specific case my guts tell me this is a must call as the 3bet is pretty large and the 4bet ridiculously small.

AXs is an interesting hand when it comes to calling 4bets because yeah okay our equity is always decent but whatever, most of all when we hit the case ace we're hardly ever gonna get bluffed off it. Several reasons, firstly, most of the bluffing range of our opponent is going to be Ax for starters. Secondly hands like JJ, QQ, KK he won't bluff with. Lastly even if he were to be 4b bluffing with, say, QJo, it's gonna be pretty rare that he tries to move us off our hand after we call on Axx. Happens, yes, but scarcely.

So we are indeed oftentimes dominated by AK, but it's actually pretty easy to call a bet once and fold to any further aggression if we don't improve by the turn.

With this thinking, and because arguing over nothing is pointless, I ran a simulation going by the following assumptions regarding postflop play. Feel free to correct them if you feel some are too far away from real play.

FLOP :
- Our opponent will Cbet 60$ if he hits TP or better or if he's unpaired. He will not be cbetting hands like QQ on Axx boards.
- We will call the flop with one pair hands and wheel draws. We will shove DP+, along with flushdraws and openenders. Our opponent will call TP+, flushdraw, openender, AK/AQ+gutshot

- If our opponent checks we will be betting 60 with TP or better, flushdraws, openenders.
- He will always call.

TURN :
- Our opponent will shove TP+, flushdraws, openenders, C/F the rest
- We will call if we improved to DP+, pair + FD, pair + openender, fold the rest

- We will bluffshove FDs, openenders, valueshove DP+, check the rest
- Our opponent will call turned TP+, 25% of the rest

RIVER :
If there has been a bet on one of the previous streets :

- We will valueshove DP+ and bluff 25% of the times we are unpaired
- Our opponent will call DP+ and 25% of the time when he has a middle pair (probably losing a ton of money in the process but well, people call at least that)

If there has been strictly no bet on the previous streets :
- We will never bluff and bet 60$ with TP or better
- Our opponent will always call


The sim isn't meant to be extremely precise but I think it's good enough to give a good account of what our ev will look like. Turns out against a range made of : AK, AQs, JJ+, no bluffs we get this : http://pbrd.co/16E0rRN , +7$ in EV, which is in my opinion a great outcome for a call.

Not saying it HAS to be +ev, as some parameters might have eluded me (but to be honest if they have I still think the overall situation is +ev in game, because I have purposely set aside a few things that usually go our way but would give a much more complex and debatable sim). I simply wanted to show all those "lololforofl, you HAVE to fold !!" that it was a least closer than they would expect.

FWIW, remove JJ and AQs from our opponent's range and you still get +3$ in EV, leave them and add a few bluffs and you easily get to 10-15$ in EV. Haven't toyed with postflop adjustments, as it's much more time consuming.

ArtPlay,

You're assuming a very -EV check/call from the villain on the flop. He's never folding with 16% equity? Making a -$52 call every time?

You're also assuming that in pretty much all river spots he's going to be paying you off a ton. I think that's pretty optimistic, to say the least.

Try letting him check/fold a couple combos, and removing some of his most -EV calls on the river and see how that affects the overall value of the hand.

And he never has a check raising range on the flop? You've basically taken away from him any ability to put you in a bad spot post flop...

I think your calcs are wildly inaccurate here. They just don't represent reality at all...

I'm not trying to give CO a perfect strategy against D's hand (or even perceived range), simply trying to estimate at best how people actually play.

Unless I'm mistaken you find the following spots a bit far fetched :

1- When villain cks QQ on Axx he will always C/C one 60$ bet
2- When villain cks QQ and pot is checked through on K4xx4 he will always C/C a 60$ bet on the river. I just realized writing it that actually he will seldom call if the board instead is K4xxA. I'll correct that.
3- When villain cks QQ on a Axx board and then faces a turn or river shove he will call 25% of the time.

I believe 1- to be extremely realistic, eventhough I may add a 85% factor for the sake of it. BTW if you play it against a whole range I think you maye actually HAVE to call. 2/ Seems honest to me, I may however add a 60% factor for the situation when the river is an A. 3/ Seems honest as well, 25% sigh-calling when your premium gets fuc*ked in such an annoying fashion in a 4bet pot is I believe a decent figure

I'll make the adjustments, I however doubt they'll change much as they concern very specific cases. Thanks for your input.


Edit : as for te C/R you simply can't factor in every possible decision it's a modelization of reality. Also note that we never slowplay which might put HIM in much trickier spot, much more than checkraises btw to which we would just always fold given how ridiculously strong his range is.

What 4-betting range did you give him? Is QQ the only hand he can possibly have when he checks?

Could you actually just upload the tree somewhere? I'd like to play with it a bit.

How very constructive posting, I'm not even sure why I'm responding but anyway...

I'm obviously talking about ranges when I'm referring to "worst case scenario". If you seriously think what I'm getting at is we will flop bottom pair against AK and take it to showdown then I frankly don't even know where to begin. Basically, there are spots where your range (particularly if it doesn't suck) for flatting 4bets will have villains hand killed even though his preflop range is strong. You will have opportunities to use this to your advantage. Not many, but imho enough of them. This is assuming villain plays reasonably well oop in 4bet pots, which people say he usually does because of the SPR, but frankly, most non good/bumhunting nitregs don't.

Artplay,

I would agree with most of what you wrote but one thing that caught my attention was the assumption that a hand like QQ will check Axx 100% of the time. From my experience people still cbet "to clean up the hand" a lot in those spots.

That occurred to me as well, just thought it was whatever-ish given that the amount of money put in relatively to equities is roughly the same with both lines since I haven't tried to do anything unstable like bet two streets with the naked ace for thin value and instead chose to keep it extremely basic. At least as basic as I could.

Here's a link to the tree : http://dl.free.fr/dtctLa9cB