Hi all,

please need some advice for these kind a flop and turn spots. I open 44, SB 3bets and 44 is a call.

Flop favors my range a lot and he has missed a lot of his 3betting range. I guess he is under 3betting a bit from SB, but when i give him this range:
AA-88,AKo-AJo,KQo,AKs-ATs,A5s-A2s,KQs-KTs,QJs-QTs,JTs,T9s,98s,87s

He has missed 60% of the flops.

Ok we are not going to fold right?
Raising neither i guess. There is no value in raising and we don't need to bluff. Maybe a raise to deny him his equity vs overcards?

Turn didn't helped him a lot either. call turn?

cbet stats aren't reliable, but fwiw: 82 (17) OTF and 99 (7) on the turn.

Moooooooooooraaawwwr.
HEM/Pacific NL Hold'em $0.05/$0.10 - 6 players

UTG: $10.07
UTG+1: $10.25
CO: $11.30
Button: $15.28 (Hero)
SB: $11.30
BB: $8.98

Preflop: ($0.15) Hero is Button with (6 players)
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.25, SB raises to $0.90, BB folds, Hero calls $0.65

Flop: ($1.90) (2 players)
SB bets $1.18, Hero calls $1.18

Turn: ($4.26) (2 players)
SB bets $2.41

These are the kinds of things for which solvers are the most useful

1. I think you should have just folded pre.

Pocket 4's is good for getting in cheap in a multiway pot.
Pocket 4's is an ok steal raise hand from B or CO. But, you want the action to go like this: you steal-raise, villains fold. Or, you steal-raise, 1 blind calls. On the flop, villain checks, you bet, villain folds. If anything else but that happens, try to get to the showdown for cheap.

Pocket 4's is NOT a good hand to play heads up in a 3-bet pot.
You are going to end up with an underpair 7 out of 8 tries and you will probably have to play fit or fold.
Pocket 4's is NOT a good hand to call down to the river for your whole stack, on a hunch.

2. Required Fold Equity, AKA, Minimum Defense Frequency.
Based on the betting, you need to defend your steal range with 30% of your range.
I don't know what your steal range is, but even if it is 40%, you would only need to defend with the top 12% of hands and pocket 4's is not in the top 12% of hands. So you can fold it. There's easier ways to make money in poker, imo.

As played, I would lean toward folding on the flop but I can see calling. I would definitely fold the Turn.

Magnum

I've seen solved ranges with small pp calling 3bets, so based on that, I think it is an OK call pre. One of the issues with calling those is how tricky they are to play postflop. Here, I think the flop call makes sense, but depending on your range, you could argue for a raise. Villain is saying he has an overpair (or 88, but I don't think this is in range close to 100% of the time for the average 10nl player) or a bluff, maybe an 8. You should have all the sets if you're calling with 44. The question is whether you'd raise any of those otf. I think a call is best, so no raising range. Then, Ott, I think you should mainly be considering a raise or a fold. If 76s is in your range, you now have all the sets, and all the straights, as well as top two. Assuming you bluff a lot of your FD, are you better off bluffing with your lower equity 33 and 44, your higher pairs with a gutshot (66, 77, 78, 56), or your draws with over cards (JT, QJ, if you didn't fold them otf)? Or a mix of those? Personally, as a raise would likely be all in, I'd be tempted to go for those bluffs with higher equity (pair+gutshot), but those are the type of hands which may actually function better as calls.

For me, that is one of the reasons it is worth considering deviating from solver ranges when calling small pp vs a 3bet, because without knowing how to play them here, I think you can miss out on a lot of their EV, which is probably pretty low to start off with. There are situations where they are good bluff candidates at certain frequencies, but I'm not able to identify those.

Thanks a lot PJJ. Need to read your comment more closely but makes sense what you say.

A little bit of a background story off this hand and why i call 44 in this spot (right now) I have been a winning player in the past up to 50nl with 5bb/100. At 50nl i hit my ceiling and lost interessest in the game. Also because of a burn-out at work (and therefore in private also) i quit poker for a couple of years. Never been in to GTO before and was capable of winning just attacking leaks and playing eploitative, exposing my game for a couple of eploits in return also.

Now i'm picking up the game again and with the idea of grinding up to 50nl and getting into a more GTO approach of the game. i think from 50nl+ its just necassary to defend vs good regs and also be able to better spot deviatings from equilibrium and exploit those when possible.

So long story short: i know it's easier to fold 44 vs SB 3bet and def not necassary to call to be a winning player at these stakes, but i am also forcing myself in those spots to learn and understand how ranges works in these kind of situations. Just to be a better player and grind up to 50nl again and maybe more from there.

Maybe i'll end up folding 44 in game in the future based on my learnings, but in a GTO perspective 44 is a call vs sb 3b according to various GTO preflop charts. Also my postflop play definitely not good enough right now with these holdings, but thats why i force myself to be in situations like these.

anyway, thanks for your feedback thus far guys!

Based on what you've said, I think you'd be best looking to get a solver, like aner0 says. The problem here (not just with 44, but with your range as a whole) is that you don't have so many obvious bluff candidates aside from the FD, and you will want to be mixing those between raises and calls. Here, the solver will do a much better job of helping you figure out what to do with which hands than humans could.