How many against full stacked players?

the most important factor of shipping it in pre is clearly position of the two players. giving stats without telling us if you were in ep against the btn or in the btn against the bb is ridiculous.

Maybe I'm just a sicko, but I kinda like just shoving this flop, sure he'll fold his bs non paired hands, but he'll snap call any pp imo.

You might not have the image for that though, but after your pre play, I think your check to an aggressive player will look more scary then a bet on the flop, he may even shove TT over your c-bet "lol, u have AK". I would have 4b more pre too as I think he's calling widest pre.

If this is true (and in many games it certainly is), I hope you're thinking about how to exploit this when you don't have kings.

This is dead on too. Nit opens UTG (say he opens like 4% UTG) generally the best play is to flat kings. The biggest thing people don't realize is you're not flatting because you're scared of AA and I hear a lot of people talk about postflop trying to minimize losses against AA. Now of course it's important to realize AA is still a part of his range, but especially against a nit like that there will be a ton of boards where only one hand beats you. If he's not opening 44 UTG there are a lot of sets he just can't have. You should be instead looking to maximize value against hands like 99-QQ when your hand is deceptive, especially to someone who doesn't understand this concept.

Very very good cotw.

I wouldn't really call 6% 3bet stat crazy aggro.

it creates enough dead money that we can profitably 4bet/call KK when we add said dead money together with our equity against his continuing range. (this of course assumes that he is 3betting our whatever it is (ep, mp, etc) with 6% of his range. or maybe even more considering that 6% might be overall and it might be 10% from the blinds.

+1.

I agree with you. I was just saying 6% 3bet isn't crazy aggro. My 3bet from the blinds is about 6% and I consider that very tight.

75 is not insanely high, it's standard. The average at NL50 this year, according to my PT statistics, has been 73.14. With regs, it's even higher. The guy I've played most hands this month has 88% fold to 3-bet (VPIP14 PFR 9). The second guy has 93 (VPIP 9 PFR 2). There's a few regs (like me) who 4-bet light and call with questionable hands, so against those you can 3-bet for value much more liberally, but 15 out of the 20 most active regs have fold to 3-bet statistics over 80%. 3-betting light is insanely profitable at the micros, but at the same time 3-betting anything but AA for value is sometimes difficult. KK is still for value, but when I have TT-QQ I tend to look at other things besides value. If I have position and the pot's likely to be HU, I often rather flat than 3-bet. No point in 3-betting, say, QQ, when the opponent will fold hands like TT-JJ and AQ-AT, hands you really want to get action from. If the pot's gonna be multiway, you should 3-bet of course, since it's hard to get value out of smaller overpairs in multiway pots, because the opponent will assume you have a set or 2 pair when you show strength. If there's a raise and and a caller or two, there's no shame in winning the pot right away, but when it's likely going to be HU on the flop, it's often easier to extract value when you don't 3-bet.

This maybe should have gone into the stats thread. If so, apologies.

Was messing around with my DB, and thought some people might find this interesting.

Over last 282687 hands:

I've gotten KK all-in preflop headsup 108 times.
I've faced AA in this situation 25 times.
I've won 5 of those 25 times (20%, actual equity 18.1%).
My winnings are -$38.17, but bb/100 is +494.11.

Once I got all-in with two people, one who had AA and the other who had KK. My equity in that situation was 1% .

This is what's funny how the whole "It's +EV .. in the LONG run" yeah the long run is just massive amounts of hands you'll likely never see show great profit, if he's uber nit and 4-bet shoves AI .. it's your choice to lay down KK

I think I found a place for it...

Thanks for the stats.

this

I did this exact thing to a reg nit at .50 on ft last night. Works like a charm.

I'm re-reading COTWs because I played rather miserably today. This one brought a question up for me based on a hand that came up in my evening session. If UTG+1 had been a nit, I would have leaned toward folding to the shove. However, this player's stats - 17/15 with 7% 3-bet - made me freeze and I didn't feel good about calling or folding. Any suggestions for these situations when it's not a nit shoving? Flip a coin?

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (BB): $25.00
UTG: $28.38
UTG+1: $25.00
UTG+2: $9.40
MP1: $25.24
MP2: $13.75
CO: $25.00
BTN: $26.85
SB: $23.75

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BB with K K
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $0.90, 2 folds, MP2 calls $0.90, 3 folds, Hero raises to $4, UTG+1 raises to $25 all in, 1 fold, Hero ?

If you have a good sample size on UTG+1 i would look at EP stats for UTG+1 and take it from there?

This is a bit tricky as UTG+1 might think you are squeezing and shove lighter. Pull out pokerstove and run some hands and see what range he needs to have for you to be +EV

Only have 53 hands on UTG+1. He was 13/13 from EP and had been playing aggressively. Here's what I come up with on PokerStove:

1,530,799,776 games 1.813 secs 844,346,263 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 24.989% 24.42% 00.57% 373753656 8778972.00 { 22+, A8s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, AJo+, KQo }
Hand 1: 75.011% 74.44% 00.57% 1139488176 8778972.00 { KK }

So, with his range, I think it would have been best for me to call his shove.

That's too wide for a 4bet shove range imo.

Would narrow it down to say JJ+, AK, maybe AQs and KQs but not sure.

Ah, yes indeed, still working on my first cup of coffee this morning. If I narrow his range for shoving, equity becomes close to even with me slightly ahead. IMO based on this, a call is better than a fold.

I think calling pre is better if he seems aggro and opens quite wide from EP, take a flop and play some post flop.

Edit: On the other hand, we are out of position so 3betting > calling > folding me thinks.

Pokerstars 2NL FR (dec'09-may'10)

Hands: 101.067
KK: 475 (428ptbb/100; win 80%)
AIpf KK: 40 (964ptbb/100; win 67,5%)

vs Short Stacks:
All: 18 win (941bb) / 11 loss (520bb)
AA: 0 win / 5 loss

vs Full Stacks:
All: 5 win (846bb) / 6 loss (606bb)
AA: 1 win / 3 loss

Tie: 2 (both KK vs KK)
no flop: 3 (yes, sometimes they DO fold at 2NL when you raise AI)

Seems I'm conservative with going AI preflop (1 out of 12) AND lucky to dodge the AA in the deck (16% of shortstack and 36% of fullstack) at least preflop (going AI post flop and then finding AA in villain's hand is a different matter).
In case you're wondering why the numbers don't add up; it's because of multiway pots that have a side-pot (twice I lost against AA this way only loosing 16bb and 10bb because the AA were short and the JJ-QQ were full)

Full stacks show(13):
AA(4), AQ(1),AJ(1),KK(3),JJ(2),TT(1),66(1)

Short stacks show(32):
AA(5),AK(5),AJ(2),AT(3),JJ(5),99-22(7),Axs(2),KQ(1),KJs(1),98s(1)

As for a hand that made me wish for more time in my timebank.

I've been playing 11/8 for the last 45 hands

UTG+1: played 11 hands (82/0), saw 10 flops, 6 turns and 2 rivers + SD, played str8 on turn slow and only minraised on the river. twice pf3bet, he just calls and folds flop or turn.

MP2: played a flat 44/16 (all positions the same) in 45 hands, saw 20 flops but only 3 SD's. Doesn't like calling post-flop (raise/fold type)

CO: played 27/20 (slightly pos aware) in 30 hands, saw about 9 flops and is a maniac post flop. Has bet at every 3flush on the board (4) and made everybody fold. Has shown down AK IP firing 3barrels (lost this hand to set from MP2) as A-high.

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

SB: $1.98
BB: $0.77
Hero (UTG): $3.08
UTG+1: $1.70
UTG+2: $1.10
MP1: $1.31
MP2: $1.55
CO: $4.07
BTN: $4.04

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG with K K
Hero raises to $0.06, 1 fold, UTG+2 calls $0.06, 1 fold, MP2 raises to $0.22, CO calls $0.22, 3 folds, Hero raises to $1, UTG+2 raises to $1.10 all in, MP2 raises to $1.55 all in, CO raises to $4.07 all in, Hero ?

How to analyse and stove this in light of this thread?

Easy call with the read you have and it looks like he is trying to iso the two shorties and make you fold.

Good article, really appreciated!

Do you fold in this spot? I find this is one of the most difficult spots, and I feel like I always get it wrong (ie fold to his bluffs, call his sets.) Should I be doing a certain frequency of these (say fold 75%, call 25%?)

And usually if you call such a raise, chances are you're going to go all in by river, if he keeps barreling.