Villain was opening 64% of buttons and playing 36% of big blinds. Seemed straightforward and TAGgish. I was 3-betting about 9% so not out of line at all.

He'd never 4-bet me before (in about 40 minutes).

As soon as he 4-bet, my gut feel was he is never folding and I'm getting a coinflip at best.

But at 114 BB deep I shipped it in out of habit.


[converted_hand][hand_history]Full Tilt, $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 2 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (BB): $457.50 (114.4 bb)
SB: $494.50 (123.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A K
SB raises to $12, Hero raises to $44, SB raises to $100, Hero raises to $457.50 and is all-in, SB calls $357.50


Can I just get it in with AK every time here and not lose too much sleep over it?

How deep does it have to get before a shove with AK is bad here? 250BB?

i wouldnt worry about it. u could call tho if u want to be super nitty. rather shove tho and get to realize my equity. theres also a dead 160$ in the middle and u might be making an assumption that isnt true.

Its played fine. If you were deeper or have a specific read, u could see a flop.

people opening up 64% of btns arent TAG, theyre fish.

Depends on your reads really.. for a guy who 4bets ton, im happy getting it in 250bb

totally fine to 3bet/stack off ak here

master lj did a study a long time ago about how deep you have to be to fold AK preflop for all the cookies and i think it was like over 280bigs

if we give him AQ+ TT+ we are flipping if we give him AK TT+ we are 60/40 dog... so overtime we lose vs. this opponent. I fu got a big BR and like variance play away and shove it thats all we are doing because we have no FE.

We only need 45% equity from a strict EV standpoint given that we've already put $44 in. Also, both our equity against his range and FE are higher than they seem because we have the obvious blockers.

I've been thinking about this, and I think I would either shove even if I knew that I only had 40% equity and very little FE or fold and sit out, because 3bet/folding hurts us if we continue the match.

FWIW, if you mess around with an equity simulator and assume a very nitty opponent, folding QQ here is better than folding AK.

I have slowly opened up my game ever since I started with HU SNGs and currently open about 75% of my buttons for a min-raise. Is this still too tight? It feels like I only fold trash.

Edit: against nitty opponents who don't defend their BB enough I open 90%+ and if I'm 150+ bb deep I open around 80%.

a blanket statement like this is just not the way to think about this situation fwiw, but i suppose usefull to know

Wasn't really a study, just a stove analysis making some basic assumptions.

I need about 500bbs to fold vs Matthew though =P

But he's right... hands like QQ/JJ can be missing completely from some people's range here. The situation should be tailored to each player, but you could spend a little time in Stove seeing how the situation changes based on different villains.

I had a really weird one the other day from a 200bb horrible player that rarely 3bet, let alone 4bet... I still got it in, although in hindsight it was a fold (results supported it being a bad shove as well).

EDIT: iirc, the Stove I did was AKo vs {AK,KK+} where we still have 38% equity. In the case in the OP you only need 45% equity to stack off anyway even if you got called 100%.

get it in this deep, ur committed for the times he has ak and pair, etc

i dont think he ever 4bets AQ,AJ when u have a tight 3bet image 9% so at the best we are coinflipping against JJ,TT,QQ.But EV of shoving is slightly - so its not a very bad play to shove...i would fold though