Villain is unknown, but has been fairly active as of recent playing something like 23/23 over the last 20 hands. He seems to play poorly postflop.
I have been playing 37/33 over 30-ish hands.


$0.1/$0.2 No Limit Holdem
iPoker
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:
Hero ($20.00)
UTG+1 ($20.00)
CO ($20.40)
BTN ($10.00)
SB ($4.34)
BB ($20.53)

Pre-flop: ($0.3, 6 players) Hero is UTG K A
Hero raises to $0.8, UTG+1 raises to $2.4, 4 folds

Hero calls or raises?

If call, why? What do we do if we miss?
If raise, how much and why?

hero never calls since hes oop with a hands that misses 2/3 of flops.

hero hence 4bets to 6,calling a shove, since ak is the nuts preflop

Agree with orlov, though I think without history, it's a lot closer... I mean, just because he's been active, doesn't mean he's capable of recognizing you are very aggro and start 3-betting you light, especially at these stakes.

Definitely. My thoughts are that I am behind with what is, at best ~30 % EV, if I just shove and get called. I have some folding EV, which is great for 4betting.

However, if 4bet to ~7 and my opponent shoves, his range sort of narrows down to AK/QQ+ with heavy emphasis on the top of that range.

I guess this situation is why they call AK a hand with reverse implied odds.

folding is fine here he 3bet a UTG raiser which means extreme strength

I'm curious about this situation, we're getting 2-1 on a call and we've got a 33% chance of hitting the flop. Even if we never get another dime when we hit, isn't calling practically neutral EV?

You might say he may hold AA and we hit a king, but if we're willing to get all our money in pre-flop should we care about this?

That ran through my mind too, but this is an important thing to consider:
"I have been playing 37/33 over 30-ish hands."

I feel very inclined to raise and fold to a shove. I think his range for reraising me here is something like KQs+ AQ+ TT+. If I 4bet, I represent AKs QQ+ and I can get something like 50 - 60 % of his range to fold. If he shoves, I can assume he has my range beat and I can fold.

Comments?

If you're going to 4bet/fold, then that means you are bluffing... so if you're going to 4bet/fold, I'd rather you be doing this with 72o than AK, because AK actually has value and has decent equity against his shoving ranges.

I forgot you were UTG though when I made the initial post, that makes a bit of difference..... if you have no real history yet, I'm inclined to fold......

If this were CO vs button, I'd definitely 4bet, call a shove.

Yes, any other position would make this a helluvalot easier. That's why I'm inclined to 4bet as a bluff and fold to a shove.

I like your thinking with a 4bet shove, but it does come as counter-intuitive to me because we are essentially turning our hand into our bluff. I know that PNL and HOC talks explicitly about not turning medium strength hands into bluffs, because they actually lose value when we have to fold them. On the other hand, weak holdings gain value because they can win pots that otherwise would have been abandoned.

So, is what we have here an example of relative hand strength? Sure, AKo is a premium hand, but now we are an UTG raiser facing a 3bet against a somewhat polarized range. Does this turn our AK into a marginal holding, and make it theoretically acceptable?

I really struggle with AK, and I definitely have found a leak in my game where I am over estimating my FE in these situations.

I think a shove over is bad, because he is going to call only with hands that crush you, or are flipping.

So its between either a 4bet/fold, or a 4bet/all-in(either call or shove ourselves). I like a 4bet/fold -- its hard for me to drop a premium hand like this, but I can say it here easier than at the actual table. Also, the 4bet/fold keeps us from having to see a flop in a huge pot with A-high. I just don't think my post flop skills are good enough to play correctly there, and I may fold to a worse hand, or get stacked with A because I am the table sheriff.

"So, is what we have here an example of relative hand strength? Sure, AKo is a premium hand, but now we are an UTG raiser facing a 3bet against a somewhat polarized range. Does this turn our AK into a marginal holding, and make it theoretically acceptable?"

Imo, it does hence why I'm tempted to 4bet/fold.

if you 4 bet you have to call a shove, folding would be really bad and i think id prob get it in, if he was like 12/10 its diff story.

either 4bet to 7,50-ish and call a shove or just fold it now, I think it's pretty close either way cause his line is pretty strong. Imo 4bet/folding AK is never a good idea with a 100bb stack, youll have to assume hes only shoving AA and KK for that to be correct and few villains are that nitty.

The difference between a 23/20 and a 12/10 is much less significant in a 3bet+ pot. The ranges are quite similar, and at these lower stakes we are not really seeing very many light 3bets; a light 5bet is unheard of and I don't think AA,KK,AK,QQ(discounted) is a conservative range for him after you 4bet.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

12,290,035 games 11.141 secs 1,103,135 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 62.798% 37.23% 25.57% 4575603 3142624.50 { KK+, QcQh, QcQs, AKs, AKo }
Hand 1: 37.202% 11.63% 25.57% 1429768 3142705.00 { AKo }


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I like best a 4bet/fold here. 40% equity is good, but we lose less IMO if we fold out his range with our 4bet, and just get out of the way otherwise.

there is no situation in which a 4bet-fold is good.

yeah but that range would make a call correct, no? unless you 4bet to <5.

yes there is, just not with AK for 100bbs.

im pretty sure you proved that its a call...

Umm what?

for 100bb's when we have a hand with any sort of value I'm never 4bet/folding

but I still think folding to his 3bet is the correct play

What range do you give his 3bet, bsball?

I'm not so certain that a 4bet/fold here is the quite right play anymore. Maybe we can fold to a 3bet, but that just seems so nitty.

Obviously getting all in with 40% equity is -EV, so we need to gain at least 11% FE with our 4bet to make this move +EV. Correct? I think that we can achieve at least that much against most villains here

QQ+, AK. My reasoning for folding here is that I think villain shows extreme strength by 3betting us, REGARDLESS of our table image. Most 20nl villains aren't going to randomly start 3betting light, what they instead do is say "**** it, eventually i'll get a good hand and stack him." It looks like he's picked up that hand. I hate shoving because imo he's not going to fold and we have bad equity against his 5bet/shove range.
At the same time, I don't like calling because:

In addition in reraised pots that aren't preflop all ins AK tends to not have great implied odds. Let's look at his range (KK,QQ,AA, AK):

If the flop comes like Axx, we aren't getting paid off by KK or QQ, we split with AK but he's never folding, and we (very occasionally) get stacked by a set.

If the flop comes Kxx, we aren't getting paid off by QQ, KK stacks us, AA stacks us, and we split with AK

If the flop comes xxx, we have to c/f. So like most of the time we either lose a small pot , win a medium sized one, or lose a big one

I think you've just helped me plus one of my big leaks. I'm sadly, somehow, a break even player with AK, and I see I have been hugely overvaluing it. I have stoved it before, but not thought about how poor the implied odds--let alone how deadly the reverse implied odds are.

lol ofc there is, in this specific one its not tough.

on the pot odds issue, yes this is certainly true, but we face some RIO oop even more so than IP. we arent getting much more out of QQ when we hit and get stacked by aa and kk nevertheless(well kk if theres no ace and we hit a k), this is a big problem OOP and a smaller one IP since ppl can put oyu on floats and whatnot.

folding pre here is also okay, if villain is a very tight 3bettor.