I feel the information surrounding this hand is important:

I have over 200 hands on this guy. In addition to the above stats, he's on the more aggressive side with an AF of 2.4 and a cbet percentage of 83. His turn cbet percentage on the other hand is 33 indicating he gives up after a single bet very frequently. He folds to 3 bets half the time


For the meta strategy I 3 bet like 90% A2s-A9s combos vs a standard CO open and standard opponent, and would check back this flop with them so my range as the reality of this hand was played is protected on this flop and run out, although this guy is probably not sophisticated enough to realize that.

What was your plan on the turn? Were you hoping he would check any river?

Given your description of villain, I think the second ace on the river leans me toward a call, especially when you check back the flop on a flush board.

I was hoping he would check back, yes.

On this river I was planning on calling but his bet was big

this is way overdoing it, your freq with A6s-A9s should be 25% or less, should be doing more calling with those than 3betting.

As for the hand, I rangebet flop, but ok.

Definitely an underbluffed spot and we do have better to call with. OTOH this combo is pretty good for calling.
IDK, its close, but folding to this sizing unblocking diamonds feels a bit weak.

I've been really narrowing my passive lines preflop and tightened up as well and I've used my sub AT suited aces and suited connectors 54-87s as 3 bet bluffs here. I stack off jj+ and AK. Against looser players I'll do more calling with these hands and instead 3bet A9s+

I include TT in my value 3 bets when players have approx 50 percent fold to 3 bet or lower

I would call otr but not be too thrilled about it. Folding isn't much less ev (if any), but pool at 2nl should have enough random garbage for a call to be good.

I agree with your default strat, and disagree with what RWE said. I don't think you should ever flat A9s-A2s on button in a high rake environment. 3-bet A5-A2s at 100% frequency, mix with A9s-A6s (sometimes 3-bet, never call) and some 76s/65s/54s, flat AJs/ATs.

Snowie's BTNvCO chart:


Based on that pre-flop strat, you have a few Axs that check back flop, along with KK-TT. TT is well down your range on the river, so you can fold it.

Well a decent % of the time there'll be a non reg in the blinds, in which case I think A6s-A9s is a 100% call. All I said was these are more of a call than a 3b.
OP said originally he 3bets 90% of A2s-A9s, that sounds like it would equate to something like a 15-20% 3bet, which is too much.
Not sure about 65s/54s, interesting that Snowie likes these a lot, it seems like we should be more linear IP to me, but idk.

Unlike when we're in the blinds, where our 3-bets get flatted pretty often (so we should be mostly linear/value-heavy), it's much harder for villain to flat a 3-bet and play OOP. He's going to 4-bet or fold pretty often, so there's more polarization in our 3-betting ranges.
We 3-bet some weak hands that have easy decisions (fold) when villain 4-bets. With our mid-strength hands, we're better off just flatting the initial open. i.e. we flat the middle of our range (ATs, 99 etc), and 3-bet better hands (TT+, AQ+) and worse ones (A5s, 54s). Hence, the 3-betting range in position is somewhat polarized.

Naturally you can deviate to an exploitative strat if you have reasons to do so. e.g. opener is a station, BB is a fish.

Didn't realize that. Makes sense. Thanks!

the sub pc version of snowie thinks 3b all A9s-A2s btn vs co is about the same ev as 3b AJo/KQo and higher ev than the small scs. I guess it's just 3b those for board coverage.

also, it likes calling AQs-ATs, KJs, QJs, JTs and AQo

this is vb a 1/2p open, which is 2.25bb

vs a 3bb open, it starts 3b ATs,KJs, but the small scs are now break even and interestingly, the ev of flatting QTs goes up

its literally 7.5%, my whole 3 bet range. tbh I think ill add a6s in there now too

I can understand Ralph thinking you were 3-betting "too much", because you would be if you had a lot of offsuit stuff as well. A lot of players 3-bet all AQo and AQs, (and JJ/TT/99) and maybe AJo or KQo by default. Each offsuit hand is 12 combos (0.9%), so the numbers quickly add up if you have many offsuit combos in your range. A5s is only 0.3% of hands.
I don't think there's anything wrong per se with 3-betting AQ, but I prefer to flat it, so that I've got some very strong top pairs on Axx/Qxx in my flatting range. The 3-betting range with all the suited aces and SCs, but fewer offsuit combos, has decent board coverage and equity vs villain's flatting range.

Note that all those Axs and SCs are very close to breakeven as 3-bet "bluffs". They only really exist as balancers for your stack off hands, and you're 3-betting them because calling is not profitable. But you can call with AQ/AJs, 99-77 etc.
If you were to 3-bet TT+, AJo+, KQo, KQs, and all the Axs, and 3 SCs, then you would have such a high 3-bet frequency that an opponent would give your 3-bets much less respect and would 4-bet or call much more often. I think that happens at 100NL+, where the 3-betting frequency is very high and there's hardly any flatting. (Even 88/77 are commonly 3-bet).