I'm not sure if this is in the right forum. If not, mods please move.

I've been watching videos recently where the player decides to 3-bet a weak ace because, among other reasons, there are card removal factors at play. Obviously, on the surface, this makes sense. Having an ace means that the villain is less likely to have an ace, and aces make up the only hands that crush you. However, isn't this overlooking the fact that when your opponent does have an ace, you're in very bad shape? At least with suited connectors, you're hardly ever in very bad shape (even an overpair is not horrible). Does the fact that you having one of the three aces decreases the chance they have an ace override the domination concerns?

Well the thing is, if you are going to 3b somebody with something like A5o in position, say you're btn vs a taggy co opener, the hands they continue with will likely not get you in that much trouble.

First, most tags will only continue with like AQ here, or AJs, even if they continue with AJo+ that's 36 combos of hands (all remaining AJ-AK combos), and we can assume that in this spot that AK will likely 4bet, so we'll say 25 combos of hands that will continue postflop.

When the flop comes A hi, it will be an easy check back for pot control reasons. If your opponents lead turn and river it's obvious that you're beat and you can fold. If they lead turn and check river it's debatable whether to bet the river, depends on the suspicion on the opponent to see if you can squeeze out some value or not.

When the flop doesn't come A hi, you cbet and they will fold whenever they miss, which is what will happen a majority of the time. And if you're picking good opponents to 3bet, than you will just pick up the pot preflop a lot of the time, so you won't even be getting into these spots.

So basically as long as you're not committing your stack every time you flop TPNK with Ax you should be just fine using this strategy. This isn't to say that 3betting SCs isn't good either in certain spots, those hands are just usually better to flat with in position since they have so much postflop value, where a hand like A5o or K7s doesn't.

Thanks for the great response. I understand all of that, but where does card removal play into that? Are they overstating its importance/maybe I'm just misinterpreting them? Is it that the hands they flat are even less likely to have me dominated because I have an ace?

Card removal primarily comes in with the exact number of combos they have to continue with. Like I said, if we 3b Ax, we remove 1 A from the combo of hands that they can continue with. He can continue with 36 hand combos AJ-AK when we have an A, but when we don't have an A, there are 48 combos of those hands. Not to mention that it cuts the combos of AA from 6 to 3. Anytime you can take half of your opponents absolute nut hands out of his range, is a good thing.

Let's say he continues with JJ+ and AK. If both of your cards are below jack, there are 40 possible combos. (6 of each pair and 16 of AK)

If you got A5, possibles combos of AA goes from 6 to 3 and AK goes from 16 to 12. Which make a total of 33 possible combos of JJ+ AK.

this diminution of combos increase your fold equity, and also increase the chance that your ace is live (not dominated) when called