AA on JQK board vs. solid TAG; hand-reading line check

[catfish_01]

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Hold'em Cash Game
$0.10/$0.25 Blinds
6 Players
LegoPoker HH Converter (http://www.legopoker.com/hh/)

SB: $41.20
<u>Hero (BB): $26.85</u>
UTG: $25
<u>MP: $26.95</u>
CO: $25
BTN: $94.25

<font color="black">Preflop:</font> Hero is dealt Ahttp://legopoker.com/hh/images/diamond.gif A/images/graemlins/heart.gif (6 Players)
UTG folds, <font color="red">MP raises to $0.85</font>, 3 folds, <font color="red">Hero raises to $2.95</font>, MP calls $2.10

<font color="black">Flop:</font> ($6) Jhttp://legopoker.com/hh/images/club.gif Qhttp://legopoker.com/hh/images/club.gif Khttp://legopoker.com/hh/images/diamond.gif (2 Players)
<font color="red">Hero bets $4.75</font>, <font color="red">MP raises to $15</font>, <font color="red">Hero raises all-in to $23.90</font>, MP calls $8.90

<font color="black">Turn:</font> ($53.80) 8http://legopoker.com/hh/images/diamond.gif (2 Players - 1 All-In)

<font color="black">River:</font> ($53.80) 8/images/graemlins/spade.gif (2 Players - 1 All-In)

Pot Size: $53.80 ($2.65 Rake)
___________________________________

Villian is a 14.5/10/2.0 solid regular. After he raised the flop, I stopped for a second to think, so I would like some feedback on my thought process.

Made hands that could beat me on this board: AT, JJ, QQ, KK
-AT is unlikely because he probably would've folded to my 3-bet preflop
-KK is unlikely because he probably would've 4-bet preflop
-QQ, JJ are equally likely

Made hands that I am ahead of that might do this: AK, AQ, AJ
-AJ is is unlikely because he probably would've folded preflop
-AQs/o or AKs/o seem equally likely

So I concluded that even a tight solid player would be doing this with a hand that I am solidly beating enough to continue here; especially since there are more ways to be dealt AKo/s and AQo/s than QQ or JJ. Is that reasonable?

[barryc83]

I doubt he does that with AQ. If there ever is a time to fold AA in a RR pot for 100bb this would be it. I dunno, I still stack off here though, lol.

[catfish_01]

Even if we remove AQo/s from the possibilities, isn't there a greater chance he has AKo/s than QQ, JJ, KK?

[We Major]

[ QUOTE ]
Even if we remove AQo/s from the possibilities, isn't there a greater chance he has AKo/s than QQ, JJ, KK?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, because you hold 2 of the A's. There's 6 combos of AK and 9 possible combos of QQ, JJ, KK.

I'd tend to fold this..you're either slightly ahead or way behind. I think his range is pretty much KK, QQ, JJ and AKc.

How often is this guy making moves and calling 3 bets pre?

[catfish_01]

I didn't even think about reducing the chance of AKo/AKs because I held two aces (duh!) How did you do the math to figure up the combo possibilities of those holdings?

As far as making moves and calling 3-bets preflop here, I have several thousand hands on him and he is a good, aggressive TAG who seems to get his money in in good spots.

His 3-bet calling frequency in his history vs. me is so low that I am almost 100% certain that he doesn't have any Ax lower than AQ. However, I am fairly certain he would 4-bet KK so I would think to discount the chances that he has that.

[theflyingcow]

You post some very interesting hands and seem to have a sound thought process. Let's take a look at the analysis of your reads.

[ QUOTE ]

Villian is a 14.5/10/2.0 solid regular

[/ QUOTE ]
Keeping this in mind...

[ QUOTE ]
Made hands that could beat me on this board: AT, JJ, QQ, KK
-AT is unlikely because he probably would've folded to my 3-bet preflop
-KK is unlikely because he probably would've 4-bet preflop
-QQ, JJ are equally likely


[/ QUOTE ]
I agree that AT is highly unlikely since most solid TAGs fold this to a 3-bet. However, I wouldn't necessarily discount KK too much from being in his range. You'd need a read that he is not capable of playing in a tricky manner by smooth-calling KK to extract.

[ QUOTE ]

Made hands that I am ahead of that might do this: AK, AQ, AJ
-AJ is is unlikely because he probably would've folded preflop
-AQs/o or AKs/o seem equally likely


[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, I agree.

[ QUOTE ]

So I concluded that even a tight solid player would be doing this with a hand that I am solidly beating enough to continue here; especially since there are more ways to be dealt AKo/s and AQo/s than QQ or JJ. Is that reasonable?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well let's see if this part is right. Given that there's 1 Q/J on the board and that there are still 3 in the deck, there are (3 choose 2) ways to be dealt QQ/JJ, so there are 3 combos each of these two hands, which makes 6 hands we're behind to. Given that we have 2 aces and that there is a K/Q on the board, there are 6 ways to be dealt AK/AQ so we're ahead of 12 hands. Based on your analysis, you conclude that we're ahead 2/3 times so this is a call.

But I disagree with your call because I think you overestimated the likelihood that some of these hands would push this flop, especially AQ. Given that your opponent is a solid TAG, I'm doubt that AQ is comfortable shoving here because: (assuming your 3-betting range is tight), he's behind to AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, and ahead of TT and splitting with AQ. Would a solid TAG shove the flop and be hoping for a split or that you bet here with TT? I think not, so we really have to discount the possibility of AQ doing this here. Moreover, I don't think we can discount KK entirely because any good TAG is capable of smooth-calling a 3-bet to extract the most money possible on low flops. I think the most likely hand he's holding is QQ, followed closely by JJ. I think I fold here.

[We Major]

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't even think about reducing the chance of AKo/AKs because I held two aces (duh!) How did you do the math to figure up the combo possibilities of those holdings?

As far as making moves and calling 3-bets preflop here, I have several thousand hands on him and he is a good, aggressive TAG who seems to get his money in in good spots.

His 3-bet calling frequency in his history vs. me is so low that I am almost 100% certain that he doesn't have any Ax lower than AQ. However, I am fairly certain he would 4-bet KK so I would think to discount the chances that he has that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's my hand combo cheatsheet...I sat there on a plane one day and memorized this:

16 combos of offsuit cards (AK for example)
4 different ways to have AK suited
6 combos of PP's

If there is an A on the board, then the combos reduce to 12 combos of AK.

If there is an A on the board then there are only 3 combos of AA.

If you hold and A and there's an A on the board, then there's 8 combos of AK. 4 K's and 2 different A's to pair up with each A.

If there's an A and a K on the board, there's 9 different combos of AK. 3 K's and 3 different A's to pair with each K.

That's pretty much all you need to know.

[catfish_01]

Thanks for the review and explaining how to figure out the combos.

One weird thing though; the villian didn't just shove after I bet, he raised about 3x my bet, leaving ~$9 behind. Is there any insight hidden in that vs. shove-raising?

[theflyingcow]

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't even think about reducing the chance of AKo/AKs because I held two aces (duh!) How did you do the math to figure up the combo possibilities of those holdings?


[/ QUOTE ]
For pocket pairs, the number of different combinations is determined by the number of those cards left in the deck choose 2. So in general, for m choose n, the formula is m!/(n! * (m-n)!) In our case, for KK-JJ, m = 3 since we have 3 K's (or Q's, J's) left in the deck, and n = 2 since we're choosing our villian to hold both of them. For a hand like AK, multiply the number of A's left by the number of K's left in the deck.

[ QUOTE ]

His 3-bet calling frequency in his history vs. me is so low that I am almost 100% certain that he doesn't have any Ax lower than AQ. However, I am fairly certain he would 4-bet KK so I would think to discount the chances that he has that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even if we were to assume that he was only holding AK, QQ or JJ, we're only ahead 50% of the time. Even so, AK shoving this flop is unlikely since I think he'd be at best hoping for a split since given that you 3-bet preflop, he'd know that he's behind to JJ-AA.

[theflyingcow]

[ QUOTE ]
One weird thing though; the villian didn't just shove after I bet, he raised about 3x my bet, leaving ~$9 behind. Is there any insight hidden in that vs. shove-raising?

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this on FT? If so, I think he just hit the "bet pot" button.

[catfish_01]

It is on FT, but I think that in the case of a re-raise, "Bet Pot" works by betting an additional amount equal to the exact amount of the pot after you called the current bet; so bet pot should've been a raise of 15.50. The amounts always look weird on FullTilt too because the the rake is taken out on each street but Bet Pot still pretends the rake hasn't been taken out (and the convertor I used for here doesn't count the rake till the end either.)