AA in SB vs steal

[KitCloudkicker]

6 max situation:

an ABC 25/15 opens in CO. you have AA in the SB. the BB is loose and usually defends for 1 bet but folds for 2. do you 3 bet or not?

[Tryptamean]

I think this is a good spot to consider cold calling. You get 1 more sb from CO almost 100% of the time on the flop anyway. I think letting a bad player in that will pay off with worse hands is worth the chance of him sucking out.

If you have a LAG image, go ahead and 3bet. It will likely get BB's dead money in the pot and CO should be more prone to give you action with a TP type of hand.

[Oink]

call

[Saikkonen]

By just calling we will give some equity away. So if we assume that if we get it HU with CO our equity is 85% against a stealingrange like 66+,A2s+,K6s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,A7o+,K9o+,QTo+,JTo.
If we let BB in with any random hand out equity will fall to about 73%. So the maths is like this for the immediate EV:
call: 6sb*0.73= 4.38SB
raise: at least: 7sb*0.85= 5.95

So this we give away we have to win in future rounds and 1.5 sb is a lot considering:
-we will probably go to showdown anyway so we have some bad implied odds.
- BB may call anyway securing us an even bigger expectation
- if you occasionally reraises steals from sb with hands like 77+, KJs+, AJ0+ or even QJs you may get better action.
- a coldcall from an otherwise TA might seem too obvious.

So I will almost always reraise this confident that I did not give anything away

[Oink]

Good ananlysis but something is wrong here

[ QUOTE ]
call: 6sb*0.73= 4.38SB
raise: at least: 7sb*0.85= 5.95

[/ QUOTE ]

If you call and BB calls the pot is 6 SB.

If you 3-bet and BB folds and CO calls the pot is 7 SB.

So far so good. But if you want to do that Eq analysis you haev to consider the fact that when you raise you put in 1 more bet yourself. So when you 3-bet the pot gets bigger but so does your own investment in it.

Shouldnt it be something like

call: 6*0.73 - 1.5 = 2.88
raise: 7*0.85 - 2.5 = 3.45

Now the diff is only 0.57 small bets

[rafiki]

I always raise. Be curious if someone could prove that it's incorrect to do so.

[Saikkonen]

Oink@ You are absolutely right. I forgot to withdraw our own investment. BTW, our investment is not 1.5(call) or 2.5(raise)but rather 1 or 2 because we have already poste 0.5SB. But the difference is still the same.

So thankyou for the correction and calling doesn't seem bad but it is not my standard but maybe I could learn something here if my image is tight at the table.

[NinaWilliams]

FWIW I always 3 bet this but calling could also be correct in this instance. I think it also depends on how bb plays. If he plays well postflop, I dont see much value in keeping him in. If hes a spewtard, calling is 100% correct.

[callmedonnie]

I am 3 betting because I don't want to invite anyone to crack my Aces without paying for it and also because I don't think I'm revealing my hand as I'm three betting many other hands to a CO steal, such as 66+, AT+, KQ. Maybe more if the guy steals too much.

[frenchpignouf]

We need to look the implications for the postflop play. We cr anyflop, so the investment is quite the same 2BB for CC and cr or 2BB for 3bet and lead. We gain value by deception, the pfr can 3 bet a top pair or an overpair. It's hard to estimate the deception value (maybe a little less than 1 sb) but we can give an approximation for the value of being 3 way.

If the BB call with any two on the flop there is 1 sb more on the flop, so we can win one more sb. If the sb is very loose, he can win 10% of the time IMO. As a matter of fact with a random hand BB has 13% of equity, but he fold the flop if he has just a backdoor draw. So he wins about 10% of the time with an average pot of 10-12 BB, we loose a little more than one big bet.

But to win 10% of the time the BB needs to do bad calls on every streets, so he loose a lot more than his initial investment of 1 sb. For example with this board

Board: Kd 7d 2d
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 09.696% 09.58% 00.12% 19549 238.50 { 66+, A2s+, K6s+, Q8s+, J8s+, T8s+, A7o+, K9o+, QTo+, JTo }
Hand 1: 76.938% 76.83% 00.11% 156788 226.50 { AcAd }
Hand 2: 13.365% 13.36% 00.01% 27264 12.00 { 7h6d }


He wins 13% of 10 big bets but loose 3 big bets if he call UI the flop, the turn and the river. So we win from him 77% of 0.5+1.7=1.7 BB with this flop.

Now we can suppose the big blind call 1 sb pf with average hands and garbages but fold for 2 this hands. The big blind call 2 cold with good hand like 67s.

There is not a great difference imo, if the big blind call 1 or 2 pf with a hand like 67s. If we 3 bet pre flop, the investment for us is the same 4sb. We loose 1 sb on the flop but the big blind has better odds to peel and we loose the avantage of deception.


A very bad hand like J3o flop two pair or better 3.7% of the time. So it's quite rare he has the odds to call 2 or raise on the flop. We can give now a rough estimate with a average or a bad hand:

-5% of the time the BB wins 10 BB without bad calls.
-30% of the time he flop a marginal hand and loose on average 1.5BB with bad calls.
- 65% of the time BB fold the flop and loose juste 0.5BB.

So to summarize:

-With CC pf we win 0.27 BB from the big blind if he call with a bad hand. The analysis is not very accurate, but it is quite clear this play is not -EV or very close to 0. If we add the value of deception it becomes a clear +EV.

-With hand a good hand 76s, I think there is not too much difference because we cr every flop and we have deception value.

-If the big blind is a good player, there will be just a few bad calls postflop and he can fold 76o. So probably there is not too much value to CC pf in this case.