Discussion: 4-betting preflop - shove?

[Sir Winalot]

Lately I've been thinking about this kind of preflop situations with roughly 100bb stacks. We make a standard raise to 4bb, get 3-bet to ~12bb and decide to make a 4-bet. Now, the question is: how much to raise to? I've heard that in NLHTAP sklansky and his friends say we should shove here rather than make a normal raise (please correct me if I'm wrong, haven't read the book). Also, it would be great if someone could post a quote of the exact part in the book.

Now, the first thing that came to my mind was: doesn't this look scary as hell to villains and make it harder for them to call with a worse hand? After all, they would have to call over 80bb. The second thing I came up with was that it could be good with AK because we get to see all 5 cards and villain can't bail out if an A or K hits.

Personally I like raising to ~45bb more. Sure we're still pot committed and will have to call an all-in on nearly any flop, but IMO it doesn't kill our action as effectively as shoving does.

How do you think the following things influence the decision:

1) Stack sizes
2) Position
3) Our hand
4) Reads

Also, do you think we could do this with only certain hands and not with others, say, shove with AK and make normal raises with AA etc.

Example hand:

50NL 6-max, no reads

SB ($50)
BB ($50)
UTG ($50)
MP ($50)
Hero ($50)
Button ($50)

Preflop: Hero is CO with K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
2 folds, Hero raises to $2, 2 folds, BB raises to $6.5, <font color="red"> Hero raises to what? </font>

[Imrahil]

I sometimes call here and look to push a decent flop. Most of the time I'll raise to $20 or so, although pushing may be best.

[Unknown Soldier]

position - oop - shoving becomes more preferable. In posiation re-raising gains value.

stack sizes - deeper(&gt;140bbs), shoving just becomes an overbet, shallower(&lt;60bbs) shoving becomes good in most situations. In between depends on the other factors

hands - AK is good for shoving, KK+ might loose value if you shove them. QQ is q. good for shoving against some players, don't want to see any overcards on the flop

reads - nit, don't push QQ, you're probably behind his range and everything but KK+ is folding and no worse hands call. Same reason for not pushing KK+, they'll fold too many hands, make a raise then take it from there. AK is good for psuhing against these players.

loose - just pushing seems the best w/ JJ+ AK dependsing on how loose they are obviously, they'll call with worse hands


far too many situations to go through though.

[Triggerle]

4) Reads:

If someone has been 3-betting me a lot I'm much more inclined to push here for two reasons:

First, if he folds he will think twice about 3-betting me light in the future.

Second, if he has 3-bet me a lot before he might think I finally got on tilt because of him pushing me out of pots. He might be more likely to call my shove with the lower end of his range.