Another common spot with AK

[Profish2285]

[ QUOTE ]
I usually just call and see the flop. MP reraise of UTG is pretty tight no matter how you look at it if he has any clue.

[/ QUOTE ]

Corsakh so what do you do when you miss 66% of the time? I am guessing c/f but that seems like a huge spew of cash over time. Heres the thing with calling from my perspective. Most of the times you miss so you lose your initial investment. Othertimes you hit, you get a c-bet from villain and there goes the hand. Othertimes you hit and you get no action from villain as his QQ or JJ are now scared. Sometimes you just trapped AQ and can probably take a sizable pot. Lastly, you hit and are still dominated and lose your stack. So either you lose a little most of the time, win a little sometimes, win a stack Id say once in a while but definitely less than the first two scenarios, and sometimes you lose huge. Even assuming that when you stack villain counteracts when villain stacks you, the first scenarios put you in the red. Sorry if this sounds confusing, Im not sure how else to put this.

[corsakh]

We are not discussing a 3bet light situation, are we? If I have a suspicions I am getting 3bet light, AK is the nuts. I thought we were talking about a tighter range, somewhat like JJ+, AQs+. We put 5 into 7, we need hit 35%. Taking into account straights and flushes we hit more often than that. Many people dont even cbet without a pair. When they do we usually are against a pair and are behind.

[bsball8806]

[ QUOTE ]
Bsball I think this situation is different as before it was 3 bet before it even got to me. Onto this hand, I agree with you that just because he 3 bets doesnt means its AA or KK. However, once we 4 bet we are narrowing his range down alot further. Of all the hands you just listed the only one we dominate is AQ and Im fairly confident AQ gets mucked by the majority to a huge shove like that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fish, I agree with you that these are different situations. However, if we raise (AKs on this hand, AKo on the other hand), don't you agree that we can get hands like 9's, 10's, and J's (possibly QQ), to fold? AQ isn't the only hand that 3bets us, but folds to a reraise..

[Profish2285]

Corsakh, no Im not talking about 3 betting light. I generally give people alot more credit when they 3 bet my UTG or MP raise than anywhere else. Thats a good point about the addition of straights and flushes. It just seems inherently bad to call at first glance as QQ or JJ takes our money 65% of the time and even the other times we only get so little of theirs in return post flop.

Bsball, honestly, unless villain is a tag, I dont think we can get him to fold 99-JJ. I think they will call and take a flop. I think if we shove we increase the rate that they fold those, but I dont think we increase that rate enough to make up for all the cash we are risking to accomplish this.

[corsakh]

Ye but the problem is, 4betting commits you. They can still fold with AQ and TT. But anything they call with - you are screwed. You are putting your stack at risk for winning $9.

[Profish2285]

See that was my exact point as well, risking so much to win so little and if we get called we expect to lose. Essentially, we are turning AK into a bluff by doing this except of course AK has better equity than 72o obviously. Maybe that statement just contradicted itself but it sounded right in my head. Your line of just calling would fit in perfectly with the rest of my style of not 4 betting except in rare situations so I guess that works best. I really hate playing AK oop.

[Pokey]

There's already $9 in the pot right now, including the money from the blinds. A push is therefore risking $50 to win either $9 immediately or $59 at showdown.

Risking $50 to win $59 means you're looking at 59-to-50 odds, so you'd have to win 45.9% of the time for this to be +EV. Without having good information on villain it's hard to say what his range is for the preflop three-bet. Let's say villain calls this four-bet push with "QQ+, AK." Considering some of the dreck I've seen people call pushes with, this is insanely tight. Against this range, you will win 41.9% of the time by showdown. As an EV calculation, you're looking at:

0.419*(+$59) + 0.581*(-$50) = -$4.33.

Seems like a losing proposition, yeah? Not so fast....

A range of "QQ+, AK" is 2.6% of your preflop holdings. I cannot imagine that the average unknown player only three-bets 2.6% of the time. If we start throwing other hands into the mix the situation changes rapidly -- either your odds at showdown improve because the added hands fare badly against AKs or your folding equity improves when villain three-bets with a hand but folds to your four-bet push.

If you throw in AQs into villain's calling range, this becomes EV-neutral.

If instead villain three-bets with just 1.25% more hands that he then folds to a four-bet, this becomes EV-neutral. That would be "99, TT, and JJ," as an example, or "AQ."

A combination of the two makes it INCREDIBLY easy for this to be a +EV situation. In fact, it makes it hard for it NOT to be +EV.

Really, the only way this can be -EV is if (1) your opponent is INCREDIBLY tight with the three-bets and (2) your opponent will NOT fold to a four-bet all-in.

Think about that for a minute: do we really think that the sort of player who will only three-bet "AK, KK, AA" is happy to call a 4xPot reraise all-in from UTG while he's only holding KK/AK? We're literally in a situation where our opponent only has to fold a couple hand holdings, or only has to call with a couple bad hand holdings, for this to be EV-neutral.

I've seen unknowns call pushes with KQ, A4, QJs, and all sorts of random trash; just ONE of those hands makes this an easily +EV situation. I've seen unknowns fold KK to a four-bet push; that also makes this a +EV situation.

Ignore the past, plug your nose, and push. You'll be surprised how well it works in the long run.

[Profish2285]

Im confused, pokey youre saying that if villain is calling with JJ-99 then a push is +EV? What I dont understand is that QQ is about the same as those equity wise against AK, no? While I do agree that people 3 bet light sometimes, I dont run into that pretty much ever if I am opening from either UTG or MP. Figure if villain 3 bets 99+ and AQ+ and calls a raise with all of those except AQ, how can pushing be +EV?

[matrix]

If you raise and villain pushes - then what?

What hands push OTT of a 4bet preflop?

say we make it 17 (34bb) thats over a 1/3rd of our stack.

Pot odds after we get pushed on mean I think that we have to put villain on AA and ONLY on AA to make a fold correct and we can see one Ace already. If villain has KK and we have over 1/3rd of our stack the pot is offering us better than 2:1 odds. and AKs v KK is 34/66.

There are THREE combos of AA left out there when we have AK - villain has AA very rarely. If we are called by JJ+ we have made a +EV play - we are supposed to be making +EV plays and not caring much about the individual results.

Lets say we fold out villains AQ here - is that bad??

If we are against AQ we are praying for an Ace on the flop - that ace isn't coming very often if there are two accounted for already. If we are against KK or a worse pair and an Ace hits the flop what action do we get postflop? KK now curses their "Ace magnets" and we lose a lot of postflop monies...


There are 12 combos of AQ left there are 3KK's 6 QQ's 6 JJ's - so villain has a pp JJ+ here more often.

If we raise and villain flat calls often we end up gettin money in postflop even further behind - If we miss AQ flops a Q then hello reverse domination.

Preflop we have good equity vs his range - we have a bunch of FE vs his range - and AK hates just about every flop going for various reasons. Either we hit enough or miss and price ourselves in enough to get ourselves stacked when Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind. Or we shutdown our action. Or we tilt and fold and make a worse mistake.

Why not push preflop and take the easier +EV path? Postflop is a minefield and hoping that we will somehow outplay a villain *everytime* is wishful thinking.

[Profish2285]

Matrix I completely agree with you about 4 betting a small amount. I think that is the worst of all the options. I guess folding is bad because we become fairly exploitable if we are folding everything to a 3 bet except QQ-AA. So that leaves us with calling and shoving. I definitely understand your points about calling, I guess maybe I am being too results oriented. I keep going back and forth right now about what is correct. Alot of this talk about pushing though is ending up with the knowledge of this being a neutral EV situation. I really dont like to put my stack in the middle of neutral EV spots. The way I see it is much more often than not, if someone is willing to 3 bet a UTG raise, they are also willing to get their stack in when we shove to them but maybe thats wrong?