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AA Facing A Pre-Flop 3-Bet, OOP
So I promised I'd post this hand. I'm not sure if my opponent would be happy with leaving his alias in because I'm a wally and forgot to ask, so I'll take it out.
I know what most people will say; "There are no decent players at NL4", since that tends to be the stock response when someone suggests otherwise. However, on this occasion let's assume that when I say this player is a thinking player who's familiar with me, I'm not deluded or telling porkies.
So this is a thinking player who's familiar with me. He thinks about situations and has shown he can adapt to loose aggro play. I'm not saying he's Tom Dwan, but who is? "Tom Dwan is Tom Dwan! Durrr!..." Little joke there. I'm so funny.
"Loose aggro" probably describes me pretty well on this table. I can't remember which hands I've shown down prior to this but I've been involved in lots of hands here. So when this opponent 3-bets me, I'm fairly sure that he doesn't need to be doing so with a super-narrow range, especially in position. I don't want to go ahead and make a 4-bet against this guy because I literally haven't 4-bet once at the table yet. I think my hand is face-up when I do. Flatting and allowing him to bet seems preferable against his range. I think his range is probably TT+, definitely AK and possibly AQ. It might be a little wider in this situation but I'd rather be conservative. I doubt he continues with anything shy of KK if I 4-bet.
If he's not adapting to my loose aggro play, he should be. lol
So who likes flatting the 3-bet and who likes a 4-bet? Remember, we're assuming this villain is not your average NL4 loose passive player and that he will have noticed my wide pre-flop opening range.
Post-flop isn't relevant to this question so I won't include it. I didn't like my play on the river, but never mind... JEdward is a pseudonym.
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| duxrs | Small blind | £0.02 | £0.02 | £3.15 | |
| seadog508 | Big blind | £0.04 | £0.06 | £7.34 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| BorinLoner | Raise | £0.12 | £0.18 | £4.96 | |
| JEdward | Raise | £0.44 | £0.62 | £3.80 | |
| duxrs | Fold | ||||
| seadog508 | Fold | ||||
| BorinLoner | Call | £0.32 | £0.94 | £4.64 |
Comments
If you've been playing loose aggressive and bullying the table he might be ready to make a stand against you and given that he's fired in a good sized reraise this might be him making his stand. He probably has a good hand but probably puts you on a wider range than normal given as you say you'd been very loose aggressive.
I'm making the bet about £1.20-£1.30.
Flat much more likely if I was in position after the flop.
At the lowerer stake levels, I would just be betting big hands to get it in.
It is a chunky raise, good indication it is a strong hand. While it is possible to get 4bet with a wider range on the button, the bet here is a bit of a tell. I would say no matter the opponent, at lower stakes, with your big hands just bet bet bet to get it in preflop. If your opponent completely misses (say with AK) then we have lost out on quite a lot of value.
It's a good thought process you have, and quite sophisticated, but probably for the higher levels 50nl plus where a strategy like this might be better.
You had quite a lot of information prior to this hand, eg the post a couple below this.
To be honest I thought you were reasonably strong, maybe QQ. In a way your flat call on the flop saved you your stack. Both playing it deceptively.
4 bet for max ev
if you know this villain is an aggressive villain who will do c bets then a call is ok when i hit a FH on the flop and cbet the flop i decided to check the turn knowing knowing that the villain in my showdown is an aggressive type.
but if he is another one who is easy to scare post flop or just calls with hands then it will be best to just ship it preflop because for all you know he might have KK or QQ but if the board comes AdBdCd and he doesn't have one the chances are he will just check all the way or fold fearing you have a flush.
I wasn't saying he was light when 3-betting in position but simply not super-narrow. I don't think he's making a huge number of moves and I think he's expecting me to flat a fair proportion of the time meaning he'd be 3-betting that TT+ and AQ+ range. Having not seen me 4-bet at all I'm expecting him to give me credit for a much stronger range if I 4-bet than if I flat. I doubt he continues with anything weaker than KK to a 4-bet. Forcing him to fold the majority of that 3-betting range didn't seem like a good idea, since I think he'll c-bet almost any flop when checked to, regardless of his holding.
I will admit that I do tend to overthink things a little and the majority of the 'dynamic' with this player is based on threads posted on this forum. However, since I pretty much offer a complete run-down on every aspect of my own game, I'm pretty sure I should be giving other forum regs credit for taking some notice of it. lol
It's fairly obvious that the villain was Larson from his post. If I'm wrong about his 3-betting range being relatively wide against me, then I'd be a tad surprised. As for his 3-bet sizing being a show of his hand strength, I hope that's not a good read. I'm trusting that he'd 3-bet the same with his entire range.
I mainly posted this hand because I promised him I would, since he didn't believe that I had AA when we were discussing it. If I were to post up the real hands that were costly to me last night, they'd all be examples of me making bad calls or triple-barrel bluffs just because I like being a hero - Profitable play and exciting play aren't always the same. I may need to choose which I prefer.
I suppose I could say "Yeah, I'm a massive fish", lol.
When I do play I usually play 4 tables, although I hardly play at all really. Before last night I think my last cash session of longer than half an hour was at NL10 in January and I hadn't played anything in a couple of weeks. I'd guess my VPIP is somewhere around 30-35% on all four tables at NL4. Might be higher, in truth, but I tend to find that the majority of my profits come from smaller pots, isolating limpers and c-betting the flop. The majority of my losses tend to come from bluffing three streets or hero-calling with second pair. I can't help myself.
I don't doubt that I could probably increase my win rate by tightening up. Then I could build my roll and move up through the levels... I just don't think that's what you want to do when you come to play a bit of poker once every few weeks. If you view it as a long-term grind, you think differently from someone who sits down just to play a bit one evening. I know there are lots of players at NL4 waiting for JJ+ to make a raise. I can't imagine they enjoy playing that way.
With all that said, circumstances have changed recently so I could definitely use some extra money. I probably couldn't force myself to nit up, though.
To the guy saying all 4nl players are losing, quite simply you are wrong.
There is many winning 4nl players, the best known example being tintin, who until very recently played exclusively at 4nl.
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This topic came about when borin told me he had Aces, i said to him i would be 4 betting aces there all the time. In poker, people have different views and opinions on how best to play hands. You can debate one way or another, nothing is clear cut.It's an interesting hand, I can never put Borin on aces here (tho looking back just calling my 3 bet his range is pretty narrow here). As per the whole topic of this thread, i 100% felt aces would be 4 bet here.
This is how the hand played from my perspective; pre after i am called i am putting boring on AK/AQ. big pocket pair (but not aces)
When the flop comes down and boring Checks, i think he has Queens/ Jacks, if i bet theres a good chance he is folding. I'm quite happy with the check here, to try and get some value. Some values better than none, right?
On the turn when Borin bets into me, i just call to allow him to fire another bullett on the river. If i raise, it's most likely a fold, outside of a very small number of hands in Borins Range.
On the river, i'm delighted when i see the bet, but when i raise i don't expect a call, not a lot can be good here (from opponents perspective). And seeing it was pocket Aces, this is an easy fold. I don't like my bet sizing on the river, i should have min raised it or just shoved. I know it was almost a shove, but psychologically i have bet "pot". A min bet is maybe being called. Found this hand really interesting, and unorthodxaly played by me due to the opponent being Borin, i would have played this hand vastly different against most other players.
xx
If you took the best players on the NL4 tables right now and dropped them at NL100, or whatever, I doubt they'd be winning players at those stakes without some significant retuning and education.
By the way, I wouldn't have called any raise on that river. You can never be raising anything shy of trips on the river and after your flop check I was pretty much assuming you had KK, QQ, JJ or TT. Everything else you'd bet, including AK, I felt. There are more combinations of QQ, JJ and TT than there are of KK but it's just a question of whether you'd call that bet with those hands.
I think I should have bet a fair bit smaller but I decided at the time that if you'd call 70p, you'd call £1 too. Maybe I could have checked but I don't know if you'd actually value bet those underpairs to the King...
And maybe try and keep to the topic of the post, it might help
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Borinloner, as per his posts on the clinic, has a really good knowlegde of poker.
I agree with you 100% that it should have been 4 bet. I also agree that at the lower levels, 5nl 10nl that the best way to play is tight.
That being said, people play for different reasons, some to make money some just for the fun of it. Most probably a bit of both. Borin does not play a great deal, he seems to just love the game, particuarly from a knowlegde perspective, he is the poker academic of Sky.
If he did play regularly, undoubtedly he would be a winning player.
You are right, he is going to call atleast 1 street with JJ/QQ.
Thinking about it, i do need to bet the flop. If he folds he folds. It's a tough balance sometimes.
But then i'm toiling a bit on the turn (that was my thinking), if i bet outside of AA he's probably folding.
I should have just bet, to get it on the river.
Beaneh, I agree. I was thinking he would c-bet any flop, assuming I was flatting fairly wide. I was surprised by the check but obviously that only ever meant value hands because he c-bets any bluffs. I ruled out AK immediately since it seemed he'd either be really strong (KK) or fairly marginal to anything that calls a bet on this flop. I probably should have bet more on the turn but after his check on the flop, I didn't want to make it too tough for him to call with his underpairs to the King.
I am surprised at the way this thread has developed. It seemed fairly innocuous to me and, as I say, I only posted because I promised I would.
I still don't hate the way I played it, though.
But in the days when I played a lot of SNG's I would build up my roll nicely before having a tilty evening, when I would spew the lot off by jumping up the levels, chasing my losses and playing like a mentalist. Then I'd do it again.
I can make no guarantees that I could avoid that in future.