So many bets, so little reads.

Bovada Hand #3018568233 TBL#9391946 HOLDEM No Limit - 2015-03-05 16:15:53
Seat 1: UTG ($10.93 in chips)
Seat 2: UTG+1 ($10.15 in chips)
Seat 3: Dealer ($11.29 in chips)
Seat 5: Big Blind [ME] ($10.05 in chips)
Dealer : Set dealer/Bring in spot [3]
Big Blind [ME] : Big blind/Bring in $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***

Big Blind [ME] : Card dealt to a spot [K A]
UTG : Calls $0.10
UTG+1 : Folds
Dealer : Raises $0.30 to $0.30
Big Blind [ME] : Raises $0.90 to $1
UTG : Raises $3.20 to $3.30

5 bet shove? Fold? Flat call? I don't have any significant reads on villain.

Hi Forefront,

What was the Dealer's action before it got back to you?

Fold.

If it makes a difference, I tend to get myself in trouble with AK more than I would like.

Hey Forefront. Welcome to FTR.

Playing AK pre-flop when facing 3-bets isn't always the easiest thing in the world, but I have a couple of links I can give you to get you thinking.

Me asking a similar question in 2008: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ns-161354.html

When you miss the flop: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ot-198229.html

I'll come back and read those links when I have more time

This one depends very much on your metagame. If people mostly only 4bet with KK and AA as I'd guess then you have an easy fold.
The Limp/4Bet line in particular is something people love to do with AA. He probably knows that but I'd give him credit for it (and make a note to keep an eye out for similar moves from him -if he does it a lot you can call one ..though better if you can see someone else do it).

You are getting Pot odds of better than 2:1 with another 3 for the flop so a call is not totally horrible but if you can only trust a flush or a straight you're going to be making tough decisions the whole way.

If he's gone straight to a shove I'd feel much happier calling simply because I see a lot of people shove preflop with much weaker hands.


Usual Caveat: I don't play your tables so my assumptions may be wrong: if your game is aggressively looser and/or bluffier then you might well miss a lot of value by folding here.
(I'm also not that great a player but you can judge my arguments on their own merits -and if I'm wrong at least I might learn something when someone puts me right ..I think I do better evaluating these hands than I often do playing them)

You do not have enough info to fold AKs PRE.

You will never have that info on Bovada.

The main reason to fold AKs PRE is when you know for a fact that villain would never have QQ- or AK-. Their range has to be exactly KK or AA in order for you to fold AKs.

The anonymous player pool on Bovada means you will never have the tens of thousands of hands you'd need to have seen to be convinced that they ONLY have KK+.

Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

You do not have enough info to fold AKs PRE.

You will never have that info on Bovada.

The main reason to fold AKs PRE is when you know for a fact that villain would never have QQ- or AK-. Their range has to be exactly KK or AA in order for you to fold AKs.

The anonymous player pool on Bovada means you will never have the tens of thousands of hands you'd need to have seen to be convinced that they ONLY have KK+.

While your equity looks ok to call the QQ+,AK range, a fair chunk of that equity won't arrive on the flop when villain will (probably) be putting the rest of the chips in: 5:4 are not attractive odds for even a ~40% call (including AKo).
..and it's not 40% if you are folding many flops. Do you know what portion of your 40% hand equity you make on the flop?

Perhaps you could explain your reasoning a bit MMM?



Also it might be possible to categorise the player from his other play and have enough data on players of that type to reach a fairly high level of confidence about his range (you'd still need to have seen a fair few hands that session and it certainly wouldn't work for everyone but 80% confidence of his range would have a substantial impact on your decisions)
In this case you might even be more than 80% confident just from knowing he's playing at this table (not saying it is so, but it's certainly possible that over 80% of Bovada 10c players would never make that move with less than KK -most of those who 4Bet lighter choosing the shove).


EDIT: oh yes I was going to read Spoon's threads, perhaps I'll find enlightenment there
EDIT2: 5:4 not 6:5

Originally Posted by Timlagor

While your equity looks ok to call the QQ+,AK range, a fair chunk of that equity won't arrive on the flop when villain will (probably) be putting the rest of the chips in: 6:5 are not attractive odds for even a ~40% call (including AKo).
..and it's not 40% if you are folding many flops. Do you know what portion of your 40% hand equity you make on the flop?

Perhaps you could explain your reasoning a bit MMM?

Treat AA,KK,AKs as the same thing PRE. Keep raising. Don't call PRE with these holdings. These are the top of your range, and you play the top of your range aggressively.

If you're facing a call OTF where you need 40% equity to call, then you should pretty much KNOW whether to call or fold. Villain is either bluffing, which means his range is much wider than your proposed KK+... or you're right and it's an easy fold 'cause you're beat dead to rights.

The point is to set yourself up for easy choices and FAT value.

Originally Posted by Timlagor

Also it might be possible to categorise the player from his other play and have enough data on players of that type to reach a fairly high level of confidence about his range (you'd still need to have seen a fair few hands that session and it certainly wouldn't work for everyone but 80% confidence of his range would have a substantial impact on your decisions)
In this case you might even be more than 80% confident just from knowing he's playing at this table (not saying it is so, but it's certainly possible that over 80% of Bovada 10c players would never make that move with less than KK -most of those who 4Bet lighter choosing the shove).

I have a degree in physics and there are plenty of other posters and moderators here on FTR who have extensive mathematical training. We'll all tell you the same thing.

You're trying to distinguish a rate of 0.9% { KK+ } to a rate of ~1.3% { QQ+ } or { KK+,AKs }.

The number of hands you'd need to distinguish those rates is not in the hundreds or thousands. You need tens or hundreds of thousands of results to make that kind of distinction. Randomness and variance are going to play hell with you trying to pin those frequencies down to not include each other in your error bars.

Bottom line:
You do not know within a statistically significant margin that folding AKs PRE is a good move, and when you're wrong, you're throwing away one of the toppest of top tier hands.
(Nothing personal... it's not that you don't know.. it's that it is not to be known within the parameters we are given.)

Originally Posted by Timlagor

EDIT: oh yes I was going to read Spoon's threads, perhaps I'll find enlightenment there

Let us know what you learn.

I had no intention of doing a statistical analysis of bet frequency: that would be worthless anyway since plenty of people slow play AA.

I was thinking you'd look at hands shown down and see that no one ever made that move with QQ. I realise you need many instances of QQ+ and AK to have any confidence and you won't be seeing all those dealt so it would indeed need a lot of hands.
You're also not going to have actually zero people making that move either but if the actual figure is close (eg 5%) then I'd think you could get confidence that it was less than 15% in a reasonable timeframe.
My guesstimate is that non-shove 4Bets at this level are >90% KK+. From a Limp/4bet I don't even expect to see KK. Bovada may differ from Stars and there are bound to be some players who will make these moves but how many of these exceptions do we need to make calling worthwhile when the hand can be released relatively painlessly at this point? Even if calling or shoving is the right move I don't believe it's going to be so by very much.


If you are facing a KK+ only range then our AKs is pretty horrible preflop.
The 40% was your equity preflop if you're AI against the QQ+,AK range. Shoving is the only way you get all that equity ..but that's the 5:4* pot odds from where he sits right now.
Maybe we're talking at cross purposes but you seem to suggest setting yourself up for an easy fold on the flop which doesn't strike me as a terribly constructive use of 23BB.

The main reason to fold AKs PRE is when you know for a fact that villain would never have QQ- or AK-. Their range has to be exactly KK or AA in order for you to fold AKs.

What I was hoping you'd explain is why you want to call this even against a range of QQ+,AK (and AKo seems particularly unlikely) since we're behind with the implied odds working against us. Only if he has AKo are we ahead of his hand at all and then not massively. From your comment about 'toppest of top tier' hands are you suggesting a shove here? ([P])


I don't know how much equity you lose by only looking at the flop (folding on flop if you miss) to hit your hand with AKs but I suppose a lot of it is tied up in draws that get very slim if you haven't got 4/5 on the flop, so you might not lose very much which could certainly make the call here better.
If the stacks were twice as deep there would obviously be a lot more room to profit from the best flops.


* not sure where I got 6:5 from; clearly 5:4 is better but it still doesn't seem enough to me.

No (new) enlightenment from Spoon's links sadly: I didn't understand that thread at all. It wasn't all clear why the villain in that thread would 4bet their entire Opening range or why their range for calling a shove was supposed to be all-important when you can stop at the 4Bet with potentially great equity against their Opening (& therefore 4Betting) range.
The reference to ABCD wasn't linked but might have made things clearer -I suspect I misunderstood what Spoon's villain was actually supposed to be doing.

I never said to call with AKs. I said to keep raising with AKs, the same as you would with AA, or KK.
Only fish slow-play hands PRE at the micros. I hope you're not doing this.

You keep focusing on what happens when you run it into KK+, but what about the other times when Villain does not hold KK+ and folds?

I do not suggest calling PRE with { KK+, AKs }. Shit, I'm happy to get it in with { QQ+, AKs }. You know how many times I folded QQ's PRE only to check the HH and see that Villain had { TT- }? Too many.

There will always be plenty of spazz from players at the micros... that spaz means they will NOT play a range so tight as { KK+ } that you can reliably fold monster hands to. It only takes 1 or 2 spazz bets out of many hands to make that range FAR FAR wider than your estimated 0.9%.

I'm telling you that you simply can't trust any Villain to be so disciplined that you can fold AKs PRE to them. Certainly not at the micros, and certainly not against a Villain that you've played less than ten thousand hands against.


Clearly if you KNOW that Villain has you beat, then their range contains no fold portion and then you have no fold equity and must fold yourself. EZ.

***
I play on Bovada. I'm not talking about any other site or a different player pool.

I have other issues with your post but would really like an answer to the main point:

So you want to Shove here? smaller 5bet seems pointless (I'd missed that you said "keep raising" -sorry 'bout that)
Fair enough but at 5:4 pot odds you're really relying on that "spazz" cos you're making a high-variance play that needs non-PP non-AK in his range not to be losing. I'd still like an explanation of why you want to get it in against {QQ+, AKs} when every hand in that range is ahead or equal and the pot odds are not helpful (even 40% hand equity assumed he had AKo as well and you need 44%).

You've now brought up fold equity. The whole point of my contention is that he's already on at least {QQ+ AK} and simply won't fold.

The main reason to fold AKs PRE is when you know for a fact that villain would never have QQ- or AK-. Their range has to be exactly KK or AA in order for you to fold AKs.

Please explain this. Was this relying on fold equity as well?


In the context of calling at 3:2 it makes some sense if you expect most of your equity to to be realisable from the flop: i.e. the flops you don't like the look of contain very little of your [P] equity (backdoor draws being improbable). I'm not sure that's so however as the [T] and [R] Aces will beat at least half his range for you. Outplaying him is going to be tricky too when he's only got one Pot-bet in him.
Since you don't want to call that's not relevant anyway so I'm at a loss.

In the OP you said this:

Originally Posted by Forefront

I don't have any significant reads on villain.

in which case,

Now, you're saying this:

Originally Posted by Timlagor

The whole point of my contention is that he's already on at least {QQ+ AK} and simply won't fold.

in which case, fold.

***
Let's take it back a step.

You are playing on Bovada.

You have the ability to see all villains cards face-up. Check the HH in the lobby at least 24 hours after you close a table, and you can see all of Villains' cards dealt face up. You can go back and check what the villains were holding in key hands. Make a note during your session that will help you find the hand the next day (or 2 days later... 'cause the card are shown 24 hours after table closes, not opens).

If you're not using this feature on Bovada, I heartily recommend doing so. This could be the best advice you've received in poker. It will give you real motivation to take notes and then go back and study. That study will yield immediate and real results.

***
My ultimate advice to you is to trust yourself in this spot. Your gut is telling you that I'm wrong (about shoving) and there's not much I can do to convince your gut. If you fold in this spot a few times, and make a note of the hand, so you can go back and check, then you can see for yourself if you're right about Villain's range.

If you are, then my advice to shove all-in is bad/wrong. If not, then let's start talking EV calculations (fold equity and all).