AKs not sure about pre-flop

What is the most optimal play in this situation long term.
I dont like stacking with it pre, esp. with a raise and a re-raise in front of me - is it ok to fold here with no reads?

POKERSTARS GAME #10717924521: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($0.10/$0.25) - 2007/07/01 - 18:02:58 (ET)
Table 'Guizhou II' 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: RUSSOBROW ($6.75 in chips)
Seat 2: elkombi ($24.65 in chips)
Seat 3: ameda98 ($60.55 in chips)
Seat 4: Jabbawood ($31.05 in chips)
Seat 5: Noble007 ($24.65 in chips)
Seat 6: reply77 ($25.40 in chips)
Jabbawood: posts small blind $0.10
Noble007: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Noble007 [Kd Ad]
reply77: raises $0.50 to $0.75
RUSSOBROW: calls $0.75
elkombi: folds
ameda98: raises $2.25 to $3
Jabbawood: calls $2.90
Noble007: raises $9 to $12
reply77: folds
RUSSOBROW: calls $6 and is all-in
ameda98: raises $48.55 to $60.55 and is all-in
Jabbawood: folds
Noble007: calls $12.65 and is all-in

why are you short stacked? A fold is probably slightly better than a call

get all in

this is 25NL

with half your chips in the pot its a call

i fold to pre. Stacking off with AK isnt very standard until 400nl.

oooh sorry i totally misread the action. I thought it went raise -> reraise and then you to act

Cool, Thanks guys

i think this whole "OMG stacking off with less than KK at 25nl is TERRIBLE" thing is just stupid. If people are really playing that passively you should just constantly be 3betting in position with a HUGE range of hands until they become confused and play back at you. The answer is not folding AKs preflop. You can win 8 bb/100 in these ssnl games if you just throw caution to the winds and start 3betting like a madman in position. Soon people will start stacking off with mid pair or folding waaaayy too much, which either way is inducing mistakes. Perhaps the most difficult skill in poker is adjusting correctly to frequent 3betting by a tag/lag with a wide range with 100 bb stacks- and I GUARANTEE that if you open up your 3betting range that ur SSNL opponents will not adjust even close to properly.

so do it and u wont have to fold big hands anymore cause folding isnt BOC

the thing is 25NL is full of 20/6 supernits and 50/5 loose passive players so you can't 3-bet light because an open raise means a big hand way too often

Thanks for the input sauce.
My general 3-betting range is the common AQ+ & 10,10+
How much more would you suggest I could try opening it in position

& do I c-bet most flops like 75% if called
& if they 4 bet do I open up my range to include shoving with more than just AA or KK?

(Bearing in mind that I am usually playing at the loosest tables (usually semi passive) I can find, do you still think I should loosen up my 3 betting range?)

sauce123. Are you saying 3betting nits light is +EV?

Noble I wouldn't get too caught up in fancy play when you say you are playing at loose passive tables and someone is 4 betting, usually they have a hand in that situation. They might limp and call raises with garbage, but passive players usually have the goods when 4 betting.

Separate point: Depending on how the opponent are playing, you might make more by not 3 betting certain hands like AK and AQs if you call their raise and they play weaker aces (very common low stakes leak). They may just fold the weak Ax hands to a 3bet and you miss some value.

I'm not saying don't 3bet those hands, just consider it depending on the table, especially if you see a lot of weak aces being played.

MCat, Pelion, Noble-

saying things like "i cbet 75% of flops" is counter-productive. More important is finding betsizes and preflop/flop/turn lines which have positive equity against an opponent's range.

If a 20/6 opens in EP the logical counter-adjustment is to call with any suited 3 gapper or better, any Axs, any PP, fold AJ KQ KJ QJ AQ, and 3bet AK 50%, QQ 50%, KK, AA. So against this player we are never 3betting light we are calling light cause of the narrowness of their range.

However if the same player limps in any position, we should be raising them with a range of something like: any pair, any suited 2 gapper or better, any two cards ten or higher, Axs, Kxs, maybe 67o+ connectors. Now the value of our hand becomes less important as if we are in position and are capable of double barreling/ triple barreling against their incredibly weak range we have put ourselves into a +ev situation. However this preflop isolating range tightens up to a certain extent if they limp re raise frequently or semi frequently until we can put them on a range of LRR hands.

So thats a standard mid stakes strategy on how to exploit loose or tight passive players preflop. For obvious reasons a 50/5s range is even more exploitable (though this is almost debateable) than a 20/6s.

Postflop we are going to have to evaluate texture and metagame slightly to play well. The single most important skill we are going to use is taking notes on our opponent's postflop tendencies. These will fit into two basic categories

1) they never fold
2) they fold too much

If 1 is true we will catch on pretty quickly, here's an example:

25/5 limps UTG+1 for .25, we raise to 1.25 with 85s (A bigger raise should discourage other cold callers which we dont want and inflate the pot so that we win more with each cbet as each cbet is going to have positive expectation against this player) UTG+1 calls.

flop 529 rainbow villain checks we bet 1.75 villain calls.
Turn 2 check/check
river 3 Villain bets 1.35 we call villain shows AQ0 we win!

This situation is going to become increasingly common as we become by faaaar the most active player at the table. For future reference this villain is going to be categorized in group 1- If he has a pair or AK or AQ he is going to keep us honest on 1-2 streets and we will have to commit a sizeable portion of our stack to get him off bottom or mid pair regardless of scare cards. Our adjustment to this is going to be to bet for value liberally and to keep the hands like 76o or 32s out of our isolating range and focus more on weakish big unpaired cards like KT0, QJo to isolate with. These big cards are going to serve both as blockers (we are still going to be cbetting a high % of flops as our opponent will often have absolutely nothing at all and be forced to fold) and as a way to get three streets of value out of top pair weak kicker. Needless to say when we get our big pairs this guy is done for. Also, when this kind of loose passive raises we are going to lay down some pretty big hands until we get a range on him for raising as this will often be polarized to bluffs/near nut hands which is uncomfortably close to playing well. So we give up those pots until given reason otherwise.

Heres a sample hand against villain number two:

25/7 limps in UTG+2 we raise to 1.25 in CO with 42s he calls
flop comes K92 rainbow he checks we bet 1.75 he calls
turn A he checks we bet 5 he folds and starts typing some random bullshit about how aggro we are into the chatbox

Same preflop stats but definitely a different kind of player. Theres a ton of these floating around at low stakes live and online games. They see people paying off light and decide the way to adjust is to keep the pot small preflop and set/flush/straight mine until we go broke to them with top pair. They know not to go broke with weak (one pair) made hands from reading some basic poker literature and from watching TV but fortunately are completely exploitable. Against these guys we can isolate basically whatever the hell we want and fire two barrels with any gutshot, pair, or draw until they fold. they will fold on the flop enough for just cbets to be very profitable and definitely enough on the turn for all scare cards to be profitable bluffs. Also, its often a good idea to follow through off a missed double barrel for even 1/3 pot on a blank river if the board has many missed draws as these players will often be calling big bets with incorrect implied odds and almost always wont read hands well enough to surmise our mini bet on the river is just air designed to get them to fold their bottom pair and flush draw and avoid showdown for our missed 5 high gutshot. Also, when these guys donk bet its frequently to find out where their at and we can raise with just about any two we opened with.

As you continue to think more along the lines of exploiting these passive players and less on your cards, fold equity and profits will increase and you will move up in stakes. Hope this clarifies why I'm stressing an aggressive approach whether its for 3betting open raises or punishing limps of loose passives.

If people are interested I can kind of expand on flop/turn texture and other HUD stuff but this is just kind of explaining as best I can that I'm not saying be a lagtard and 3bet the nit with 76s when he raises UTG and get yourself pot committed, its a way of using our HUD stats to set up insanely profitable C-betting opportunities when our opponent basically shouts to us "I HAVE A MEDIOCRE STARTING HAND." Its a reaction to the range mistake low stakes players make: without the ever-present threat of big pairs + AK being in an opponent's preflop range (cause they are raising 6%-premiums- and limping wiht the rest) we are free to constantly run over them....

thanks sauce. most +EV post i've read in a while.

Wow, I don't even play cash games (yet) and I thought that was tremendously insightful. Thanks.

Brilliant post sauce, nice one! I really like the way you think, it's a smart ballsy way of playing cards, quite reminds me of supersystem.

excellent stuff - im posting just so i can really read this at home tonight...

i fold preflop after that kinda action in the hand - unless i know they are total idiots...raise, call, re-raise is pretty strong - i see KK and AA there too often -

sauce, nice post. +EV

bookmarked

That was obv an awesome post sauce and I agree with all of it. In my other post I was disputing the specific idea from your first post that you should be 3-betting light at 25NL. I was certainly not arguing that you should play like a nit. I am a huge advocate of playing really laggy and beating the crap out of people post-flop at 25NL, but that means raising their limps moreso than re-raising their raises. Whoever says that you should play like a nit at small stakes and never bluff isn't a good player IMO

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sauce123

Same preflop stats but definitely a different kind of player. Theres a ton of these floating around at low stakes live and online games. They see people paying off light and decide the way to adjust is to keep the pot small preflop and set/flush/straight mine until we go broke to them with top pair. They know not to go broke with weak (one pair) made hands from reading some basic poker literature and from watching TV but fortunately are completely exploitable. Against these guys we can isolate basically whatever the hell we want and fire two barrels with any gutshot, pair, or draw until they fold. they will fold on the flop enough for just cbets to be very profitable and definitely enough on the turn for all scare cards to be profitable bluffs. Also, its often a good idea to follow through off a missed double barrel for even 1/3 pot on a blank river if the board has many missed draws as these players will often be calling big bets with incorrect implied odds and almost always wont read hands well enough to surmise our mini bet on the river is just air designed to get them to fold their bottom pair and flush draw and avoid showdown for our missed 5 high gutshot. Also, when these guys donk bet its frequently to find out where their at and we can raise with just about any two we opened with.

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BTW this player is the type of donk that I was trying to describe to you and The Tripster at the Flamingo and I think they are becoming more prevalent in SSNL games than the "type 1" donks, but as usual you explained it better than I did. A lot of times they're underrolled they call small flop bets too often but fold to big turn and river bets too often because they're afraid of going busto.

Wow, I just saw this now.
What a good post. Thanks for making that effort sauce, much appreciated
I just glanced at it now in my lunch break but I will try digest it fully after work today. Thanks.

now i have read it and I think its good stuff - Great stuff - I think you should copy it and put it in its own topic though....I don't think we should leave it buried in the middle of this - I'm not saying it has to be stickied right now but I think this would be of great value to a lot of players here....but i'm not sure how many will read through it here?

Like just reading the title I didn't even want to open it, you know? so maybe we should quote it and start its own topic - I think there are some really good theory lines in here -

the only thing i would want some clarification is the stakes this works at...i saw the word midstakes, then limp for 25c and re-raise to $1.75 etc....my first reaction is to say this won't work against a large portion of 25NL'ers, but you clarified specifically for your opponents - this is the most important aspect of what we can get away with, IMO, but I'm not sure that THAT aspect gets enough attention...you know? not in your post, but in the forum in general -

Limpin- I think I'll expand upon my last post to cover the general topic "adjustments to weak/loose tight games" as best I can and maybe make it its own thread because no one should ever have to fold AKs 100 bb deep. when i get back from 4th july

I think your write sauce but since a lot aren't even paying attention its just really tough, and most players on this forum arent threebetting light anyways. For me, it's really hard to fold AKs because i threebet light in position and people see it.

Nice post sauce. :goldstar: