Should I call facing this turn jam in a 4bet pot?

I like a raise on the flop. AP, he might read the flop call as weakness and be trying to get you to fold your equity with but he did r/4! pre from UTG, so he shouldn't have much cheese. We only need 32% equity. We have 39% against a range as tight as QQ+/AQs, do yeah, I call this.

I would think this is a fold to the 4bet from an unknown in a live 2/5 game like this. As played yeh just call the flop and call off the turn.

Yeah, interesting. My first query in this hand was how to defend vs the 4bet. I wonder if anyone has 9max GTO ranges for UTG+2 vs UTG 4bet? In 6max AKs is usually a 5bet jam, but I assume one needs to tighten up a little in 9max. Adjusting for live low stakes poker I think vs the general player pool it would be very unwise to 5bet jam with AKs, as 4bet ranges are so insanely narrow. Folding of course felt far too tight, so that only left one option (although I did consider jamming for a moment but thought better of it as this was vs an unknown player).

Think I just rip it in pre.

As played pre, I might rip it in on the flop.

As played pre and on flop, think I fold turn.

Yup

I mean isn't his 4b here QQ+,AKo+ all day? Even QQ/AK might just call our 3b who knows. Vs this range we're 40% - you can make the argument for calling but I don't even think we can given how hard it is to realize our equity. More than likely we're seeing one street (flop) - if we don't improve we're just x/f? Furthermore if it comes Axx or Kxx and he has a worse hand it's not like he's auto stacking off with say qq on a board like this. I don't like the spot in general - I would probably just give him respect for a nut range and move on. Don't see how we can make money in this spot

How are we 39pc on the river? Eg Vs aq or kk we have 12 outs from 44 cards which is 3/11 as a fraction, which is about 27pc isnt it? So it's a fold unless he has some random ak in there

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Agree.

Was on my phone earlier and didn't want to type a lot of explanation...

This is just my reasoning, filtered through my experience, to try to form a read for V, even if it's very basic, and admittedly based on very limited info...

1. He's a younger player. I'm assuming he's a he and not a she, when OP doesn't specify. Younger players, especially younger men, tend to be a little more aggro than older players, so I could see him opening wide, even UTG, and possibly even 4B'ing light.

2. He's bought into a 2/5 game for $600. Assuming the max BI is $1k, that's not quite short enough to be a "just looking for a spot to jam pre" stack size, but it could possibly indicate V is shot-taking, and not looking to go broke for 200bb's.

Even without trying to form some sort of read from the above, AKs is a hand we don't mind jamming pre, blocking AA and KK, and being suited, wanting to see all five cards, etc.

But with the read, my thinking is V might be aggro enough to 4B AK, QQ, or even AQs or JJ, but also possibly not willing to stack off with anything worse than AA/KK. Against most V's, we could be indifferent about getting it in pre with AKs, but in this spot, I think jamming pre is going to be slightly more +EV than flatting.

Once we see the flop, and he c-bets 1/4 pot, we're guessing if he's just going with it. He's leaving himself less than a PSB behind, and I'd kind of expect him to jam any turn that isn't a diamond. If we're going to face a jam on the turn, I think I'd rather just jam flop, and possibly get him to let go of AK, maybe even AQ, and if he has it in his range, JJ.

Maybe occasionally he hero-folds AA/KK, thinking we've got QQ, or AQ, thinking we've got AA/KK. Even if we're up against AQ or KK, we're not doing terribly bad, with 12 outs. We're really only dominated by AA and QQ.

Once we get to the turn, and V jams, I question how often he's jamming AQ or AK after we call the 4B pre and just smooth call his flop bet. Feels like we've got 12 outs at best, and maybe only 9. I hate calling off here, when V r/4B's pre, c-bets 1/4 pot, and then jams on a brick, when we're just on a draw.

Yes, I agree that live 4betting ranges in general are extremely narrow, and that's why I was hesitant to get it in preflop. I also agree that it's a spot where it's hard to get paid postflop unless he somehow has AQ (which ironically enough is a good argument for getting it in preflop, lol).

It was certainly an annoying spot and in the end I boiled it down to probably having 9 outs and therefore not getting the right price to call.

My bad. It is OTF that we have 39%. I forgot to add the turn card in. Yeah, even if we give him the offsuit AQs, we're still not getting the right price OTT.

interesting sim

i havent looked much at 9m at all so am cobbling together a few sims
primarily they got 9 handed 150bb w high rake and 8m 125 bb w no rake that i can look at

in the 125 he is supposed to 4b some amount of qq ~20% but fairly indiff between all options, and he is 4b/ folding AKo and a smattering of a5ss atss 76ss hands. its hard for me to guess how people are going to deviate. i do see regs misapply 4betting ranges either having one for all ranges or just 4bing too much so i dont think its crazy to expect there to be some bluffs / folds here esp when he sizes it the way he does. at equilibrium at least you can call or jam your hand, im kind of hard pressed to believe that jamming can be a large error here to be honest.

anyways flop was interesting too
i aisolved the 125 ranges and it wants to pure x as oop (ip is trapping a bunch of aa and so much of oop's range is AK because hes 4bing almost all of em whereas ip is jamming some and folding some pre) and hes actually at a disadvatnage on the non a / k boards similar to like bvb 4b. i think you can play no raise otf vs this sizing in which case turn becomes a fold. fwiw i would estimate u have more than 9 outs on average. even if u think hes equally likely to have kk / aa and never anything else, thats still 10.5

have no real preference for what u should do tbh but calling flop and not realizing all our equity def the worst possible outcome for this hand. i think the most important thing is understanding what your range should be doing pre where you're trapping quite a bit w AA and some KK given position / stacks / polarity of his 4b range

Sure, it's difficult to get a read with such limited info on villain - at least, with regard to how he plays. But he was certainly young, eager, energetic, and arrived with one of the best players in the city - so I assumed he at least knew a thing or two. From the way they were talking I knew he was an experienced player with some knowledge of theory, and certainly not concerned with the dollar values involved. The max buy-in in this game is $800; I don't know why he bought in for less.

Against the general low stakes player pool I take 4bets very seriously and am usually reluctant to 5bet jam AKs preflop, but I agree there are certainly some arguments for doing so, such as those that you mentioned.

As the hand was played, I didn't appreciate that I was likely to face a jam on the turn, which was an oversight on my part. The option of raising the flop certainly occurred to me, but I concluded that I likely had zero fold equity and therefore it was questionable whether or not raising was the right play. However, if I'm going to face the turn jam, perhaps getting it in on the flop is indeed fine and a decent way to play. Getting him to fold any hands is of course a huge result too. Side question - what value hands would I balance this semi-bluff with? After 3betting and calling the 4bet, I guess only QQ, right? And perhaps the few combos of slow-played AA and KK?

Yes I also question how often his turn jam is a bluff in this situation. In order to balance his overpairs+ he needs to bluff with many AK/A5s combos (any any bluff combos he might have) - and again I just don't buy that the general player pool is doing this correctly in live low stakes poker. It's certainly a tricky spot with my hand, and I'm certainly not getting the right price if I'm behind.

re the balance thing, that can be right that he has to jam bunch of combos or whatever, but the alternative is he just does something different w value hands be it bet sizing or what have you. i do think hes going to have all of the AK combos pre and i think people cbet way too much here so hes going to need to do something w those

re cbetting too much. he can't really pure 4b qq here in theory, he might in practice but if he's playing the sim optimized way, like > half of his range otf is ace high and ip is incredibly tight, but i still think people pure cbet in all of these xbet pots

given subsequent description of young aspiring / actual pro thats friends w good people i would 5b jam pre as i expect him to 4b too loose here (doubt anyone looks at fr pre). the only worrisome part is him not max buying but not enough to not go all in vs 140. my rough guess is he 4bs too much as a % (maybe never flats pre but just 4b or fold) but doesn't fold AKo / QQ vs a jam so likely getting pummeled in this node but not really by your actual hand. would still all in though

What does he do different with the value hands then? Bet smaller, or perhaps check more often?

Yes for sure I'm never raising QQ once he bets to me on the flop and there is less than a psb behind; it's just a value hand that occurred to me when I was responding to docvail. So that would leave only the few combos of AA and KK to raise with on the flop in order to balance AKs. But perhaps simpler given the SPR and narrow ranges is to not have a raising range at all on the flop?

Yes agreed that a large amount of his range is ace high but that most players are still going to cbet close to range on the flop. Also agreed that if he is an aspiring pro or has some decent knowledge of theory that he can certainly 4bet wider and I should be more incentivized to 5bet jam preflop. However, when the hand was played, we were only one orbit into play, so I was still unsure of exactly what kind of player type etc he was.

Interesting, thanks. I guess the 9-handed 150bb w high rake sim is the most applicable one here? Rake in the game is 10% up to $10 plus $2 for bonuses. Does it give a range for what UTG+2 5bet jams vs UTG 4bet?

Personally I think 4bet pots are an understudied animal in live low stakes poker, and almost all players certainly have a lot less experience with them than they do with 3bet pots. In general I would say the overwhelming majority of the player pool are vastly under-4betting because when they have a big hand they don't want to scare off their opponent, and when they are at the lower end of their range and get 3bet they are much more inclined simply to fold rather than 4bet bluff. I could count on one hand the number of times I have seen someone turn over a 4bet bluff in this game in the last three years.

Sure thing about the 10.5 outs, that makes sense. (Although even then I'm not getting the right price).

Agreed that the possibility of calling flop and not getting to realize equity subsequently is a disaster, but that still leaves the question of how to play this hand in the context of my range, especially if there are no raises on the flop.

Definitely I would like to understand more how to approach this preflop, and in hindsight I'm starting to think that jamming might be best. How does the fact that I'm trapping with some AA and KK impact the rest of the range and how it should be played?

maybe bet smaller, maybe check, maybe timing different, maybe sizing different blah blah. theres a million ways even people that are balanced and good end up deviating. here i just think its a weird spot where hes going to misplay range bc hes unfamiliar with it and what the interactions look like. similar to the ak hand a million bb deep in another thread this week. again its a weird hand, hes supposed to x range in the comparable sim i ran, and he should really want to stretch the betting out over 2 more streets as the guy with a polar range (ie ai solves preferred size is 40% ott to leave 25% behind otr but people don't really do that.

i think post as u is ok although a very dissapointing result for your hand but idk id look at pre. i think you mostly want to start out with a strong pre game and then adjust accordingly as opposed to start with a node locked never jamming AKss only jamming the nuts here pre (this is actually backwards to how a solver will approach the 4b w stacks and generally 4bs in alot of spots)

im using the 125bb 8max research mode sim but idk if u can look at that if you're not a customer and i still dunno how to post ss so u might be out of luck. 5b is like 2/3 kk/ 2/3 akss, 1/4 aa, 20% ako. calling range vs the 4b which in defense of the sim is larger than what u encountered is like QQ+, whatever AKo it doesnt fold to the 4b, and some of the trace amounts of suited connectors it 3bs here and occasionally random amounts of the pocket pairs. would think the hands that get mixed end up becoming closer to pure calls vs his size at no rake but would just play it the same or potentially a bit tighter in your game both bc rake, ppl are nits, and also the way they're going to make mistakes here is going to be in a way that's harder for ur marginal hands to realize equity / ev

Yeah I agree that many players are going to misplay their ranges here, if only because the vast majority are unfamiliar with 4bet pot dynamics.

Interesting that he's meant to check range in the sim that you ran. How is my hand meant to play vs a check? If he wants to stretch the betting over three streets what does that look like - I assume something like 20%, 20%, jam?

I'm really surprised to see the suggestion of betting 40% pot on the turn to leave 25% on the river. I have a really hard time seeing how this can possibly be balanced and had a debate with a Youtube creator about a similar river bet sizing in a hand I saw on his stream. I just don't get how this can be right unless villain has a very value-heavy range (which would indicate that he's got a bet-size wrong earlier in the hand). His claim was that solvers do not care what has happened on previous streets, or about what will happen on streets to come, and just want to use the right betsize for the street in question, which again I have difficulty accepting because surely the optimal way to look at it is within the context of how the hand is played across all streets? Also, I see Pio using different sizes/strategies depending on how villain varies their play on the current/previous street - so again, I have a hard time seeing how these claims can be valid.

Yes I agree that part of the problem for me in this hand stems from preflop. I am certainly happy to 5bet jam AKs once I have seen that villain has a propensity to 4bet something more than QQ+/AK, but as I mentioned that is pretty rare at low stakes (at least, with any consistency) and I had a one orbit hand sample with this specific villain.

You should be able to post screenshots just by using Prtsc and then Ctrl+V?

Thanks for the range information, that sounds about right. I knew from online 6max ranges AKs is almost always a 5bet jam but the fact that this was live, and an UTG open+4bet resulted in my just calling. It's always nice to play IP and also to have some strong hands in my flat vs 4bet range.

I think calling AKs to the 4! can't be a huge mistake given we're IP and we don't have supernit reads. AP I ship the flop.

Yes I agree, I like having some AKs in my 4bet calling range when IP, but there are good arguments for jamming too and once any villain has shown a propensity for 4betting wider than what is usual at the average low stakes game, I will happily rip this pre about half the time (depending on positions too of course).

Shipping flop is probably fine too and has the big benefit of guaranteeing that we get to realise our equity.

***REVEAL***

I tanked and tanked and decided that I was not getting the right price to chase the draw, as I was likely up against an overpair. So I let it go.

Whilst raking the pot villain showed AKo; he got me off a freeroll. A great result for him that showed he's probably a competent player who has some understanding of the hands he needs to use as bluffs in 4bet pots.

i think it shows the pit falls of assuming people never bluff and only calculating equity vs a value range. here its kinda meh bc AK is an easier bluff for people and way more combos than a5ss so you dont exactly "beat" his bluffs

decent ev error for him to jam though w/o Ad and i think shows he doesn't really understand the situation (w 40% sizing instead of this all in thing ott though it wants to bet his hand sometimes so maybe that's worth thinking about when you say you dont understand or blv that we should use that size)

at equilibrium (worthless w this sim because pre is gonna be off and post too vs anyone) akdd losing 55bb calling the turn

vs flop x you bet 1/4 always assuming he doesn't have a xr all in size, if he has an all in size you dont stab as often with your hand but will reluctantly call it off (fwiw i think people xf here 0% even though theyre meant to so id be careful about this in practice) vs both

if he xs to u ott u wont stab your hand as again u suffer vs xrai and theoretically have some amount of sdv

Yes that's true, I was assuming I was behind, but that is a pretty safe assumption in this spot at live low stakes against the large majority of the player pool (at least, it is in my experience).

Definitely AKo is the most natural bluff here (A5s flopped bottom pair, but perhaps can be used as a bluff combo regardless). There's not much else in UTG's 4bet range (except a small percentage of AQs and some rare bluffs) that isn't an overpair. I guess JJ, if 4bet, should be check-calling?

So, ultimately, he found the right hand to use a bluff and it worked out well for him - bravo.

the thing re pre w AKss is calling and jamming are supposed to be similar ev - is why it mixes. if you're not excited to jam (bc u think hes too tight) im not actually sure that calling does very much for you. with that being said i do think its tough for most people to be too tight here because it would involve them not 4betting AK or something which i think is a bad assumption to make

utg is very much not supposed to have jj here (he isn't even supposed to do this with close to full freq of qq), but again people dont know these ranges and will be too loose