Did I play this wrong? 3! fold with AA On The Flop

PRE - from OOP, I'd have 3B bigger, to reduce the SPR, and make it less profitable for V to set mine or continue with some speculative hands.

When someone asks how much we have before calling our raise, it's often indicative of a speculative hand that needs correct implied odds to continue. Usually at these stakes that will mean small to middling pairs that want to set mine.

When V flats pre and raises Q52 rainbow, he probably doesn't have QQ, 2P, or a draw, unless he's in the habit of opening from EP and calling 3B's out of the SB with 43. He most likely either has 55, 22, AQ, or some air-ball / backdoor BS. No real point in 3B'ing him with that range. Just flat call and look to play some poker on later streets.

As played, facing a 4B jam, I think it's a pretty easy fold. He's not jamming AQ, unless he's terrible. If he's not vpip'ing too wide, he's probably not doing this with a bluff or worse value.

But I'm expecting him to say he had a worse hand. Not sure I'd believe him. Probably call him FOS, right to his face.

Call the flop raise. 3b serves no purpose here.

As played, I'm folding given how little we have on him.

As for what he said he had, I'd give that no credibility, so would not worry one iota either way.

Let's say we call his raise OTF. Turn comes an unconnected card, e.g. 9 of the fourth suite. What's our plan here?

Bet and fold to a raise, or check call? If we check, any average+ player will bet anything larger than 75.

So are we going to bet-call, check-call, check-call three streets?

What we do depends on the turn card and his bet size.

We can have QQ here, but that's about it for thick value. He's probably not playing 66-JJ this way, so most turns are going to be bricks. If he was raising us with AQ or a draw, which seems unlikely, he's likely to check back after we call, not barrel. If he barrels huge, yeah, we can probably make an exploitable fold then.

Are you worried about being bluffed here? This would seem like a very under-bluffed line. He's repping thick value, which would mostly be 55. His bluffs would be 43, or maybe some suited ace-wheel combo, unless he's turning some PP into a bluff, which, again, seems unlikely.

If he's not vpip'ing too wide, he shouldn't have 22 or 43. Maybe he has 55, or slow played QQ pre. Those are really the only hands that are going to barrel huge on brick turns. He probably wouldn't ask about your stack size pre with AQ, and he's not going to continue to bet huge with AQ when we can have AA/KK.

If he has a huge bluff in him here, good for him. We have one pair, in a 3B pot. He shouldn't be doing anything too maniacal in this spot. If we check turn and he checks back, which I'd expect him to do with all his bluffs on brick turns, we can see a river and decide if we want to bet thin for value or bluff-catch by checking.

Bear in mind we that we can go runner runner to make the wheel, or we could conceivably turn our hand into a bluff on some runouts. So I'd rather call flop and decide what to do on the turn or river instead of 3B-folding.

It would also depend on our table image. If we've been opening / 3B'ing a lot, and c-betting at a high frequency, he could be playing back at us with worse value on the flop, or raising simply because we won't have much on this board. If we'd fold all our bluffs to his raise, then we're only left with value when we call, which should make him slow down on the turn with QX.

3bet a little bigger to 36-40. He's utg and not vpiping wide so likely has a strong hand and so will call pretty often, you're deeper, you're oop, he opened 4x.

Flop bet and size is good. His raise is interesting, in theory it's very low freq built around QQ w/ some low pp and A5/A4 mixed in. Not sure what a live low stakes player is doing this w/ though.

But if I had to speculate he doesn't have these low pp and A5/A4 and it's either QQ or something like AQ/KQ trying to see where they're at and slow you down.

In theory there is a 3bet here w/ AA but for much larger sizing and never folding.

In practice I think calling and seeing what he does on the turn is best because you can really get a ton of information based on what the turn card is and what he chooses to do on the turn.

I think the way you played it is definitely the worst no way you draw it up since you just folded possibly the best hand and all of your equity whereas at the very least you could have seen a turn.

Makes sense.

Good point. At the time of the hand I didn't think about BD wheel. However I think chasing the wheel draw is not justifiable given our stack depth. Also, if the turn & river comes 3 & 4 (or the other way around), and we jam the river, most opponents can get rid of a set at that point because it's too obvious.

I can understand your hesitation on letting villain keep the betting lead - it feels like you are at their mercy - but that is often the way to make the most money.

Being out of position has an inherent disadvantage and simply being more aggressive isn't going to overcome that. In fact, being more passive is often better. You'll see where checking flops rather than c-betting will induce more bluffs and thin value bets when you have the goods.

This is a dry, static board and you don't have to worry about overcards. Play accordingly.

Man everything about preflop timing and the flop just screams 22 or 55 to me. Raise bigger pre ($40). Otf i would just as a general rule basically never value 3 bet and then fold to a 4 bet. I also just think theres no reason to 3 bet, in that you dont need protection and you have position, so im probably just calling on the flop.

I might fold to the 4 as played, but i think your options are to either call the flop and reevaluate ott, or 3b/call if uou really think people are getting out of line with their c/r (i kinda doubt they are. Youre SUPPOSED to check raise with air sometimes)

To clarify, we're not drawing to a straight when we have AA. We have additional equity in that straight draw on this board, and depending on the suits, possibly some more equity with a backdoor flush draw. At the very least, we'll be blocking two nut flush draws, if the board starts to run out that way.

My main point is that our AA beats all his 1P, but loses to literally everything else in his value range, which isn't all that wide on this flop, given the pre-flop action. Doubtful he's asking for your stack size with AQ or QQ, or that he's opening 43s from EP if he's not VPIP'ing too wide. As @Tomark said, this really feels like 55 or 22. It's rare that a competent V will make it so clear that he flopped a set, but this seems like one of those spots.

So we can kind of give him 55 / 22 for value, maybe throw in some over-played AQ or slow-played QQ, and some 43s that is off on some adventure, or maybe some ace-wheel combo with a backdoor flush draw.

Now that we have that as his range - why 3B-fold the flop? Why not flat call, see a turn, and see what he does. If he has 55/22, he'll probably barrel huge, but he might slow down on any card that might make us a boat, which could be any card above a 5, when we 3B from the SB. He's probably not going to blast off with AQ or 43. The only super-nutted hand he could have is QQ, which assumes he's not 4B'ing that pre-flop.

So, instead of torching $150 by 3B'ing the flop, just call the $75, prepared to fold if he bombs the turn, but also prepared to bomb it if we spike an ace, and prepared to continue if we pick up equity in the form of a draw, or even a potential bluff card. Say the turn is a K that adds a BDFD. We could have KK here, or AKs. If we donk huge on a K, is he going to love it?

Like, he doesn't know we have AA. We could have AKs, or A5s, or JJ, or anything else that's in our SB 3B'ing range. A lot of turns are going to be potentially better for us than for him, which is why I said we should just flat call, and look to play some poker on later streets. His 55 and 22 are going to hate a lot of run-outs, and will either fold if we get aggro, or sometimes just check back if we don't.

The problem is that I did not have position (I was SB).

If he did have 55/22, we only wanted to see an ace (two outs) ott which strengthens our hand.
If V was raising with an open ended straight draw this way, an Ace ott would become our reverse out to stack off.
If V was getting out of line otf with AQ/KQ/QJ and we didn't 3-bet, we won't be very happy to see any K,Q, J, either.

Given the above I don't see there is much we wanna see on the turn to continue safely out of position.

If we did see a non-connective card, e.g. 9 of the fourth suite, we would have a hard time check-folding the turn, because by not 3! the flop and by checking the turn, V can still barrel with AQ. And if we check-call on the turn or bet - fold ott, it may turn out more costly than min 3! the flop.

Happy to hear other thoughts.

Ok I'm confused. Who is the OP here?

Please re-read my post. It was a rainbow flop, with AA we have no backdoor flush possibility.

Also otf, holding AA we are just over 10% equity against a set, this has already included the bd straight possibility. If we had KK, we would be at 8.5% against a set. It's good that you pointed out the BDSD but as I said our stack depth can be indifferent to the 1.5% additional equity.

Sorry, I used a different laptop recently so I lost the log-in for my old account (this one). I then set up a new log-in for this post.

Now I am back with my old laptop with automatic log-in therefore causing the confusion to the readers.

Thanks for reminding me.

You can reply to any op.

Uhm...did you create a different user profile just to post this thread? The OP is "Donk0932". You're "L.C.C." Are you trolling us? Why?

Yes, true, we have no backdoor flush draw potential with AA on a rainbow flop. I meant that we could rep a flush if a BDFD appears on the turn, and completes on the river, if it's for one of the suits in our hand.

I don't know what to tell you. You put almost 40% of your stack into the pot, then folded. That's usually a pretty big mistake. If the additional equity of the BDSD isn't enough to justify calling, it sure as $hlt isn't enough to justify raising, right?

Like I said - are you afraid of being bluffed here? Why are you so reticent to play poker on the turn or river, instead preferring to torch $180 raising flop in a spot where we can be fairly certain our opponent has us beat and is extremely unlikely to fold?

It seems really unlikely that he's playing 43 this way, so I'm not worried about spiking an ace. It also seems unlikely he's going to barrel turn AND river with AQ. It also seems at least somewhat likely that V might slow down on the turn or river if we flat call flop, no matter what he has, unless he runs into quads.

Reveal:

End of discussion.

Sorry, you must have posted this as I was typing my subsequent response above. I'm a member of a different forum, where having two accounts is strictly verboten, hence my raised eyebrow here. No harm done, hopefully.

As for the hand - I believe he had 55. It's the hand that most comports to his actions pre and on flop. He got lucky. It happens. I just recently got stacked with AA in a tournament when my opponent in the SB flopped trip 3's with K3o.

It sucks to run into a flopped set when we have AA, but it happens, which is why I think we all suggested you just flat call the flop and evaluate turn.

Once in twenty we'll spike that miracle ace on the turn. Once in six we'll catch a wheel card to pick up the BDSD, and sometimes when that happens our opponent will slow down and check back or bet small. Perhaps once in ten or fifteen our opponent will slow down and check back or bet small on a disconnected high card that might make us a bigger set. Occasionally our opponent will slow down on a wheel card or disconnected high card that also puts a BDFD out there, and we'll be able to rep the flush if it comes in on the river.

Add it up, and there's about a 20%-30% chance we'll be able to continue from the turn to the river. We don't want to be forced to fold away that sliver of equity by 3B'ing the flop.

Hope that helps.