Deciding whether to 3-bet or fold with AQo on the BTN
Playing around with GTO-W suggests that when playing with live 10% rake:
At 300BB deep, a x7 open raise from the HJ is a fold with AQo on the BTN.
At 300BB deep and x4, it's basically indifferent between folding and raising.
At 175BB deep x7, the solver suggests 2/3 fold, 1/3 raise.
At 175BB deep x4, the options flip to 1/3 fold, 2/3 raise.
At a 100BB deep, the solver is nearly always raising.
I'm struggling to come up with a theory that explains these findings.
5 Replies
7x and 4x are insanely big so the solver will open an extremely tight range
live you open to those sizes precisely because of how soft the games are and that makes what a solver tells you to play preflop a lot less relevant
The concept you are thinking of is reverse implied odds.
Solvers will 3bet less offsuit hands the deeper they get because of how those hands play OTR.
You can see this with AKo in SB vs BTN 2.5x RFI.
At 100bb. AKo pure 3bets.
At 200bb. AKo now mixes in some calls.
Why? Because in most scenario's the best hand we can hope for with AK/AQo is what by the river? 1 pair.
Solvers will put less money in the pot the deeper they get with preflop hands that can't go 3 streets. You see this with AQo as well. AKo/AQo 3bet less as stacks increase.
At 100bb TPTK is a good hand that you can stack off with at reasonable SPRs. The higher the SPR, the less you want to stack off with TPTK. So to avoid this situation the solver will fold more AQo when deeper like in your example.
Thanks for the detailed answer, which makes a lot of sense.
Is your answer based on "common sense" about GTO or specific knowledge about how solvers work?
From a programming point of view?
I've read Noam Brown's papers but I don't really understand how solvers iterate to get solutions. I do know they use something called Monte Carlo Counterfactual Regret Minimization. I'm not a programmer though so this is just me reciting from the papers I've read.
My answer was based on my own solver study with GTO Wizard and studying solutions. It's a common trend in all pot types.
Another example is BTN 2.5x/SB3BET/BTN 4BET.
SB pure continues with AQo at 100bb
At 200bb, SB is never calling and playing 5bet or fold. Same reasoning in my mind.
It's because of 10% rake lol.
