ATs in a 3bet pot with multiple decision points

Every street is fine so long as you jam this River.

This is a mandatory bluff—you only have Ace-high and you have one of the nut blockers.

Let’s just make it really easy and count the combos. You’re making a pot-size shove, so a third of your River shoves need to be bluffs for you to remain in exploitable.

What hands get here with this action and shove the River?

Let’s count the value: the 4 QTs (the nuts). 3 pocket Jacks. 3 pocket 4s. 3 pocket 6s. And the 2 KJs.

I think shoving anything wider (K9?) is a little reckless, but, if you want to add a couple more 2-pairs K9s or remove a few JJs (because sometimes you’ll 4-bet JJ preflop), whatever, we’re close, we are looking at around 14 or 15 value hands that want to shove the River.

If you have 14 value hands, you need 7 bluffs. Which 7 should you choose?

Well I think the incredibly obvious candidates are the three AQs and three ATs hands that call the flop with backdoor flush draws (clubs, diamonds, spades). If you stick to bluffing with JUST those hands, you’ll be solid. There’s no need to complicate things by adding more light value shoves (and then more corresponding bluffs to go with them).

Just keep it simple.

Fold pre.

Rive shove is fine in theory. You shouldn’t have too many light floats on the turn.

You will see stupid calls from described player though.

PRE - At this stack depth, I'd probably just open to $15, not $20.

If V1 is a grinder, he could be 3B'ing you a little wide from the CO, so when the BB cold calls the 3B, it sort of makes me want to play ATcc as a 4B or fold, and I think I'd lean more towards fold with AT. If we had AKs, it's a 4B. I'd flat with AKo or AQs, and fold AQo and worse AX.

FLOP - Check is good.

TURN - When V1 checks back flop, he probably missed, so I don't think we need to raise V2's bet to get V1 out of the hand, when we pick up the BDFD to go with our ISSD. I'd think we want to keep V1 in the hand by just flat calling.

RIVER - I dunno. I get why we'd jam in theory, but in reality, what hands does V2 have that bet turn and check-fold river to a jam, when we have the Ac in our hand?

If we were driving the betting on previous streets, and V2 was check-calling, would be triple barrel here when it gets checked to us again, or give up and hope ace-high is good?

He's probably not folding Kx. Definitely not folding KJ, K9 or J9. QT got there. Maybe he folds T9, but is he really betting T9 on the turn, from OOP, into two opponents? It seems like we'd just be trying to fold out some weak JX, which probably doesn't bet turn.

I think I just check back, expecting to lose.

Pre-flop I really was considering a 4bet here. In an online spot, ATs 4bets a lot HJ vs CO. But that's heads up and a completely different environment where players are using smaller sizes and 3betting wider ranges. I do think this player is going to be 3betting light some of the time though. I like that a 4bet would likely get him to fold hands like AJ and AQ that dominate me. The cold caller makes things a lot more confusing though. FWIW if I had AKo here I think I would 4bet jam, expecting to win the pot uncontested a lot or flip with an overlay of dead money. Also I think I agree about opening to $15, especially with a good reg on my left.

Two votes so far for folding pre which is not surprising to me.

Our thought processes are mostly aligned post-flop. On the turn, I figured V1 either didn't have anything or maybe was sandbagging KK. QQ or something like that is possible as well.

On the river, I thought V2 was likely to bet 2P+ here so I was not really giving him much KJ K9 or J9 (especially since the latter hands are unlikely to cold call pre), but I might be mistaken. I definitely don't like having the Ac. I thought maybe a jam gets a hand like AJ or QJs to fold. Hard to know if those hands bet turn though. He also might have AQ that semi-bluffs turn with a gutshot and checks river, thinking he has a bit of SDV.

It's a challenging hand. Pre-flop, we want to get HU and IP with V2, not HU and OOP with V1. In an ideal world, we could 4B-squeeze, V1 would fold, and V2 would call, but that seems really unlikely. Like, is he going to double-flat a $200 4B off a $450 starting stack? Doubtful.

So I don't like 4B'ing with ATs, because V1 is more likely to call than V2, and V2 is more likely to jam than call, and then we'll really be in the blender. Even if V1 just flats, the most we could hope for is he's getting out of line and calling our 4B wide, planning to put us in the blender post-flop.

Whatever else we do with the rest of our range pre, I'm not going to debate, because it's so situational.

Once V1 folds and we're HU with V1, I think you need to consider the logic of what you're saying in the bold-faced part above, within the context of your read on him - he's young, short-stacked, there to have fun, etc. He could be getting to the river with a lot of KX or 2P that he's a little afraid to bet, but isn't too afraid to call a bet.

Guys like that get lost in hands a lot, especially when it goes multi-way, and even more so when it's a 3B pot. He might not even realize QT is the nuts, and could be going for a x/r with KJ or K9.

I'm not doing much cold-calling of 3B's from the BB, but if I somehow got to the river with 2P, and the river completed a possible straight, one I probably wouldn't have in my range, but that an aggro opponent might try to rep, I do a lot of checking, with the intention of calling most bets, especially when my opponent's most likely draws would be flush draws. I like having some 2P in my river checking range when I'm OOP.

Fold pre to the 3bet with only $600 in a 2/5 game ainec (if you're feelin alil frisky I would rather jam pre than call, but that's just me).

Just realized I screwed this up because the flop checked through and the bet was on the Turn, so we can’t have AQ or AT of spades or diamonds at the River.

So if we need 7 bluffs here to balance our value shoves, which 7?

We really really want to choose hands with a Queen or Ten in them because they block the nuts—if we have a Q or T in our hand, it’s less likely V has one.

So, the three obvious ones are AQcc, ATcc, and T9cc. They will essentially never win at showdown and block the nuts—shove.

Four more…I think we’ll need to turn a few “made” hands into bluffs here, and the most obvious candidates are the three Jack-Ten suited hands. In certain respects these have even better blocker qualities than your Ace-Ten, since Jack-Ten blocks straights and two-pairs and sets.

So that gives you 6 bluffs on the River. You could consider it with some of your QJs, I guess, and I’m sure our AI Solvers would do it with hands none of us would ever consider (“76 of diamonds specifically jams this river at 100% frequency!”) but for our purposes, we have enough just sticking with our worst hands here (AQcc, ATcc, T9cc, JTss, JThh, JTdd).

Without the cold caller it's a mix flat or 4b. Ranges get much tighter when anyone enters the action cold, making this a clear fold in theory. Maybe we can expand our 4b range from theory because the cold caller is probably lighter than a bot and less inclined to stackoff because 4b+ ranges are butthole tight in 2/5N- live games.

The other factors you listed don't loom that large for me. 3x IP is very standard both online and live. 3x of a typical online 3bb open is 80% pot whereas 3x of this 4bb open is 85-90% pot. Not a big difference.

2/5NL is when I start to follow the charts facing 3bs from TAGs until I get a good read on them. I certainly don't think 3b strategies are good in these games, but they're bad in less predictable ways than the TINOs' strats at lower stakes, so I think it's a winning approach to just play all around solid until I learn specific explos.

i probably just jam the combo draw ott, ias played im checking back and winning vs the other draws that whiffed. I think he has Jx or Kx that folds to a jam plenty though so im fine with a jam. I think ott and otr he calls you with basically the same range, AK+, maybe KQ.

That’s interesting, thanks for your perspective. The presence of the cold-caller actually made me want to continue more (because he is probably a fish and because I am getting better pot odds), so maybe I have it backwards.

I don’t doubt that this is a winning fold pre-flop though. Either way, I should probably be erring on the side of folding, especially given my limited bankroll and lack of experience in this player pool.

Result of this hand is that after V2 checked river, I jammed. In game I decided I had a good amount of strong hands that could take this line. I also decided that it is kind of hard for me to have a bluff if I don’t use this hand. I also hoped that this was not the sort of player to check a very strong hand on the river.

Villain gave it some thought before folding. He busted an orbit later and I moved back down to $1/$2.

After this hand I questioned my preflop play and whether or not I should have jammed turn. I thought the river shove was fine but jamming with a missed flush draw always feels gross so I wasn’t sure if that was good either.

Appreciate the feedback. If I played this hand again, I think I would fold preflop.

You are 34% on the turn against Kx and 41% against 88. I would jam as a semibluff rather than with a busted draw, but maybe that's just me. The delayed cbet does not look that strong, so you should have FE.

I am assuming V1 is a good player and isn't just 3!ing like JJ+/AK, in which case I would fold preflop and check the river.

From a range perspective, you just don’t really need to have a raise range on the turn. You’re squeezed between players, which always makes raising starts suspect to begin with, and there’s little enough money behind that you can always guarantee that all the money goes in with a turn float, river shove. So it’s a sort of spot where a call is stronger than a shove. (And floating turn and shoving river in particular is very strong.)

Of course, the bettor’s a fish and we have a hand that gains some benefits by shoving here in a vacuum, so it’s potentially an explo spot. I just find young recs to be some of the most unpredictable players until I get reads on them. I think the ways in which they’re bad tend to lean toward being looser and FPSier, and it’s hard for me to say whether that means a turn shove is exploiting that population tendency or not. Could mean they’re the exact type of rec to think some counterintuitive sh— like “a shove is weaker than a call here.”

All of this makes sense to me, including about the unpredictability of young recs.

In game I realized my value (KJ, sets, etc) probably is not raising turn. So then it doesn’t make sense for my bluffs to do so, even though it feels like that is what my specific hand wants to do.

When someone makes a tiny bet when you have a really good draw—when they lay you a great price to make your hand—you should just call. Save your bluffs for SHITTY draws—where you won’t hate life if you get jammed on, you can just fold and move on!

I would shove over the small bet with a set on a board with a possible flush draw and a zillion possible straight draws.

I think in general it’s safe to say you’d rather make a big pot when you have better draws than when you have worse draws, but to davo’s point, if we’d rather shove if we had, say, Q9cc if it had a chance of folding out NFDs or bare AQ, both to clean up some outs and to not lose at showdown agains them when river goes xx

Preflop I'm taking the rather simplistic Andrew Neeme view that with 40% of a royal flush I'm going nowhere... especially getting 3.5/1 and closing the action. You have to be somewhat kicker aware but ATs is far too strong to fold. 4bet is acceptable as well but I probably call most of the time - can't just run and hide from OOP spots every time.

Flop fine. Turn I don't hate a jam but would mostly call. River jam seems good, you can have a lot of nut hands here (and block the actual nuts yourself) and put most top pair hands under an awful lot of pressure.