A couple AQo pre flop hands.
2/3 NL. effective stack 500.
The villain in both of these situations is an early thirties white girl. She has been pretty agro in her short time at the table pre flop and on the flop. She has opened to 15 once and 20 a couple of times. She donked into me with a 120% pot size bet once. I folded. She seems to go big pre and on the flop. I have yet to see her show a hand in the 30 minutes she's been at the table. I don't think she is getting out of line I just think she is getting dealt decent hands and playing them very aggressively.
Hand 1) She opens in the HJ to 20, it's folded to me on the button. I have AQo. My gut says 3 bet but I know we can call here with hands as well. The blinds are both decent lags. Is there a change in pre flop strategy when the open raise is so large? The blinds are both lags and call raises pre a good bit.
Hand 2) The utg straddle is on to 6, I am UTG+1 and raise to 20, The two lags to my left call, The villain in the SB raises to 85, it's folded back to me. Maybe this is a squeeze, probably this is just a strong hand. Do I 4 bet? Call? Fold?
13 Replies
Hand #1 seems like an easy raise or fold, especially with LAGs in the blinds who could easily squeeze and force you to fold. In fact, the solver has this as 2/3 raise, 1/3 fold.
Hand #2 seems like a fold, unless you want to either shove with AQo or call and play BINGO just to get to the flop with AQo when the SPR <2.
Hand 1 I 3! to 60. Best to drive out the LAG blinds. If she’s opening light, we can likely just pick up the dead money. If she calls, we are ahead of her range IP. If she 4-bets, we can just fold.
Hand 2 I may just fold. If she’s squeezing light so be it. A 3! From the SB against an EP raise is pretty strong. We could call IP I guess but I don’t love it. With the straddle on, we are less than 100bb eff. If we 4-bet we are almost putting in half our stack and can’t really fold.
Hand #1 seems like an easy raise or fold, especially with LAGs in the blinds who could easily squeeze and force you to fold. In fact, the solver has this as 2/3 raise, 1/3 fold.
Hand #2 seems like a fold, unless you want to shove or call and play BINGO just to get to the flop with AQo when the SPR <2.
Is the solver suggesting a 1/3 fold here due to the size of the opening raise? This seems like it would be a nitty fold.
H1 - I would 3B to $50-$60 to fold out the LAGs and get this HU and IP. If she 4B's, fold.
H2 - interesting spot.
Her 3B size seems small to me, when she'll be OOP, and possibly multi-way if she gets called. In her position, I'd be 3B'ing to $120, minimum. Seems like she might fold if we 4B here.
I definitely don't like calling, knowing the two LAGs will likely come along, and we'll not only be multi-way and OOP post flop, we'll have the worst relative position, next to act behind the PFR. Folding is an option, but that seems weak with a hand as strong as AQ, especially if we haven't seen her show down a hand yet.
There's around $150 in the pot, and we have $480 back. We can't 4B to a normal size and fold to a jam, so we could just jam here. Alternatively, we could min-click it to $150 and fold to a jam.
I think I like the idea of min-clicking it best. That should fold out the LAGs, and put max pressure on her. If she calls, we can just c-bet the flop small, for around $50, then size up on turn, to set up an easy river jam, or just jam turn for max fold equity.
Is the solver suggesting a 1/3 fold here due to the size of the opening raise? This seems like it would be a nitty fold.
Edit: Playing around with the solver suggests:
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, we have the 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.
On a superficial level, it seems like stack sizes are more important than raise sizings, but it seems more complicated than this and I can't quite find a unifying theory.
The blinds are both lags and call raises pre a good bit.
Are they really LAGs, because I would expect LAGs to raise pre more than call. Or are they just post-flop LAG?
3! the 1st, fold the 2nd.
Even #1 seems kind of close; it may depend on Hero wants to play more of a 3! or fold range here, or mixed. AQo is a great flat if mixed, and is a great way to exploit both her larger open and loose call or lag blinds. But that doesn't mean it will be easy to play; I would consider stacking off vs a 3! from one of the blinds after Hero flats.
What the solver does to a 7x open raise is not too relevant to a live 2/3 game.
3b of fold hand 1, fold hand 2.
If we are going to 3b hand 1, I would go 70.
I would 3b hand 1 if I tjonk villain is opening too wide and calling 3b too wide, and it sounds like she probably is. She already donked into you once. Most likely if she doesn't dobk flop you take it down with a cbet. And if she makes bad calls with hands like KQo, AJo, QJo, etc, if we hit top pair and out kick her, we get a chance to stack her.
H2 is definitely a fold; continuing with AQo in a 3bet pot SB vs EP is going to lose you a lot of money in the long run.
Unless there's a clear pattern to give you an open sizing tell, I'd just 3bet H1. You'd be very happy to take the pot now but if she calls you are in decent shape. You definitely don't want to play a hand like this multiway though. Folding would be very tight.
Hand 1) No reason to flat a 7bb open ever, particuarly with action pending. Just bump it up and see where the night takes you.
Hand 2): Don't call.
It's an okay hand selection to 4b bluff, but nut worst stack sizes to do it. Even a literal CiB is 30% of stacks, and shoving over 5x is a hefty price on a pure bluff. If I'm gonna run a bluff that's 0EV at like 25% frequency or whatever, I'd rather save it for when the stack sizes are favorable and/or something about the hand makes your live spidey senses tingle.
Is the solver suggesting a 1/3 fold here due to the size of the opening raise? This seems like it would be a nitty fold.
Edit: Playing around with the solver suggests:
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, we have the 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.
On a superficial lev
Is this GTOw?
What are the raising frequencies for HJ in each of those sims?
What are the 3b frequencies for BTN in each of those sims?
