1/2 deep: Small cbets getting ZERO RESPECT?

You seem pretty confident in what he may be holding and how he'll respond despite not giving any reads.

Also, how upset by the c/r would you be if you were holding a premium PP here?

Yeah, I think you have to let it go. If you had QQ+, you would probably have him.

I have found low-stakes Vs, especially at 1/2 and 1/3, to be huge non-believers on paired flops. Thus I bet my made hands big for value, and I've pretty much given up on c-betting air.

When the flop is also connected and flushing, fuggedaboutit. I'm taking the free card every time.

Not a good flop to cbet bluff 4-ways. However, you are representing KK+ with the 3! and he should not have much 6s after raising limpers large in ep.

In this case, he probably has TT-KK the way he played it overall. You aren't going to be able to win the pot with the worse hand because you 3!.

I read it as heads up. I do think its close between checking and betting heads up.

When he checkraises like that, he might have AA/KK or a high flush draw. Sometimes people don't 4! at 1/2 / 1/3. If he had 99-JJ, he might flat call the small cbet and let you keep firing, and not risk his stack if you really had QQ+.

Likely, at best he is freerolling you.

Read would help. I favor a cbet against a tight passive, not a calling station. 1/3 pot looks weak but it folds out AK. Against an unknown, I check fold the flop. Your average V doesn’t raise the flop with draws or AKo.

OP, you're being results-oriented, but not really seeing the value in the actual result.

You're effectively saying, "I c-bet small as a bluff, got raised, and had to fold AK, booo!" But it would be worse if you c-bet large and had to fold, or continued to barrel off on brick cards and lost more if V check-raises a later street or check-calls the whole way before you give up.

The small c-bet did its job. It induced V to tip his hand strength, and prevent you from continuing to bluff. You played the hand fine. V made the mistake, not you. We're not entitled to win just because we're dealt AK.

It's not that your c-bet got zero respect. V actually gave it too much respect. Imagine how disappointed he was when you folded. He probably thought you had a real hand.

As played, fold
He either thinks he has you beat or thinks he can make you fold. I agree with the solver, a big size to represent a pocket pair.

I wonder if V still raises vs a big bet?

Most people today ignore the cbet as no indicator of strength or weakness, just the standard thing to do. Some people do it 100% of the time.

But a pot-sized cbet is less common and carries more respect. It would have probably just cost you more this time, unless V ‘was’ making a move - I’d like to know more about V.

As for the dialogue, a pot-sized bet does likely fold 77-TT - just saying, it looks like a premium

Normally, I would prefer to make it at least half pot. This is a good flop for AA/KK against a reasonably strong hand, and that is what you want to represent. Typical low stakes players would bet a decent size for value and protection with a big pair. Often, you can get a pp to fold with a decent sized cbet and maybe a barrel.

Sometimes when I cbet a decent size after 3-betting with AK or something else that missed, they will show me a mid pp or tell me they had one.

Here he was probably strong, and the small cbet got him to raise, which saved you chips, but that isn't generally to best approach.

The reason solvers prefer a larger c-bet here is that our range has a lot of big PP's and V's range doesn't have a lot of 6x, allowing us to attack these low-paired boards at a high frequency and for a larger size. But that's an equilibrium strat, which assumes V is also playing at equilibrium.

In the real world, you can c-bet small, c-bet large, or just check back, and all options may be logically defensible if we know anything about our opponents' tendencies.

Is V folding 77-QQ to a single bet? No, probably not. We'll probably have to fire more than once to get him to fold any of his over-pairs. Is 77-QQ calling a turn or river barrel on an A or K? Maybe not. Probably not. We'll have to bluff when we miss if we want to get any value, because we're unlikely to get more when we hit.

Remember that our goals can't be to always have them fold to our c-bet when we're bluffing, and always call when we have value. Those goals can't co-exist in reality. Whether we have AA or AK here, we should be indifferent to V calling or folding on the flop. I'd be more upset about V over-folding to our c-bets than over-calling.

I usually prefer cbet large on this sort of board. We don't have trips, but this is a good flop for JJ+ and not bad for AK. Maybe you need to barrel the turn. You want to represent KK+.

What you do with AA is irrelevant. You don't need to be balanced like a solver. Sometimes it is better to appear strong when you are weak and weak when you are strong. The population cbets big with an overpair. The important thing is to make it look to a 1/3 player like you have an overpair. When you have AA, you want to make it look like you have AK. That isn't GTO, but it is optimal in low stakes live games.

Now on some connected middle or low boards, it may be a check with AK and sometimes give up. On those boards, you might not cbet AA either.

why are you contesting whether or not you were isolating? You 3bet the initial raiser and got it HU IP, you isolated him. He obviously doesnt have QQ+, so what is his range? To x/r this flop he has a 6, thats it. He called your 3bet with 46, 67, 68, A6s+. Maybe on some occasion he also has NFD but lol-oh-well. I wouldnt necessarily put it past someone to massively overplay TT/JJ in this spot but even then so what, we're beat. Fold on move on, this is a nothing hand.

Yeah, it is unlikely villain has a 6 raising limpers large in ep. He could have AA/KK and not 4! at low stakes or flush draw. Otherwise, he is overplaying something. The x/r seems kind of weird, but it is an easy fold.

I agree now that OP played it well and like Doc said, OP is too results oriented and hard on himself. Betting one-third on the flop is standard after an unknown V calls a 3bet because V has a narrow range.

How would a read change how much to bet on the flop? Would you play this flop differently against a LAG, TAG, loose passive who plays fit or fold on the flop. How about a loose passive calling station?

More pre, now shove.

So do you think I should cbet pot when I have AK in this spot?

Shove??? This donk isn’t folding anything he xraised with tho.

You have bdnfd, likely two overs, and allow him to make a folding mistake. He shouldn’t be allowed to ckr this flop to this size as pfc, so, punish him. He wants to play you for stacks then indulge him.

Yeah, he really shouldn't be checkraising 99-QQ. You are about 28% against those and there is some dead money you lose if you fold. You need a significant percentage of folds from those hands to make shoving good.

55 and x6 are pretty unlikely, as he should raise large in ep with them, and he would likely just flat call with them and let you bluff AK, etc. and value bet QQ+. He could have AA/KK and not 4! preflop, this being low stakes. He could also have a high flush draw, which he probably isn't folding. You are behind AdKd, dead even with AdQd or Adxd and ahead of most other flush draws. Unlikely he has like 8d7d, because of preflop.

I think it is better to fold than try to punish him for a bad x/r. You punish him by gii when you have QQ+ and getting away from it with AK or some other bluff cbet.

lol @ anyone ever suggesting a 3bet jam on this flop with ace ****ing high. Are you kidding me? Anyone with half a brain will see this for exactly what it is, a nonsensical bluff into an uncapped range. You dont win by putting people on hands you need them to have.

Shove is awful, but villain's range is sort of capped. Preflop large ep raise makes trips or boats unlikely. Preflop flat of 3! makes AA/KK somewhat unlikely.

Villain's raise doesn't make sense partly because his range is capped.

Calling 3bets with PP's is probably the #1 component to anyone's range since they are almost always getting direct odds to do so, implied odds are there to make getting it in on the flop easy vs overpairs, and they are simple to play, no set no bet. In fact what is it you guys think V would be calling a 3bet with? JJ? So is he folding overpairs on this board? Unlikely. Suited connectors? Well if thats true then so are PP's, and regardless a big combo draw is not what you want to be up against on the flop with ace high. There's literally no component of V's range that calls a 3bet and isnt strong when he x/r literally any flop.

The number of set combos goes way down on a paired board, and most 1/2 Vs are overlimping those anyway from UTG2. So, the open is instead something like two broadway cards, suited or not, or a pp bigger than 88.(?) Calling the 3! and closing the action, doesn't remove that many combos from their range in practice. OOP, I'd think AA-JJ would 4!, but Vs can get trappy. Net, my guess on their range is maybe 76s is in it, but far more likely it's some mix of 88-QQ, and the usual AT-AQ, KJ-KQ.

The big flop x-r is pretty OOL. IME, this biases the range to things like 76 (V is OOP, and doesn't want Hero to x-back turn at 3-1 SPR), but a lot more 88-JJ that doesn't want to see an over hit. Those PPs not a Queen, are likely not calling a shove, even with those pot odds. Which is what I think amanaplan was getting at.