$1/3 heads up 3bet pot

AJ’s too weak here. You block his bluffs and don’t beat his value. Easy flop fold.

Yeah preflop 3b size is kind of a leak I guess. I also agree he is never folding Kx in his range.

I also think that the fact A blocks many of his preflop bluffing range makes calling a bad move. On this flop are we supposed to only call with made hands? I do not trust V's cbet on this one a lot, which combos should I use to float? I assume it should be the ones with some backdoor outs, or should we not float at all as there are enough combos we can defend with?

If you think his range is JJ+/AK, then yes, you can fold AJo to the 3! because that range has you utterly crushed on almost all boards. If you believe your hand is an 80/20 dog against his range, then fold. I suspect his overall 3! range is wider. 1-2x hour is more like a high single digit range. However, we are labeling him a TAG, and he is BB - most people under three bet the BB and if he is a player thinking enough to be aware of position, and doesn't believe you are a fish, he should be 3! tighter than his baseline. Also the size is really small, so that suggests he wants a call. So for this particular situation JJ+/AK might be accurate.

Against that range, I'd rather have 54s. AJ is any easy fold. AJo isn't even a raise - off suit broadways are way weaker than they appear.

So if we're calling, we are calling to bluff. If we're going to bluff this isn't a terrible flop for us. We have TT/88, we believe he doesn't. We believe he is capable of folding big hands. KK is the only hand that is never ever folding. Can we get AA to fold? That is the question we need to answer.

His bet looks like a range bet. The problem is, if we make it $100, there's only $165 behind. That isn't enough to shove turn and expect anything to fold. So raising is out of the question.

We can float, but what do we do when he leads $75-$100 OTT? It doesn't feel like we can jam and expect fold equity.

If he checks, we bet? Half pot is getting called by almost all his range. Even QQ. QQ might fold to a jam, but would AA? AK?

I don't think we're deep enough to push off AA/AK with any betting pattern. Just jamming flop is probably the best chance, but it looks spewy and I think a lot of regs would snap that off.

Ultimately, I think we're in a no win situation because the pre flop raise wasn't great, and the call was bad. His range 3! small from bb vs early position raise is just too strong that any board short of jj2 or kqt is unwinnable. He's going to c-bet 100%, and it is very value heavy, and we aren't deep enough to get much of his value to fold.

I agree with most of your analysis, if this were 6+ players I would just turbo fold. I am speculating that V is widening in this effective heads up situation. But I have no proof of that I am just speculating. I am also not sure if like you said his betting size is inducing a call. I have seen him 3! with similar sizes and did not get a particular read out of it.

I think we all agree in a regular 1/3 game this hand would be fold/4b bluff pre flop - fold post flop. I am curious in a heads up scenario how this hand should be played. I know nothing about heads up and based on the limited videos I watch it is a completely different game, people defending wide ranges and calling 3 barrels with A high etc. Also it is unclear to me to what extend should we adjust towards heads up range in this case.

I actually prefer a fold pre, if not that then a 4b with a hand like AJo. It's a little tricky because of the tiny size, but your given range for V (which seems realistic) is tighter than an equilibrium SB v CO 3b with 5x sizing (at least per my charts), to which AJo is a mix of raise and fold. Going to bat with a marginal hand against what sounds like could be the best player at the table doesn't seem worth it. But you're IP with good odds to play, I guess.

Flop again seems pretty marginal. Your range should be exclusively Broadway draws and pairs, and AJo is essentially the worst of the bunch (about 27% equity against your given V range) with the benefit of at least drawing 4 outs to a likely winner. In general, the solver prefers to fold underpairs first, which makes sense, and then start pitching AJo, AJs without a bdfd. AJo seems to be a cuspy point that is sensitive to V's flop sizing. As a human, I'd probably elevate it to a fold because do you really want to spike an Ace at some point?

this is a standard flop c/c for this size and see what happens on the turn. you have a lot of implied odds if you hit the nuts and if you turn an ace its sometimes good, and easy to tell when its not when you check (players like this play face up on turn/river).

Finally someone that knows what's going. Pre is fine and not a fold.

also please dont fold pf to a min 3b especially not in position thats just bad poker. 4b is also bad. i know calling and being "passive" is anathema here but sometimes thats the right play.

IMO folding to min 3b preflop is because in 1/3 most player's 3b range dominates AJo, and AJo has almost no nuts potential post flop. Hence folding is +EV without good read on V. 4b also depends on V's image, but on average I see folding more than 4b.

1/3 is just a game that rewards being tight and passive...

the sb could show me his kings face up and im not folding pre. your not doing blind flips postflop. its a game of odds, position, and playing your opponents range vs. the board. not who has the best two cards preflop.

take off the training wheels and stop thinking about just your own hand strength.

This is a clear fold post flop. The 3! And the bet oop is really strong and includes a lot of kings in that range imo. Esp if he’s shown you a lot of good cards over the course of the session.

If he does happen to have the king you’re drawing so thin that you’re better off spending that money in a different spot. You have no flush options and could be drawing dead to running jacks or a queen.

The move is think for 60 seconds agonizing about calling with what looks like your J’s or Q’s and then fold.

I disagree that 3! and flop bet is strong, but agree that it is drawing thin. For the fact that we are effectively heads up pre, I won't be surprised if V would 3b with JT. And post flop range bet could be anything. It is not a great hand for us to continue but it does not mean V only has strong hands in his range.

The other justification to a call would be to float and re-evaluate the turn… If he keeps firing fold ott. so maybe mix that into the choices at some frequency, but, all I’m saying is that if you’re going to spend that money, spend it drawing to more outs and in a spot where you have more equity. That’s all.

Why play four-handed? I never play four-handed unless with my family or in a tournament, usually with less than 20 BB. Few people have experience playing four-handed, so ignore everything everyone has said on this thread already.

V's preflop raise is weird. As described, V is ABC. So why would an ABC player 3bet 2.2x oop against a TAG? Is that a tell? I don't think hero has a good enough read. You cannot conclude his 3b range is so tight as JJ+/AK after seeing his hole cards only twice. Would you consider that people folded against his KTs?

How about, the game is four-handed?

After V's 3bet, I think hero can call or 4bet to 100. Hero is in position. Do you want to go uncapped to the flop playing for stacks? Or do you want to go capped for a smaller pot, probably more difficult to play? I'm probably 4 betting against the small 3 bet because it's more fun.

AP, fold the flop. K is a terrible card. Q, T,... actually most flops suck with AJo, it's really a bluffing hand here, hence I prefer to 4bet pre. Floating the flop can burn through a bankroll fast playing four-handed.

Yes you are right, I think most people did not adjust for four-handed, nor do I know if V adjusted for it. Playing four-handed is very rare which is why I ask. Now that I think about it, it is better to 4b pre instead of floating. Yes floating can work sometimes, but against TAG/ABC this is probably not +EV.

Yes, made hands and draws with more than six outs. The reason calling preflop with AJo sucks is that you have few flush draws and no open-ended straight draws, and you're dominated by AQ and AK. Even when you make top pair, you remain in a tough spot. What if you have AcJh, the board is Ah6s7s board, and V cbets? You have to call but do not like it. You're ahead of A5s ATs, but he's got also AKo, AQo, and suited broadways spades. You are really just bluff catching.

Facing a 2.2x raise four-handed preflop, I guess you can call in position, but I don't see how you make much money because you're going to lose a lot of big pots against AK and AQ, and it's hard to know when to fold when the flush or straight draw card comes in. It's why they call AJo a trouble hand.

Grunch:

PRE - if you're playing 4-handed, does the room reduce the rake? If so, and when we're only starting out $300 effective, I might lower my open size to $10.

His raise is basically a min-click. If he had position on us, I might be somewhat leery of that sizing, but OOP, this smells fishy AF, and I kind of want to 4B here.

As you correctly noted, this short-handed AJo is a premium hand, and I think a 4B generates a ton of folds, especially if we think he may not be fully adjusted to the short-handed set-up.

FLOP - ehhhh...I think I might make a disrespectful fold here, when we just miss, and V c-bets 1/2 pot from OOP.

If our read is that he's a reg TAG, he could be splitting his range into checks with his misses and bets when he hits. He's not going to have many 2P combos here, but neither will we, nor will we have many, if any draws that can complete on the turn. If we do spike a Q on the turn, he's very likely to check-fold, unless he has 2P+.

If I wanted to continue, I might click it back and see what he does. If he 3B's, I'm just done with it. But if he just calls, and the turn isn't a Q, I'd just check it back and take the free card.

The SPR is kind of awkward to do anything else. If we float and he barrels on a brick, we torched over 20% of our starting stack. If we float and he doesn't pay us off when we make our hand, we weren't getting the IO's to call. At least if we raise, we can generate some fold equity now, and we'll be more likely to realize all our equity when he checks to us on the turn.

Yeah, if we click it back and have to fold to a 3B, we're losing more than we would if we just called, but I think the immediate fold equity and bigger payout if we hit our hand compensates us well enough.

I feel like spots like these are super player dependent, as OP commented without knowing if villain is adjusting to 4-handed or not it's hard to have accurate ranges. Had he ever 3bet this small before now? I usually put more weight in 88-JJ for potential hands when opponents make a small 3bet.

As played I would call flop. This board is more favorable than say Axx because if he kept barreling we wouldn't know where we'd be at with J kicker. Even getting a J high flop is no guarantee if he's QQ+. We're drawing to the nuts and if we were going to fold to a half pot bet on a board like this we should've folded pre or 4bet.

I never play 4 handed, especially since the BBJ in our room requires 5 handed. But our room also doesn't get a reduced rake on shorthanded tables, so we'd continuing with the same 10% up to $9 + $2 ins drops. So I go for a bathroom break until the others get back, but that's me.

I'd probably open smaller but whatever.

Until I see proof of people adjusting to shorthanded in LLSNL, I assume they don't. So trivial fold for me to the 3bet.

I don't hate a float in position with nut outs and thoughts of taking it away from QQ/JJ/etc. if he checks the turn.

GcluelessshorthandednoobG

OP hasn't logged in since a week after posting this.