How do you play AKo facing a 4-bet shove at micro stakes?

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tigre666

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Hey guys, I'd like to get your thoughts on a recurring spot in micro-stakes MTTs/Cash.
When we hold AKo in middle position, open-raise, and face a 3-bet or an all-in shove from a tight-aggressive player, what is your standard play?
Do you find yourselves calling off 50+ BBs knowing you are often in a coin-flip against mid-pairs or dominated by KK/AA, or are you comfortable folding AKo deep-stacked to preserve your tournament life?
 
To one 3 bet I'm usually calling, but to a 3 bet and 4 bet all in, I'm much less likely, depending on the situation in the game etc
 
tigre666 said:
Hey guys, I'd like to get your thoughts on a recurring spot in micro-stakes MTTs/Cash.
When we hold AKo in middle position, open-raise, and face a 3-bet or an all-in shove from a tight-aggressive player, what is your standard play?
Do you find yourselves calling off 50+ BBs knowing you are often in a coin-flip against mid-pairs or dominated by KK/AA, or are you comfortable folding AKo deep-stacked to preserve your tournament life?
Click to expand...
With AKo, I’m usually happy to get the money in preflop, but 50+ BB deep against a tight-aggressive player is different. If the 3-bet or shove represents a very strong range, I’m comfortable folding AKo rather than risking my whole tournament life. I think the opponent’s range and stack depth are more important than the strength of AKo by itself.
 
With AKo, I usually look at the opponent and stack size. Against aggressive players or with shorter stacks, I'm often calling the 4-bet shove. But against tight players at micro stakes, where the range can be heavily weighted toward KK+, folding can sometimes be the better play.
 
tigre666 said:
Hey guys, I'd like to get your thoughts on a recurring spot in micro-stakes MTTs/Cash.
When we hold AKo in middle position, open-raise, and face a 3-bet or an all-in shove from a tight-aggressive player, what is your standard play?
Do you find yourselves calling off 50+ BBs knowing you are often in a coin-flip against mid-pairs or dominated by KK/AA, or are you comfortable folding AKo deep-stacked to preserve your tournament life?
Click to expand...
You range the V in such a way that suggests a fold. If the V never 3 bets AQ AJ ATs KQs-KTs QJs etc we are 50/50 at best. In a spot - OOP -non all-in 3bet 50 bb stack our EQR drops below 50%.
Also, vs a solid nit TAG we will get paid at a lower frequency which effects our ROI when we call.

A good study point is to look at those hands and certify this V type's range, then you can play for stacks long term if that range is wide enough.

If you are playing on a table where you have 50bb and it is an average stack and there are several weaker players on the table, we really do not need to take a 50/50 or worse spot OOP. We can easily restrict our call offs to suited AK. Vs the very tight range you suggested.

🤔🤓
 
There are many variables going into this including stack size, positions, opponent type, ICM etc. We should pretty much never fold AK to just a 3-bet, but it can sometimes be an option to only call and not put in a 4-bet. If its a tournament, and I am facing a 4-bet jam for 30-40BB after 3-betting AK, I am pretty much always calling it off. There are so many other worse hands, I 3-bet, that it would be insanely exploitable to fold AK.

If the opponent flips over QQ or JJ, thats fine, since I was getting the correct odds to call it off after putting in the 3-bet. Even if they flip over KK, I only lose a little bit given the pot odds, I was getting. Occationally I will run into AA, but far more often they will show another AK, and we chop, or they have a hand, that I am ahead of, that was 4-bet showing as a bluff. In the games, I play in, most people dont only 4-bet AA or KK.
 
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