$2 NL HE 6-max: Action with AKs

[puzzlefish]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Stakes

$.01/$.02

Table Format

6-max (6 seats)

Currency

$

888 Snap format - 6 seat table, fast fold mode - 0.02/0.04

Hero is UTG with 167.5 BB and has
Villain 1 at UTG+1 has 26 BB
Villain 2 at CO has 101 BB
Villain 3 at BB has 198 BB

Two more players didn't get involved at BTN and SB. Average stacks.

Hero raises to 4BB, calls from Villains 1-3

4-handed to the flop
16.5BB pot



Check to Hero.
Hero bets 10.5BB.
Villain 1 (UTG+1) jams 22BB
Villain 2 (CO) calls 22BB
Villain 3 (BB) folds

Hero?

Spoiler

Hero jams all-in and CO calls

 

[Station_Master]

Preflop you are raising too big between 2 and 3bb is better.
Multiway on the flop there is no need to bet this big. Facing raise from a shortsatcker its an easy call. The CO calling is worrying but we dont lose to that many hands. Not too much reason to raise on such a dry board so i would just call and see turn, not looking to fold on any run outs and basically getting the money in. Theres too much money in the middle to do anything else and CO could easily have AQ or AJ

 

[primrose]

Preliminary Comment: a lot of this depends on how goofy people play here. This kinda looks like they're playing very goofy, but idk.

Preflop: Exploitatively raising bigger with premiums is good if people are sufficiently bad... which is probably the case. Also iiuc this is zoom poker where you constantly change tables, so no one can pay attention to what you're doing? In that case, yes I think raising bigger than normally is correct.

Flop: generally you'd bet much smaller in a 4way pot, but it's again a reasonable exploit. An Ace won't ever fold to this bet and a 6 would probably fold to almost any bet, so yeah, exploitatively this bet makes sense.

I think the interesting question here is, if the Flop were AQ2r instead, would you have bet smaller? Because you probably should.

Turn: Once again really depends on how goofy people play. You lose to A6, A2, 66, and 22. You have (checks) about 20%/33% against the first two hands. So, eh. It's really hard to say. You can never fold to the first jam, so you just have to know how likely the typical player here is to flat this jam with something worse than 2pair. I don't know what the answer is.

It's a pretty interesting hand in any case.

 

[primrose]

Spoiler/Action:

Spoiler

Like I said, I don't know whether continuing here is correct or not. If you are continuing, I think jamming is probably worse than flatting. Because you're never getting a better hand to fold, and if the opponent does have a weaker Ace, you probably get paid more if you play more streets.

So I think you should have called instead. But I can't even say that's what I would have done because I had to think about it for a while; my first instinct was that the jam makes sense.

 

[puzzlefish]

Appreciate the comments so far. I've been open-raising my hands higher than usual in this session anyway because the players were not respecting the smaller raises and calling wide, so my thoughts were why not get some more from them? I do wish I had noted their VPIPs. I think they were in their high 30s and 40s.

I did feel afterwards that I was maybe too aggressive on the flop. I wasn't very concerned about the short stack getting it in. I was concerned about CO's call and thought it made the most sense that maybe he had AQ or AJ and was just hoping I would call too. At this level I don't find a lot of trappy play by villains.

Also, this was a hand that was done after the flop. There was no turn action. Not sure if maybe I made a mistake somewhere in the hand notes.. I don't think I did.

Having jammed, I immediately felt that it was likely a mistake as I would be folding out the weaker hands and getting called by sets and two pairs. I wouldn't be drawing dead but definitely putting myself in a losing situation long term.

 

[fundiver199]

As others have said, your sizing is much larger than GTO both preflop and on the flop. However at 2NL people are likely still so bad, that this is a reasonable exploit, so I dont mind it. As played I think, the flop is a square call. There are two unseen aces in the deck, so they could both have hands like AJ and AT, and if they can have A6 or A2, then they can have any ace in the deck, which is even better. I dont see any reason to 3-bet the flop though. Its a super try texture with no draws, so just call and look to play some later streets. I might even check the turn as well to see, what CO does.

 

[enno]

First of all your raises preflop and on the flop are too high, and I say this without using any other software.

Secondly, a very good player who I have been following says fold to a raise on the flop if you don’t have a super read and you don’t have at least Aces. Granted you have Aces but in a fast forward game you can’t have a super read on two other players, and being OOP with an all-in and a call (not just a raise), would a fold possibly be better?

 

[fundiver199]

Granted you have Aces but in a fast forward game you can’t have a super read on two other players, and being OOP with an all-in and a call (not just a raise), would a fold possibly be better?

No we absolutely can not fold here. UTG+1 only started the hand with 26BB, so he is going to move all-in on the flop with any ace, plus we cant lose any more against him. Its slightly more worrying, that CO has called, but CO is not folding AQ or AJ to a jam from a short stack, so we could still be ahead of him as well. And even though we only have top pair, there are just not many hands, that beat us here. There are 6 combos of sets, 2 combos of A6s and 1 combo of A2s, and that pretty much it. If CO can have A6o or A2o, that he can have all the other rag aces as well, and if he is bad enough to call them pre, he is not going to fold them on the flop, when he has top pair.

 

[puzzlefish]

Ok, I think I have gotten the message about cooling down my bet sizes and letting the board play out to the turn after CO calls the smaller stack jam to keep them in the hand. Here are the results for this time.

 

[fundiver199]

So CO called it off for 100BB with second pair and no draw? Certainly indicates that 2NL is still very soft

 

[puzzlefish]

So CO called it off for 100BB with second pair and no draw? Certainly indicates that 2NL is still very soft

Yes I think it comes in spurts now in this particular format. There are many players that play okay, with not too much to win from them, and it's only once in a while that these more fun players seem to show up.

 

[primrose]

Right-o, yeah so this falls under "extremely goofy". Very soft indeed.

Ok, I think I have gotten the message about cooling down my bet sizes and letting the board play out to the turn after CO calls the smaller stack jam to keep them in the hand. Here are the results for this time.

Imo the results do not indicate that you should stop with the high bet sizing. If anything people still called you too wide, so you could consider going even larger with premium hands. Don't start minraising; your high betsize worked out beautifully in this hand. you got called by one marginal hand and one strong-ish hand that you're dominating.

 

[primrose]

It's also funny because my main argument for calling instead of jamming was that a weaker Ace might fold to a jam, but it didn't, so it didn't even matter.

 

[puzzlefish]

Right-o, yeah so this falls under "extremely goofy". Very soft indeed.

Imo the results do not indicate that you should stop with the high bet sizing. If anything people still called you too wide, so you could consider going even larger with premium hands. Don't start minraising; your high betsize worked out beautifully in this hand. you got called by one marginal hand and one strong-ish hand that you're dominating.

Yeah there is definitely not going to be any minraising. I typically like to open larger against weaker players with the higher end of my range, because they do tend to pay, but that can backfire depending on which players I face and their holdings. We try to not be results oriented even if something worked particularly well one time, there may be many more times that CO folds their worse hands instead and only calls with hands like A6, 66, 22, etc.

 

[fundiver199]

It's also funny because my main argument for calling instead of jamming was that a weaker Ace might fold to a jam, but it didn't, so it didn't even matter.

Yeah if we knew, CO was this much of a calling station, then its obviously fine to super fastplay and get it in on the flop. But if he is slightly more reasonable, its a disaster, if we make him fold a hand like AJ or AT.