Haven’t played in 6 months but had nothing else to do on a Friday early afternoon. Basic 1/2 table with one very good player to my right and another very capable player UTG+2. Hero has ~600 right after showing down AA to a river that held.
Hero UTG: $12 with AK ss
UTG+ 1 call
UTG+2 call (villain with like 400. Older white guy that I’ve seen every time I’m in the room which is like 12x a year. Plays 1/2 - 5/10 that I’ve been with. Competent thinking player.)
BB calls
Flop (48): 2c7h9c
After B.B. checks and before I can act the next two check. Before dealer turns I say I didn’t act. Both players apologize. I bet $15. Normally I’d cbet more but both quickly checked. Only Villian calls
C/C? Kinda doubt he would quickly check any of the two over + FD hands he could have. Doubt he quick checks an overpair either. He could have AK or KQ with no flush draw?
Cbetting at all would be very bad here normally, but it’s good after both check out of turn of course.
C/C. Villain isn’t going to have a flush as he wouldn’t quick check that OTF. Probably not a 9 either for the same reason. He could have a 7, but he might give up OTT with that. There are 15 combos of JT he could have, that’s what I’m hoping for.
Edit: Also the cbet looks a bit small to me still, I get why you want to size small but this is an awkward hand to play OOP and you have three opponents, you don’t really want to get called. I’d make it something a bit more normal looking like 20.
Pre: Why are you making it 6BB from UTG preflop? I’d rather just bet small with AKs on tables like this where isolating one player preflop seems unlikely.
Flop: What ChrisV said about not c-betting but fine after they check.
Turn: 4-way I’m thrilled to C/C when my K comes on the turn. Let him stab. It’s unlikely you’re going to get 3 bets worth of value from TPTK out of a competent villain - and much safer to get your value on the river rather than building a giant pot. Worth risking villain hitting his draw or tripping up or something imo. Protecting your hand with one card to come doesn’t mean that much.
River: I’d C/C as played. He’s not calling say 88 on 3 streets.
The key thing to remember is that villain is one of 3 who saw the flop. So he’s much more likely to have something good like a set or monster draw vs. say middle pair than if you were HU before the flop. I guess just by instinct I’m not going for much value with TPTK before the river in a 4-way pot preflop. I like to keep the pot manageable.
That’s way off base imo, very clear turn bet. We’re going to be betting our entire range on that card and he knows this, we have to be including our value to balance our range and get value if he tries to bluffcatch. It’s a much better card for our range than his, which generally suggests we should bet. A competent villain should not interpret a check on that card as a green light to stab, I’d probably think my opponent had turned a set of kings or something. There’s also no reason to stab with many of his holdings, for example mediocre hands like 87s should certainly be checking. Finally, it’s extremely unlikely we’ll run into a better hand, since he is not checking this flop out of turn if he flopped a set or something, he’d pay a little more attention than that. So one of the main downsides of a betting line is much less probable than it would normally be.
Because you’re getting three callers and AK is crushing their range? Raising huge preflop and getting a bunch of callers is great with AK, if you think that’s what going to happen you should be raising it up with premium holdings that have a big edge against what they are going to be calling with.
I guess I’m just used to these tourneys where you don’t have to bloat the pot pre to get them to go broke post. So I try to see cheap flops with my whole range (not that anyone is paying attention to my range).
I also get nervous with only TP in a 4-way pot pre and assume any hand that calls 3 streets (or calls 2 then raises river, etc) has a good chance of beating me. So if I feel like I can only get two streets of value I favor getting it on the river.
Both things could be leaks. I guess with a bigger pot pre I can get more value. AK is just so damn frustrating to play in multi-way pots.
Preflop: Perfect. You want a tight range pre with a sizing that punishes likely loose callers.
Flop: Fine. Even in normal circumstances I don’t think a cbet is terrible here since the board missed so many hands, but do slightly prefer a check.
Turn: Mandatory bet.
River: (river pot is 158 right?) Anyway tough spot. I think there are two routes you can go:
smallish blocking bet (around 60ish)
or check/decide river: I really don’t like an auto check/call, just due to the general passiveness of live players. I normally play online so I don’t like saying this sort of thing but I think you do have to just start by checking and make a live read. I would certainly lean toward folding if villain is bombing pot. The flush draw got there and villain’s missed range just isn’t that wide.
Yeah my $150 tourneys are very different. Only nits who get pissed off when their premium hands get cracked bet that much pre. Then they always grumble if they have to fold post.
I like checking the river. If we don’t check here with a king most of the time then what the heck can we check/call with? So we should probably be betting with flushes and boats and quads and our missed straight draws as a bluff, and checking kings and aces and TT-QQ if we’re betting that on the turn, which is probably OK. So now we have TT-QQ, AA and AK, KQ, maybe KJ and KT as bluffcatchers. We should fold some of those and unless our villain is betting KJ on the river the strength of the hand doesn’t matter all that much. Not having a club in your hand makes it lean towards folding but having the strongest king makes it lean towards calling. If you had the ace of clubs you have to call, and you probably want to call when you have KQc. But other than that just call with the top half of your checking range and fold with the bottom half of your checking range.
Similarly, we should be bluffing missed straight draws with a club and checking and folding missed straight draws without a club.
If you can only get two streets of value, how you should play sometimes depends on if you expect to get more value from charging draws on the turn or inducing bluffs from missed draws on the river.
Most 1/2 rooms in NA have a $10-15 standard open. When the standard open in a $1/2 game is $6 or $7, you should just go home and make some progress on your Netflix queue.
That’s why I like the $150 tourneys. Everyone is always terrible. And most of the time you have less than 50BB effective so it’s like a SNG for me.
But let’s say it’s the first level of one of my lol donkaments and you get AKs UTG. Standard raise at the table is 2-4 BBs. But don’t assume anyone notices your raise sizes or will play any differently based on the bet size in front of them (they never do until it gets late - then they flip over to way too tight). IE - if they like their suited 3-gapper at 2BB, they will like just as much it at 10BB - even if they only have 50BB. Except the blinds which may call a minraise but fold to 4BB.
So no matter what you raise - expect about 3.5 callers on average. Re-raises rarely happen in the early rounds.
So in that world, what do you bet with AKs and why? Do you play AK any differently? Are you really happy to be 4-9 way (which does happen) with AK?
Yeah I think your analysis is spot on from a GTO perspective, but maybe this approach is overplaying the competition a little. Like I 6x it pre because my opponents are loose/passive fish, and will lean towards river folds to large bets for the same reason.
Admittedly its a little a different since the particular villain when we’re against is described as “a competent thinking player” but IMO this is a wash with him being old .
Agree that you can make substantial exploitative adjustments here but in order to intelligently do that you have to have a general ballpark idea of what the actual GTO play should be. Then fold like twice as you should be or something.
Disagree, we can start with exploitative play as a base due to population reads. Just old-fashioned poker of putting our opponents on a likely range and playing accordingly.
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