Lost (in the hand) again with AKo

Sorry you lost to a one outer.

It's a dry board that favors villain's range and you have position, so flat the flop. I don't see how flatting the small cbet looks strong. Obviously, going to try to get the money in by the river.

I’d flat. I do not think the flat looks strong.

H wins the hand, just doesn’t think he played it well.

Played fine pf, flat otf is fine too.

I would call here too. I don't think it looks that strong at all, raising would be much stronger. You're supposed to call a lot of the hands in your range against this small bet sizing.

Flop is easy. You want to let him bluff the turn. However, he is not going to believe you have AK, so you need to try to get all the money from other trips aces. What happened on the turn?

Twitcheroo: sorry, could you clarify your preflop position? Are you OTB here? I think it matters to your perceived range. Thanks!

H is BTN.

Results:
H is a fish. V can lead an A here but H should never raise an A, so H believes V knows this so H raises to $300 leaving V $175 to call into $1,050. V folds.

He can know it and still have K2s or QJ. There aren’t many hands with equity here and most of those have very little. We want to protect our pocket tens with AK and AQ here and flat. Turn can go either way.

This is a very dry static board, so no need for protection. There is a point of raising to try to get stacks in if he has an ace. Better though to call, and give him a chance to bluff the turn. If he checks the turn and you bet it, he will usually call with JJ-KK.

Grunch:

We're the BTN?

Did we consider 5B'ing pre?

Do we have the Ac or Kc?

We lose to one or two combos of A5s, assuming he's not 4B'ing A5o or 55. He's free-rolling us with AKcc, and not that far behind with any other AXcc combo.

I kinda want to click this back to $300-$350.

I disagree. In a 4BP, I think we can have some flop raises when V c-bets 20% pot on this board and we're heads up and IP.

He's going to have some AX, some club combos, and some PP's. We're going to have a similar range. Either of us could have A5s.

He can have some bet-folds, some bet-calls, and some bet-raises. We can have some raises for value, protection, and some semi-bluffs.

He happened to bet-fold. Do you think he's barreling turn with worse if we just flat call?

If we're not coolering him or getting coolered by him, it's hard to get much more value here. I've been here with A5 vs two opponents who wanted to get it all in with AK, and I've been here with AQo vs an opponent who whiffed.

If he's not a complete idiot, he's not putting another chip into the pot unless he significantly improves or already had us crushed.

be careful about making assumptions on villains thought processes,

Thought about this more after I posted. Also realized I asked if we had the Ac, which I apparently forgot was on the board as soon as I started typing.

The pre-flop configuration, the stack depth, and the reads make me think it's possible V could cold-4B pre with more than just QQ+/AK. In game, I'd be focused on trying to bucket his range and count the combos in each bucket, to figure out which parts of his range we want to target.

Bucket 1 - any AX combos he 4B's pre. I'm going to assume he's not cold 4B'ing A5s or ATo, but he might 4B as wide as AQo or even AJo, and maybe ATs, that's 8-12 combos, all drawing to 3 outs (8-12 potential scare cards we could see), plus 3 more of AK for a chop. The three 5's left in the deck are chop outs for AX, and for us if he has A5.

Bucket 2 - JJ-KK - 18 combos. JJ and QQ drawing to 2 outs (8 potential scare cards). KK is drawing dead.

Bucket 3 - KQs, maybe KJs - 8 combos, including 2 flush draw combos drawing to 9 outs if we don't have the Kc in our hand. 10 possible scare cards.

It might look like most of that range is going to over-fold to a raise in a 4BP, but we have to consider how V is ranging us when we 3B on the BTN and call his 4B. We could have a lot of AX that's worse than AT, and a lot of FD combos on the flop.

V may not believe we'd fast-play AX when we're IP. If V is sticky, he may put us on a FD and decide he's just going with his worse AX, or he's not ready to fold JJ-KK or his FD's yet. If V is really aggro, he might spaz and 3B us.

It would be an insane hero fold if he releases worse AX to a min-click. When he's getting 6:1 pot odds, it should be hard for him to fold the nut flush draw, even if he thinks some of his outs are no good.

Our hand isn't the nuts, and it's far from invulnerable in a 4BP. The only hand in his range that we have drawing dead is KK with no club.

Any T, J or Q could improve him to a boat. Any club could make him a flush. Another 5 and we're chopping with all his worse AX, unless someone improves to a better boat. If a K hits the turn or river, there's a good chance he'll shut down with his worse AX.

There are about 31 turn cards we'll hate seeing, more than half the deck. What are we doing if he barrels big on one of those 28 cards that isn't a 5? We should probably fold, because even an aggro player's bluffing frequency should go way down once we call the flop c-bet in a 4BP when there are two aces on board.

Even if the turn is a brick - what hands does he have that are going to barrel, and call a raise, once we flat call his c-bet? How likely is it that he's going to bet all three streets with worse than AK if he doesn't improve to a hand that can beat AK? It seems pretty unlikely.

I'd want to get as much money as possible into the pot on the flop, to set up a less than pot-sized turn jam on a brick. If he folds to our flop raise, it's probably because he was getting OOL pre or already made up his mind that he'd be one-and-done on the flop, so we weren't getting any more money out of him anyway.

I don't think we lost much if any value by clicking it here. Flat calling would be a reverse-equity slow-play. We'd be laying him 7:1 to suck out on us.

Sure, about 3/4 of his range only has about a 5% chance of improving on the turn, but the other 1/4 has around 20%, and more than half the time, we won't know if the turn helped him, so we won't be able to jam. If we don't or can't jam turn, we'll be giving him another chance to suck out on us on the river.

I make assumptions about V’s thought process before literally every action.

Making assumptions on villains thought process and strategy can be dangerous unless you know their strat pretty in depth

If you have no thoughts on V’s thought process how do you decide what to do?

Wait! What? You're supposed to consider what your V's will do? I thought I was supposed to just play my two cards.

how is flatting super strong? when you call you have Ax but also any pp.

Obviously in poker you are constantly making assumptions when you play. My comment was based in the idea that you dont want to over assume how a villain might be thinking in terms of metagame and levels of thought unless you have significant history with particular villains.

IMO, a sounder approach is thinking in terms of what your range wants to do against opponents ranges and not get so deep in metagame or ego battles at this level.

This hand is a test of logic, IMO.

In theory, V is supposed to range bet every flop for a small size when he's the PF4B'er.

In reality, when the board is AAX two-tone, it's unlikely he's going to simply bet his entire range. He'll most likely have some checks.

Whether he bets range or not, his betting range is going to be split between hands that are bluffing and planning to bet-fold to a raise or check-fold if unimproved on a later street when hero calls flop, and hands that he's betting for value and happy to continue vs a raise.

It's hard for us to be bluffing when we raise. But that's ok. There's a part of his betting range that can improve on the turn when we flat call. When we have value, we can't lay him 7:1 to suck out by flat calling.

Additionally, if we know he has some bet-folds, we can actually have some semi-bluff raises. We wouldn't have many in a 4BP, but they should be somewhat obvious - PP's that block the AX combos he'd likely 4B pre and unblock the combos he'd fold to a flop raise, mostly KK and QQ, and NFD combos like KQcc and KJcc.

It would be different if this was a SRP or 3BP. The ranges here are so tight that both players will struggle to find bluffs or continue vs a raise. But that's not a reason to let V realize his equity getting 7:1.

Imagine raising with KK, QQ, or KXcc and getting him to fold ATs or AJs. Imagine folding him off a chop. Imagine he flat calls with AJ and we bink the turn to make a flush or boat up.