The 3bet is obviously fine / borderline mandatory, at least at a pretty good frequency.
When pal1972 comes back with the 4bet and—this is the crucial sizing tell—DOES NOT GO ALL IN, we can basically fold everything but AA ourselves.
This might be THE most unbalanced spot on Replay. Not only will players hardly ever bluff this configuration, but if they 4bet a big chunk of their stack without going all in it’s like, ALWAYS ACES. Weaker hands like JJ or AQ/AK will mostly either fold (super duper nitty) at this point, or (much more often) just go all-in themselves.
Part of the theory behind the relatively small size of 3/4bets is precisely that we simultaneously
a) put pressure on Villain to continue with hands we dominate
b) leave ourselves room to FOLD if Villain re-raises and we think we are likely beat
By just 5! jamming back in his face, I create a configuration where I am basically never ahead, rarely flipping, and mostly just getting shown AA and maybe KK. I have owned myself by taking further aggression against a line where villain’s range is so narrow, I can comfortably fold everything but KK/AA without a care in the world.
Many beginning/weak players underestimate the preflop strength of AK, following the anachronistic axiom that it is “just a drawing hand.” But you can definitely still overdo it, even with the more powerful suited variety. This hand is an example of overdoing it.
What I see is people just clicking the pot button. They’re clearly not thinking about their sizing that much, and I don’t think you can assume it’s always aces just because they click pot instead of all-in. It’s definitely going to be a much stronger range than you should see in theory, but I still can’t imagine it’s right to fold AK in either of those spots.
Also, if you are giving them only aces and kings, you’d want to fold KK before AK.
I’m giving them like 80% AA and 20% KK and that’s being generous
I’m telling you dude, I got thousands of hands with these guys - for a lot of them it’s just aces!
I have tried theoretically calling and reraising in all sorts of configurations, and they just keep showing me aces
The general 4bet range is surely wider, but the “I just put in half my stack as a 4bet” means “I am over 60 and I have aces” at an alarmingly high frequency on this site IMO, at least for 1M+ MTTs
in general I trust the conclusions of my “spidey sense” when it gets really loud. When pal1972 was tanking (lol 4 seconds = tank, we really need a time bank) I had just enough time to think “ok guru, if he shoves you call, if he 4bets another size just fold he has aces”
but I lacked the discipline to execute in real time. but I freakin knew!
Amen to the Time bank needed comment. The reasons I bet 1/2, Pot, 77% of time, is that I understand, can do it properly, etc, and because of the pain in but slider, pain in but process of entering exact bet size amount, that uses up most to almost all to all of time, and that when, if use all of time, auto folds your hand.
Either need more time, a time bank, or a better slider, better way, to enter specific amounts, 3x, 4x, 5 x raise buttons, 1/4 pot, 1/3 pot, half pot, 3/5 pot, 2/3 pot, 3/4 pot, 4/5 pot, Pot, etc, buttons
They don’t care. There are maybe half a dozen pet issues that you can see having about a mile’s worth of discussion posts in the forum, about which Replay has just… decided not to ever do anything. I find this baffling and have frankly accepted that UI is not a huge priority for the dev team/administration/whoever makes those decisions.
I’ll concede that the short tank probably does mean they are contemplating 4-bet vs shove, and in that case it’s going to be aces a lot. Still, you don’t need to be wrong about that often for folding AKs to be a mistake.
You actually only have 1 combo of aces you can call with if you are right, so you also have to be very sure you won’t start getting exploited, because you’ll essentially be folding to every 4-bet if you start folding AKs.
yeah it’s a MASSIVE exploit which is why I keep not-folding those spots, but at some point I’m starting to reconsider. I think what I will do from now on, having been prompted by my very correct devil’s advocate interlocutor, is to actually start keeping track of these spots and see if it’s AA frequently enough to justify the deviation
Agreed. It’s not just a convenience issue either, it really does hurt the quality of the poker played here by effectively eliminating most of the sensible bet sizes
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I keep track of what hands opponents 4 bet with, and also what hands they get all in with pre-flop. Keep in mind this is a little different in a cash game where I’m mostly much deeper than will be true most of the time in a tournament. Getting all in preflop with a shallow stack isn’t the same as doing so even 50bb deep.
I find there are quite a few people where any 4! at all is almost always AA, and unless you’ve got the pot odds to call even knowing they have AA a very high percentage of the time, you fold. I don’t have any idea how pal1972 plays in tournaments (maybe similar to his cash game play, but it is hard to know), but agree in general that I’d default to folding there unless I knew I had someone that will 4 bet rather wide (you’ll see a lot of people also that will do that with almost any pocket pair). Good notes can make a big difference.
All of this is mostly focused on the 4 bet, and less the sizing. I agree the sizing leads me to generally think the range is even slightly stronger, but I give more weight to the 4 bet than to the fact that they left a little behind (that’s actually often a tell for a bluff, if we’re on the river).
EXACTLY, it’s a player type thing. The same players who will limp AK (“i want to see an A or K on the flop before I start betting big”) and JJ/QQ (“i want to see no A or K on the flop before I start betting big”) are the ones whose 4bet range is just AA and nothing else. I also agree the next major class of players are those who will just merge 55-JJ. Notes distinguish between the two over time, but those are two very clear and reliable profiles that are common on Replay, in my experience.
Also most of these guys don’t have ANY frequency plays in their repertoire, so if you see them 4bet TT you can be pretty confident that they are just always 4betting TT in that config, and when they don’t 4bet you can give them quite the narrow range and exploit postflop till your chips catch fire
I think the better exploit is to just 3-bet more often, more polar, and move AKs to your calling range. It depends a bit on how tight their open raising range is too, but I’d start just calling with AKs way before I contemplated 3-bet folding it.
If the 4-bet really is only ever aces, this player is already gifting you chips by not 4-betting anywhere near enough. AKs (two combos) vs AA (three combos) is rare enough that I’m always going to be content just getting it in here even against players who I think only ever have aces.
Agreed! And idk how much railbirding you did last night but that’s exactly what I eventually did. I was just opening almost everything by the end, 3betting light, and bet-when-checked-to at a stupid high frequency postflop. All quite effective
Ran into it a couple times but always got the chips back before too long because the blinds are huge and everyone is overfolding.
