Defending BB against BU steal. All-in on the flop.

This is a weird hand.

I 3bet with AQo and he makes a small(ish) 4bet.

That 4bet is not small. It is 2.5x your 3bet, so it is totally standard 4bet sizing.

I think my range and hand are often ahead and I consider this 4bet a strategy against weak 3bets so I call.

You are wrong. As I mentioned villain's 4bet sizing is totally standard and considering 4bet bluffs are still a bit rare at the micros I would say you are behind. And you did not call. It looks like you did min 5bet?

1. Is a (stealing) BU 4bet range stronger that BB 3bet?

Of course villain's 4betting range is stronger than your 3betting range. You should 3bet him with a wide range but BTN probably 4bets about 3% range.

2. Should I have gone all-in (5bet)?

At this limit vs a guy who might be on the tight side and with 120bb effective stacks, I would say probably not.

This rainbow flop should miss both our ranges most of the time (right?)

At this point I would guess both of your ranges are quite heavy on pocket pairs. I wouldn't cbet that flop.

is this still donking if I 3bet and he 4bets on the previous street? Does that still make only villain the agressor?

Yes it would make villain the aggressor. If he made the last raise he has the aggression. But again you did 5bet. Or am I missing something?

Instead of folding he's all-in and I think it's +EV and feel confident to call here.

I wouldn't feel so confident.. He has pocket pairs in his range. His shove shows enormous strength. You have 2 overcards. Even if you hit you might be behind.

I guess this is again one of those things you only see at NL2 but was this call +EV in your opinion?

Absolutely not.

The 3-bet is absolutely fine with that hand against a BTN open. When he 4-bets, I don’t like the idea of calling and being OOP in a 4-bet pot and nor do I like the idea of a 5-bet, so I guess I would fold then.

AQo is a fine hand to 3b/call fromBB vs BU steal. There are possible bluffs ...

I do not like betting on flop, though.

I really made a mess of this one!
My apologies. I posted it way too late and tired and completely misread what I did with the 5bet there.
Villain's 4bet is indeed normal and it's my 5bet that is too small to have any effect. In the moment it was intended to show I was not intimitaded by his (in my opinion) 4bet bluff.

When you explain it like this it all seems very logical and I am a lot closer to playing like this than I was in my 'Battle of the blinds' post.

It's just that I sometimes have these gut feelings about villain's reaction (mostly speed and timing) and when reviewing it turns out I was right about the kind of hand I put him on. So I'm having difficulty accepting that I had to fold when these subtle things do give me an edge. It's obvious that there is a lot wrong with how I play the hand apart from that though.

If I follow the rulebook and ignore my instinct that he is bluffing with a worse hand, don't I make him bury my 3bets with 4bets every time? I know some people wrote that this kind of exploitation does not exist at NL2 but I can assure you that it does. Maybe that's a new evolution? And after I have to fold a 3bet twice i will probably adapt and just call instead of 3bet which means he keeps exploiting me.

Again, not at all thinking I know anything better but just writing down my questions as they come up. I really appreciate all you help!

I would fold preflop and save myself from a trouble later. What does he 4bet? AK, QQ+ is standard I guess but at nl2 you can see AQ/AJ, TT, JJ maybe. But I wouldn't rely on that and expect his range to be way stronger than your 3betting. Plus you're gonna be OOP so I really prefer folding. OTF I would NEVER call his all in. Even if it was maniac.. any pair beats you and I assume he doesn't have pure air since he 4betted you and called your 5bet. Also keep in mind that people at these baby stakes are pretty often honest. That means except for some maniacs, they don't usualy bluff in these spots. They also tend to play passive so I would assume that when he decides to step on the gass pedal and goes all in he DOES have something.

So I'm having difficulty accepting that I had to fold when these subtle things do give me an edge.

Good players will develop this skill with time. Sometimes they get a gut feeling and it can be very accurate. However this is based on a lot of practice and experience. We ofc don't know villains timings and table dynamics etc because we weren't there. You might have made a good move. But the way that this hand was played goes against my own experience and my instinct.

Even AK beats you, so villain really has to shove the flop with total air. It is hard to know if you are genius or just got lucky with your read this time

Even AK beats you, so villain really has to shove the flop with total air. It is hard to know if you are genius or just got lucky with your read this time
My analysis was way off with the 4bet/5bet confusion and I agree that in any normal situation I should have (and think I would have) folded pre flop.

I am in no way a genius (of that I am sure ) but I do think I have good instincts about the way a player might try to use aggression that he can't back up with his hand. This time I was right but still wonder how I could have played the hand better in this mindset.

Could you indulge me a little more and tell me your strategy for when you yourself hypothetically table-read that villain has a weaker hand and is bluffing. What is the best play to have the most fold equity.
Shoving after his 4bet?

If I have a feeling that villain is bluffing me I usually like to take the aggressive line. I believe raising to be better move than seeing the next street. But preflop it is very difficult to do those reads without proper stats. Villain always has the strong hands in his range also so it would be dangerous to start thinking he must be always bluffing us. Postflop there are more spots where villain is clearly weak.

But if you had been 3betting villain a lot and now he has started to 4bet you a lot (even though he normally 4bets very little) then I might consider 5bet shoving this hand.

Originally posted by la55i
But if you had been 3betting villain a lot and now he has started to 4bet you a lot (even though he normally 4bets very little) then I might consider 5bet shoving this hand.

That's the answer I was looking for. Thank you and sorry about this messy post.