nl25 sh AK/QQ #2

4betting isolates against the strongest hands he has and our hand is too strong to fold so we haveto call and play a pot oop. Will probably ttake a passive line post-flop and fold to top much aggression

with QQ i can see what you're saying but what about with AK where we will mostly flop air? playing to hit sucks but then so does floating OOP in a 3bet pot with A high...

Hi,

AK mostly flops air 65% of the time but we have AK high, sometimes its good enough to check/call once for example on low card boards like 245 and sometimes he checks back.

When we call with AK we are acknowledging that he is is strong and taking our odds to draw for the A and K like set mining and if we don't hit i think check/folding is fine and you should feel comfortable with it.

think about it another way, this sucks less than 4betting and facing a shove.

thanks
cutegoldfish

thats interesting. ok so say we do flop A high on something like 743r and face a bet. i understand calling and also we have the SDV so we check the turn and fold to a bet which i get. but what if he checks back the turn and the board bricks off and he stabs river? is it still a fold? i think bet-check-bet is most often a made hand that is either pot controlling or trying to reel me in..

also about calling OOP, obv we can't just call AK/QQ... so taking an opening range of 66+, ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, T9s, AJo+, KQo... would you say a calling range like this is ok: QQ-JJ,AQs+,AKo? seems a little tight and predictable but i don't want to start calling AQo and AJs etc... even if i do dominate a polarised 3betting range im really not sure about calling OOP.

hi,

yes you are right the bet check bet line is usually for value so we can fold. but maybe we can also consider just folding the flop if we dont hit, we may not get implied value when we hit A or K and we know his range is strong too.

with regards to open/calling ranges, i dont think im strong at it so i suggest you look at the diamond bootcamp video where pleno talks about defending in MP against 3bets. i cant find it in the videos section i think you might be able to get it since you are a moderator.

i am still pretty much a nit and fold almost everything in MP to BU 3bets

thanks
cutegoldfish