blonde poker forum

$2/4 PLO

Hero is button with Ac 5h 3c As (Stack $360)

Villain 1 sb 3b to $26.62 (fairly readless, covers everyone)

Villain 2 in BB cold calls. Playing $384. Not a whale but has certainly done some things that make us believe he is the most value at the table.

Hero 4-bets to $106.48. Both villains call.

Flop is Kd Qh 9h.

Both villains check to us.

What's our thinking here and what do we do?

Hello Mr Greeky,
I dont know, but eagerly awaiting answers as thats the sort of board that i normally get with that type of 'aces' hand- i normally go into scared mode lol.

Same here.

The pot is bloated, we've missed it completely, but both villains check to us. I always smell a rat here, & that flop must hit so many ranges. Pretty much we can't improve, either, & there's every chance one of the villains has the  Ahrt.

Even if they have not, we really don't want to hit it, do we? 

I suppose we have to bet, but I would not be loving life. It's either that, or give up & see if we can get to showdown cheaply, but we can never call a bet, can we?

Think I'm too nitty these days.

I would just check back, its a board that nails a SB 3b range and a BB cold calling range, especially when we can remove two aces and a king from their preflop starting hands. They're going to have a ton of high card combos, rundowns with JT etc. and I don't really expect anyone to make any tightish folds especially when stacks were <100bbs.

Rightly or wrongly its just easy for them to give you a lot of hands like AATx and just stack off any 2 pair, they'll have a ton of pair+FD+gutter type hands that have you in pretty terrible shape.

I did consider that a hand like JT with nothing else may want to just lead which would make betting this hand more attractive but its hard for them to have that with their preflop ranges.

Think only bet is to jam? 255 into 320ish?

We are absolutely coffined when we get called. Don't see anyone folding KJxx with a FD or better... Only concern is we check back, the 2 of bricks comes on the turn and we are getting bluffed off the pot every single time by SB if he doesn't have it.

Check back flop, and fold to a turn bet from either player.

Yeah def check back / give up

Also, any love for flatting the 3bet preflop?

Don't play much but seems like the easiest give up ever? Am I missing something?

Nightmare flop, I'm giving up here too.

Ok glad we finally got some responses. This wasn't a hand I'd played.

I was watching a RunItOnce video where a member had submitted some hands and Phil Galfond was doing a review of it.

Galfond said that he would shove the flop. I am firmly in the check back, resign to losing the hand camp on this board in this situation which is why I took note and posted it.

That said, Given Mr Galfond is so well respected in the world of PLO I want to look into it further.

Galfond does admit he's a little rusty and fairly indecisive on it but here are a few of his comments from the video that I wrote down for the purpose of further discussion on this thread.

"I do believe that both players are kind of likely to lead with flush draws, King x of hearts, probably sets so I think when they're check calling to slow play its kinda usually Jack Ten, KK with hearts, something like that. It's pretty hard to picture a reasonable 3-betting range that is not doing well on this board.

Given that I expect a lot of strong hands to lead. Also the thing about having J10 here if you're either player is that the board is pretty draw heavy and there's less than a pot sized bet left so I wouldn't be surprised to see people leading J10. So all that said I think we probably have enough fold equity and equity to make this worthwhile.

It's one of those spots where you get really results oriented because when you get folds you feel it was the right play and when you get snapped and have terrible equity against a set + hearts or a straight you feel like an idiot."

So if anyone wants to run some numbers/construct some ranges I'd appreciate it.

I think it's interesting and still think it's a fold but curious to be convinced the other way or that it's closer than I thought.

Would have to be quite a bit deeper, probs around 200bbs before I'd think about not 4betting this hand. AA53ss isn't really trashy aces with a suit and some connectivity imo.

I remember a RIO vid from galfond talking about the 4bet of flat decision with aces, he said that he wouldn't even consider not 4betting all aces combos shallower than 180bbs and that if you're worried about people being able to peel your 4bets and play very well on the boards that aren't good for aces then its better to be 4betting strong rundowns etc than to start not 4betting some of the AA combos.

Personally not much love for flatting the 3b. We have someone who is fishy in the BB, putting in money with what we assume is a weaker range than he should have and so even though our Aces arent great we have a nut suit and in general it shouldn't get too tricky from here.

Idea behind flatting rather than 4betting was not based on being scared to push equity etc. I'm sure it is +EV to 4bet here. Reason I suggested that flatting could be considered is because of the cold caller in the BB. This means we can have a really sexy postflop spot if we just flat since as well as having absolute position (the BTN) we also have perfect relative position (i.e. If the SB cbets he will be betting through the BB into us). Feels to me like the hugely +EV spots we can often get into postflop when we flat (due to relative position and deception) might more than compensate for not pushing a preflop equity edge.

If the SB had flatted and then the BB had 3bet I would not even consider flatting.

Maybe I am just thinking this way due to all the 6c Omaha I've been playing over the last year. Flatting in this spot with non-premium AAxxxx is pretty standard in 6c - and this spot (i.e. someone cold-calling a 3bet) happens way more often at 6c.

If we assume what Phil says is true (for both players) then things don't look too bad. But imo it's a huge stretch to discount all nutty/semi nutty hands because they don't lead. Pure range vs range doesn't really change a lot even if we loosen or tighten sb's 3bet range by 5/10%, and BB's cold calling range (which obv can vary hugely depending on who it is), we're still proper fucked.
(http://i.imgur.com/FQD3yV1.png)

Discounted ranges:
(http://i.imgur.com/UPc3iRn.png)

Phil says he's not a math guy (which I find hard to believe) but even if we get absolute best possible scenario we aren't making much money.

Ok so just ran the proper numbers. It's obv a lot of guess work, and I've made quite loose assumptions about BB's range and stack off range. I've given him a cold call range of 40% here. Maybe too loose, but I'd guess it was ok for a semi whaley type. Sb range I've gone for a pretty standard top 15%, assuming hero is opening a decent amount. Both ranges excluding the very top that I assume are getting it in pre.

I've given sb a stack off range OTF as KQ+,Q9+:T,9+:hh,Thh+ and using this range he's going to be stacking off 53.25% of the time on this flop, given his preflop range.
I've given BB a pretty loose stack off range of any 2 pair, any flush draw, 9T+ (maybe too loose, let me know what you think). Therefore BB is going to be stacking off 75.16% of the time.

When sb has a hand he is stacking off with we have 16% vs his range, and 29% vs BB. 3 way we have 18%. Most of our EV comes from fold equity which we have 12% of vs said ranges, although as the pot is so big, it counts for a lot.

(http://i.imgur.com/2fuTbfX.png)

However as you can see it's a -$7.47 shove overall. Not much and a lot closer than I was expecting. Given that as Phil said he expects people to lead some of their GII hands, this probably works out to a breakeven shove.

Would like to hear opinions on my range estimations and anything I may have missed/overlooked/done wrong.

this is 100% a check back, not even close.

I'd get into the maths but I don't even think it's worth doing, POWWWWWs stuff (which is very good btw IDK if i said in the other thread Iv never used pokerjuice before I enjoyed your posts) before he even goes into deep detail confirms this in my mind.

@Stu I don't think the immeadiate EV of a 4bet preflop (which is undeniable and quite a lot given no-one folds) can ever be matched in any other play, as much as I agree with the idea that a "sexy" pre-flop spot can occur from flatting the 3b PF.

Yeah I agree now tbh. I am so used to playing 6 card Omaha now that I sort of 'forgot' how much of an equity edge AAxx has preflop in 4 card Omaha. I just ran a few sims to remind me of this. In 6c you can often get (even double-suited) Aces all-in 3way and find that you have the worst equity of the three hands (obviously I'm not talking about a hand like AAKQJTss which will always be pushing equity; I'm meaning stuff like AA9542ss which often is pushing an equity disadvantage MW even with two suited Aces). That's why flatting the 3bet is the play at 6c, but not at 4c. So yeah, clear 4bet.