Hi Eric,

First off, I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between 4betting say A9o vs A4o vs KTo - and as much as I like to be nitpicky and technical with this kind of stuff I think the most important thing is to have the correct ratio of bluffs to valubets in our 4betting range. This is what will have the heaviest impact on the EV of villain's responses and therefore our EV. The marginal difference between the different hands available for us to 4bet can't have much of an impact of the EV of the 4bet because situations where you get flatted happen very infrequently, and even when they do happen as long as you are reasonable with your 4bets your equity/playability going to the flop is going to be close anyway.

Having said all that, obviously if we want to have a solid 4bet strategy we should put some thoughts towards which hands we should do what with.

Here are some of mine:

I completely agree with 4betting the suited Kx hands and I think my Kxs 4bet range is pretty much the same as yours.
I almost always 4bet A7s and A6s, and occasionally the wheel aces. Seems like this is where we disagree as you think they are a profitable flat. I generally a) open fairly tight and b) open slightly bigger than average OTB so I expect even guys who are loose to make an adjustment and have a slightly tighter than average 3betting range against me - so I don't think the low suited Ax hands are such phenomenal flats with shallower stacks and vs. a stronger range.
If I were forced to flat all of my Ax hands (or the guy was just such a loose 3bettor that it would be the best thing to do), then yes, I would start 4betting the offsuit Ax hands. However I'm not so sure that the wheel Ax hands would be the best place to start - in fact I would take A9o over A4o every time. The ability to make a straight is nice, but with such low stack to pot ratios I think going to the flop with a hand that dominates some of villain's hands is much more important, and therefore A9o is clearly better. A9 dominates a few suited X9s combos that some villains are fairly likely to sometimes peel versus a 4bet, and it also dominates Axs wheel aces that some villains may also peel. Like I said though, all of this stuff is pretty marginal.

On a final note - I think generally the Ax blocker is a bit overrated in this spot, especially compared to a Kx blocker. Sure it blocks some of his value, but it also blocks a lot of his 3b/ft4b combos. And especially if villain is playing a 3b or fold only vs BU strat from SB, and always flatting AQ perhaps a Kx blocker isn't far behind Ax.

I agree with what you said, although to play devil's advocate the counter argument is also easy - you can probably check back and bet big turn and river to get TT to fold since it's kidn of easy for you to check back slowplays on this board, and you also freeroll yourself to him hitting Ax and coolering him.

I don't think he was particularly spewy - just too loose defending form the BB.

Hi Will,

I think I would almost always bet TT/JJ for protection as well as 99 + draws + good backdoors all for a small size. I actually don't think there's much reason to want to bet big with 99 here since even if we bet quite small we shouldn't have much trouble getting stacks in by the river.

Getting checkraised when we have TT/JJ does majorly suck here, but if you are up against an opponent who has a high x/r frequency in this spot I don't think you are supposed to exploit him in the x/r part of the game tree - if I saw my opponent doing that I would put my exploitative efforts in to barreling very aggressively versus a x/c.

Thanks for the response, Daniel!

I agree that a smaller sizing is better than a bigger.
Nowadays I feel like a lot of people would be cbetting here almost 100% of their ranges. If this would be the case I think it is possible that someone will only have a ch/raising range in this spot, or that small of a ch/calling range that we can't really make too much profit by exploiting him when he just calls. The width of his ch/raise range relative to ch/call obviously affects our EV a lot when we're betting JJ-TT. So yea my thinking was that it is a bit odd when someone checks here, unless he is not on an autocbet, and has a wider ch/call range with some ch/raises.
Am I a bit off here? I know I assume people's ch range will be very strong here which I might be wrong about. What's your opinion?

I get what you mean. Keep in mind that if we are rarely getting checked to here, betting isn't going to be much of a mistake either since it is going to happen infrequently.

I don't think most good regulars are on auto c-bet in this spot but it really depends on who you are up against - I certainly know some guys with an 85%+ cbet in 3bet pots, which probably implies 95%+ for this particular spot.

I agree with you that villain's checking range here is likely strong, but we probably have different definitions of strong: it makes a big difference if you consider strong = overpairs, FDs or strong = the subset of hands which are not non-showdownable air, which is more what I'm leaning towards and why I like a protection cbet here.

I agree with what you are saying, and I don't have any experience in these elite pools, so you're most likely right.
Infrequent mistakes are still mistakes though. :P

Thanks for the detailed answers!

Thank you!

Hi bouscotte,

Great questions and great analysis.

Like you said, while we are polarized here which generally leads to us wanting to bet quite large, I think in this spot we have a bluff too seldom to want to bet too big. Generally when you don't have too many hands that would want to bluff/need to bluff sizing smaller makes more sense - even if your valuebets are always good.

If this was a spot where everything else was equal but you weren't 3betting AJ and AQ preflop, and peeling all combos of 8x with no backdoors on the flop - then I think an overbet would work better since you have so many more hands that want to bluff.

I would turn all 8x into a bluff here but I don't think I have that many combos as the ones with no backdoors I'm likely to fold on the flop.

I would certainly construct a x/r range on that river. Like you said not with Tx boats, but certainly with other boats and straights. While Tx might only put one bet in versus a x/r, we are still incentivized to x/r because: a) a T never checks behind b) a T is never raising versus a river bet and c) we give him a chance to bluff, which he should here quite a bit.

Hope I helped!
Dan