5nl AK hand

[FireAce51]

Was playing for a short while and came across this hand, not sure if I played this wrong. The person was 27/23 with 11.5% 3bet and 25% 4 bet on a 181 hand sample.

WPN No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (6 handed) - WPN Converter Tool from FTR

Button ($5)
SB ($7.10)
BB ($5.85)
UTG ($5.90)
MP ($4.82)
Hero (CO) ($5.58)

Preflop: Hero is CO with Ad, Ks
1 fold, MP calls $0.05, Hero raises $0.25, Button raises $0.85, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.60

Flop: ($1.82) 7s, 10h, Kh (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $1.20, Hero raises $4.73 (All-In), Button calls $2.95 (All-In)

Turn: ($10.12) 5d (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($10.12) 3d (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $10.12
Main pot: $10.12 between Button and Hero, won by Button

Results:
Button had As, Ah (one pair, Aces).
Hero had Ad, Ks (one pair, Kings).
Outcome: Button won $9.62

[dhubermex]

You're ahead of his range with TPTK on the flop. Bad luck you ran into AA imo.

[WeldPhaser]

pre: well you surely could have 4b pre, after you iso and get 3b , there is going to be a lot Ax, broadway hands , and bluffs in his 3b range. so getting it in pre here would have been ok.

flop: shove raising the flop here is bad w tptk , villain seems at least competant , so i doubt he's stacking off with anything were ahead of.

[Cobra_1878]

Umm, I'm pretty happy to 4bet jam pre.

I'm also happy GII on that flop because villain can have a ton of draws.

Nice hand.

[griffey24]

If you're not 4b pre, then this is definitely standard post.

[veifa]

4b pre

[OngBonga]

If you're not 4b pre, then this is definitely standard post.

I can possibly call the cbet in an effort to keep his range wider, but yeah I agree with this.

[NstaBink]

I think you played the hand optimally. I don't like a 4b pre because AK, clearly, is not invincible. Had you 4b pre, you'd have likely gotten it all in at that point and I think that is a hugely overrated move. It is very possible to get away from AK and you should give yourself that chance (unless you just want to gamble.) Tournament poker? Perhaps. But at low stakes cash, you could be up against anything. Give the villain a chance to give you more information before committing your entire buy in.

Either way, you ran into our friend, Variance. You played it straight forward imo.

[OngBonga]

When we get it in pre with AK, we're not doing it to gamble, we're doing it because it's ahead of villain's stacking range. If you're getting it in as 55% favourite against villain's range, it's not gambling, it's investing. There's an important disticntion here that you would do very well to try to understand.

[BigSlickBaby]

When we get it in pre with AK, we're not doing it to gamble, we're doing it because it's ahead of villain's stacking range. If you're getting it in as 55% favourite against villain's range, it's not gambling, it's investing. There's an important disticntion here that you would do very well to try to understand.

I'm really not just kissing your ass because I'm new, I'm serious: You really know how to word things and clearly really understand how to teach the game to people. This concept that you're detailing here is something that I have been realizing over the last few weeks. Playing tournament poker a bit actually helped my cash game with this as I got to shake some of the monsters under the bed syndrome and realize what hands play well against other hands all in pre, etc without feeling the pressure of losing my entire cash stack if I was wrong. Prior to this, I was consistently getting caught in the switches after bad beats instead of continually making the same +EV "investments", as you put it, over and over again and watching the long term results come in.

I've had a few sessions now that were hugely profitable and still where I lost $2 or $3 here or there from shoves that I lost where I had between 48% and 65% equity. I also stacked several fish with moves like this, as well and those were for much larger amounts than $2 or $3 dollars. Before this, I wasn't understanding that you won't get any value off of anyone semi competent when you're an 85%+ favorite and you will only get them to put their money in sometimes when it's 60/40 you or 40/60 them. Over the last few thousand hands, there is a distinct upswing in the amount of hands I'm going all in with preflop or on the flop and my profits have responded accordingly. Nobody is going to miss that half a buyin or three quarter of a buyin lost pot now and then when they're crushing heads up and multiplayer pots for 2-3+ buyins at a clip. Again...as you said, these are investments and I really like the way you word it.

edit: One other thing to note is that I struggled initially when dealing with short stackers. Now they're just fodder to pick off for medium sized pots. I almost always know when I'm ahead of their range and when it's profitable, I'm iso raising them, looking for a 3bet, and then 4bet shoving over the top and watching myself take down an easy short stack.

[OngBonga]

Well I'm glad I'm helping people to improve. The irony is I'm not all that great at poker myself, especially cash games. I'm more of a tourney player. I'm fine with basic concepts, and understanding the difference between gambling and investing is something I consider basic. I'm only touching the surface. It's obvious that if we get it in at 55% equity then we're making money over a large sample, but even if we only have 45%, we could still be making money thanks to the dead money (the size of the pot before we shove), and fold equity (when 77 folds against our shove with AK, we're taking the whole pot instead of just half of it). When you start to apply these factors, you begin to understand that 50% equity is not the magic line that determines profit or not profit, that actually it's lower than that depending on villain's folding tendancies, and pot size. But there we start to move into advanced territory, and that's not something I'm as comfortable with. Knowing how much fold equity we have, and knowing how this effects our profit line, that's not something I'm too hot at. But it's important to understand the basics first, and I'm happy that I can help with that.

[BigSlickBaby]

When you start to apply these factors, you begin to understand that 50% equity is not the magic line that determines profit or not profit, that actually it's lower than that depending on villain's folding tendancies, and pot size. But there we start to move into advanced territory, and that's not something I'm as comfortable with. Knowing how much fold equity we have, and knowing how this effects our profit line, that's not something I'm too hot at. But it's important to understand the basics first, and I'm happy that I can help with that.

As said before, I'm about 40k hands in (with about 35,000 being cash hands). I'm about to make a huge push at this during the fall here so I spent the last few days getting my ducks in a row with things like software, study material, videos, etc now that I have some semblance of an idea as to what I'm doing and what's what in the world of online poker.

I wound up getting hooked on equity calculators I tried all of the hot ones out and am utilizing their free trials. I found that I like Equilab and PokerRanger the best but don't actually need PR right now. It would be more of a shiny toy at this point in my career. So, for now, I'm just getting as good as I can with Equilab and learning everything about it and when I'm ready to take a bigger bite out of things, I'll register PR. It's (PR) $80 USD and right now that's a ton of buyins and also nearly 3 months of a DeucesCracked subscription so instead of just indulging and picking it up, I'm going to wait a bit. Everyone tells me that Equilab is more than enough until at least about 25 or 50nl.

Anyway, yeah - I'm getting addicted to the equity trainer and playing around with ranges. Just in the last few days of doing this I think my understanding of flop textures and how certain ranges hit certain boards has opened up nearly ten fold.

I plan on playing a lot of hands this week and using both PT4 and Equilab in conjunction with one another to really take my post session analysis, and study in general, to the next level. I want to get up to 10nl+ asap at this point.

edit: I spent a bit more time watching tutorial videos, reading, and learning about Flopzilla earlier. It turns out that this combined with Equilab really is a good investment for me right now. It fits my budget well and provides everything I need for a while. This is a regular (big) part of my study from this point on now and I'm looking forward to understanding more at the tables as a result.