
Game type: 25/50 Full Ring NL, PokerStars
Your image: A little hyper
Opponent’s image: Very solid long-time regular
Your hand: A♣K♠
The setup: You’ve hit a couple nice flops for some decent pots so far in this full ring game. This hand, you’re up against a very solid regular in these games.
The table folds to you on the button. You make it 3x. The SB folds and the BB makes it $550. You call and flop top pair on an all-heart board:
8♥4♥A♥
The BB leads for $750 into $1125. What’s your play?
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If you raise, you can’t really make it wrong for a heart draw to call and you certainly can’t make it wrong for a stronger draw to call. You’ll also fold out all non-heart holding hands you’re ahead of.
If you call, you risk letting a small heart that would fold to a flop raise get there, but you can force your opponent to make a much bigger mistake when hearts don’t get there (or when they’re not holding a heart). That happens roughly 8% of the time – and a chunk of that % involves hands they’d call a raise with anyhow (probably any Kh or Qh, maybe Jh with a pair).
Based on that, I think you make more money by calling here.
What actually happened: You raised all-in and the BB called, showing AQ with the Qh. Your hand held up and you won the pot.
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The villain didn’t flop a flush as the ace is in the flop so therefore he either has a pair or likely a weaker ace. There are really two really bad hands to be up against – 88 and AKh, with AA being a distant unfortunate possibility. Repop will chase away the weaker holdings but we are rather unlikely to make any more money out of those anyway. At the same time, there are several trailing holdings with a heart in them that would probably call a push here. I assume that I am ahead at the moment and given that the pot is 1,875 and villain has 2.7k left behind I will push.
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Agree with catcher and not the staff.
Calling is terrible. Raising is correct given his stack size and image I think a shove is good too.
“Very solid long-time regular” is not likely to 3-bet with suited conectors, so you really only need to worry about AKh, 88 and AA as catcher says.
Not sure of the exact % a 4th heart will fall but i think the times he calls with KKh, QQh, JJh or AQh and doesnt get there will make it a good shove in the long run.
Anyone with better maths please feels free to correct me.
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With this flop i want to control pot size or bail.
Raising may either get your opponent to fold or may risk a big chunk of your stack (and a good one for that matter). CAll and reevaluate.
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@Cristiano
Villain is not a deep as hero. His stack is not much bigger than the pot if we call. You cant talk about pot control with this pot to stack ratio. In a preflop reraised pot, you have to be willing to play TPTK on the flop, otherwise you should have folded preflop.
I don’t like getting tricky, I just shove all in here.
Off course calling migth trap AQ or even AJ with no h, but I dont see villain shoving a whole lot of medium pocket pairs on turn if no h hits. And even though villain migth sligthly have pot odds ti call the shove, his pot odds are infinite if we dont raise.
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listen kids you have to raise that, chances are he raised with a big pocker pair, strong chance he might have a heart in that mix, you put him all in and if he wants to risk drawing out on you with a heart, he’s a sucker stay at the table with him, you will get your money back off him….if he sucks out, chances are with a big pair he wont call with that ace showing.
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Shove to drive out heart draws. Only correct answer, unless you really like playing with fire.
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Assuming you’re reasonably confident your opponent has either an ace or a pair with a single heart then he’s got 11 or 12 outs, and he’ll know it.
That means if you shove he’ll be facing 2775 into 2625, which he should call.
You’ll then win 8175 53-57% of the time for an expected value of +$310 or +$585 if he has a pair or AQh-type hand respectively.
If you call and then shove if the turn blanks, or fold if a heart comes then the villain will only win the pot if he turns a heart, since he will otherwise not have correct odds to call your bet (If he does call anyway, even better). He’ll therefore take down the pot at it’s current size 20% of the time, while you’ll take it 73-76%. If he hits trips or a second pair then we can assume he stacks us for the other 4.5-6.7%
This gets us to an expected value of $464-$589 for the hand.
So the staff have got this one right but it’s incredibly close, especially as the villain turned out to have the AQ option which left the EVs at 585 and 589 for shoving and calling respectively (tbh my rounding errors are probably greater than this difference).
However I think there are added benefits to calling that I haven’t included in the calculations:
1. If the villain has AKh and a heart falls on the turn you’ll be able to get away from the hand a lot more cheaply.
2. Similarly if he has trip aces and a heart falls you’ll be able to check/fold and save some more chips.
3. There’s a decent chance your opponent will fire again even if he misses the turn, allowing you to get your money in with a much bigger edge than on the flop.
4. The calling approach has lower variance since the pots will be smaller and you’ll win a greater proportion of them. ie. while your net profit is similar, your return for chips risked is much greater when you call. Of course if the guy shoves on the turn even when he misses then the pots will be just as big but your EV will have become far higher.
As a rule of thumb, when you have your opponent on a narrow hand range of combo draws, it’s usually a good idea to save some chips back for the turn, since if the money goes in on the flop it’s almost a coinflip, whereas the turn will blank the majority of the time, allowing you to take the pot down or get your money in with a big advantage.
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Sorry, small mistake in there. The larger EVs should in each case refer to being against a pair, while the smaller EVs refer to AQh etc. This means shoving is a mistake against AQh but much less so against a pair, which is what you’d expect.
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Hello! Every prime y!

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I like it
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If your not already beat the only way you can lose this hand is by calling and making a mistake later.
You are more likely to make a profit from an opponent with 1 heart calling your shove and missing their draw than any thing else. The half stack is more likely to do just that anyway.
Do you really want to give them an opportunity to brick the turn and fold to your turn shove??
Your risk is limited because of the villains stack size. Get your chips in.
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If the villian calls our all-in, he is at +EV with 12 outs (flush plus 3 Qs). Based on this, I don’t see how an all-in raise could be +EV for us.
I think calling is correct here. All-in on the turn if no heart comes. With a heart and villian bet, do we fold this?
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Hi Everyone,
Such a nice forum layout, I love being here!
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