As a general rule I will always c bet these boards with AA.

In the example you give even though villain is a tight reg these guys have a huge variation on post flop aggression. Versus an unknown I would defend the flop and turn and give up on the river at stakes below 100NL. Players just won't 3 barrel bluff you frequently enough to be able to call. It really will be sets and top two most of the time.

It's important here to note that we have the As which cuts down heavily on villain's flush draw combos pushing it closer to a fold, but not necessarily all the way. The pair plus 6 combos are enough make it worth defending

In this example we are OOP. So I'm also wondering, if we actually do get raised on these board type, can we just flat out fold a flop raise vs the player type described? If that were the scenario.

I do ok but do not consider myself "pro" ... My personal experience with these spots is to reverse engineer the ranges they need to have to make calling flop raises / turn raises / or flop shoves to their raises etc. then look at whether the range that they need to have fits with their actions. If they need to be raising flop and betting turn with hands as wide as T7o to make AA a profitable bet/call flop check call turn check call river (card dependent in terms of how it interacts with their ranges of bluff / value hands) then it should be a spot where if there is aggression we should fold.

If however they need to have only 77 88 55 and 3 combos of flushdraws (A4s JTs KQs) and us bet calling flop check calling turn check calling river etc. then likely it is best to be holding onto the hand.

The constructed range will be relative to the villain also. If they are a pfr vpip af of 5 11 0.8 they will have a significantly narrower range and therefore AA equity will be much lower than if they are a 22 45 8. Against a 22 45 8 I am check calling and hoping they are dropping dud bombs.

Hey,

pretty easy here, put your range and villains range in Equilab and you'll see villain has rangeadvantage, the stronger range should bet, so check should be the most +EV line with AA.

You can x/r to target his overpairs (obv. x/r fold or x/r call with spade), or x/c to target his whole range, if he has a high CC% x/c and x-decide until river is the best line imo because he has a lot of hands which can barrel now.

Note: OOP your handstrenght has to increase to play aggressive or call down light, AA on that board and runout is not a strong hand (relative). Against bet bet bet (big), easy fold on the river unless villain is super aggressive, against small bets call the river wihtout the spade and fold with spade unless you have a read that he uses small bets for thin value and bluffs.

If you bet the hand and call against a raise, there is no reason to call a turnbet on the J even against good regulars, your "mid-range" hits that board, 77 88 JT KJ etc. you have enough hands with more robust equity to defend against further bets.

Maybe you don't but you write some beastly answers on the forums

Yeah so would check/calling the flops be a decent strategy then? Just trying to see the clearest way to navigate these spots.

we may post at the same time, yeah x/c is nice

I would certainly as a default be betting for value until a villain gave me reasons to think otherwise. It is important to have an idea of what you are doing based on whether they raise, as a raise is really the only thing you need to plan a response to. If they fold, the action ends, if they call, the action resumes on the next card to hit and how that card interacts with what we think their range is, what we think they think our range is and what we think they think we think their range is etc. This then defines what actions we take.

There are instances where I would check to check call, but they are rare, and require very specific reads / dynamics / play history with the person.

Being out of position is where the difficulties lie, as it hampers our ability to read their range correctly. I would suggest look through the HH you have in whatever software you use and filter for AA UTG and set certain flop textures then just watch all the hands you can... this will load your head with a fresh look at AA on wet coordinated low - mid boards and give you an idea of how you fare. Then perhaps take the opportunity to reverse the situation. Look at other spots where someone has opened UTG and action has gone to the turn. What hands have you shown up with and how have they fared against the hands you have had? Has your actual hand had theirs crushed every time? If so, these flops against people who play similar to you are an easy bet / fold.

It is hard to knuckle down and do this. Set aside two hours and glue yourself to it till you figure it out. People intend to do this sort of stuff and generally just click around a little bit get bored and start scrolling through you tube.

I recently watched a RunItOnce video in a similar topic. The video covered a similar spot except it was UTG vs loose-ish BTN and the board was something like 865. In that scenario, since BTN will potentially have all the nuts hands and have a narrower range (ie, those nut hands are a bigger part of the range) so the conclusion was that you should check this spot with your entire range. Spots like the one you posted are probably a good example of why you want to be checking so much.

UTG vs tight CO has a bit of a different range but on such a board I still think checking often will be good.

For the hand you posted I think I would call flop fold turn. It's a spot where he can have a bunch of sets that should raise the wet board but also on the Jx turn the 4 combos of T9s that he might have go from bluffs to value hands. Combined with the fact that you hold As it'll be tough for him to be overbluffing. I know your question is more general than that but that's just 2 things that come to mind on this particular runout.

I pretty much take the approach of where is AA in my range? We have straights, sets and two pairs... As well as combondraws. So AA on this board isn't in the top portion of our range so therefore checking becomes a much more viable option.

Then when we look at villains range they have the straights, sets and possibly 2pairs. He has less over pairs than us and when we block nfd less FD. They have a chunk of hands that we are happy when he calls a bet, over pairs we have crushed and something like KQbdfd, but he also folds a lot of hands that have no equity anyway. So the range we end up against OTT becomes a bit worrying for us and quite tough to play. When we check however we face a far easier spot OTT when it goes x/x as we can be sure we have the best hand (a lottttt) but also villain still has hands that call (weak over pairs tp hands that check back flop) and we can now include delayed cbet bluffs in our range with hands that block tt-qq combos.

If we get raised I feel very gross and we should be getting raised a lot more than a dry or high caed flop if villain is competent. Therefore given I feel gross and am likely to make a mistake v a raise and put myself in a tough spot where again I can make a mistake when called, I like checking. Also any mistake I make by check calling too much won't be as big, cost wise, as when we cbet flop.

Not that betting flop would be bad in terms of EV, but the EV I and likely you lose through the tough spots you end up OTT or/and OTR most likely cancel out the EV of a flop bet and make the situation more likely to be -EV.

This is a good post. I will re-examine myself what I have done in these spots. Likely I should be checking more. I have been playing a long time in home games where certain people will take J8cc and be "attacking" this board so given that tendency AA becomes a hand to bet to induce a raise to bluff catch vs people trying to pressure your range. They are not calling to play and make the best hand, they are calling to have some equity and, realising they likely have less real equity and need to rely on bluff equity, they will try to get opponents to fold... These dynamics maybe are reinforcing in myself poor lines with some hands where I have adapted to a very specific set of players and play styles and that thinking has then leeched into corrupting my general approach to playing hands - they have an greater number of bluffs and semi-bluffs in their range than do the general poker population so it is likely I am paying off tighter ranges online when I shouldn't because I am aware this looks like a great spot to bluff but they are not thinking that way they are thinking I have a set please call.

To me what we do depends largely on the player type we're facing. You say he's a tight but not overly aggro. The question we need to ask ourselves is if he would semi-bluff a draw here and raise our C-Bet. If the answer is yes then we should check the flop because facing a raise on this board puts us in a very uncomfortable decision. We're crushed against two pair or better and we're not even a big favorite against a good draw.

If we're facing a player who is incapable of raising draws then the answer is we should C-Bet to get value from worse pairs and draws. There are tons of multi-tabling nits out there who won't raise a draw in this spot so we have to check our HUD and see how high his Aggr. % and Raise Flop C-Bet stats are.

Playing the flop correctly will save us from facing all those tough decisions later on.

@Grocker6 nice thread you have started

I agree with this, and v a fish whonraises only for value will cbet.

What would you do if we have noninfonon villain?

It depends

Even with no info I think the stakes we play make a difference. At NL 2 and NL5 I would just go for stacks against an unknown.

At NL50 or NL100 I think without any info I prefer a check/call. Besides avoiding many difficult decisions later on we also get value from any hand Villain decides to bluff with that he would just fold to a bet.

I think in general this is a pretty close spot so I would prefer the lower variance play which is to check.

^^ this is the best way to sum it up IMO

@Jon-PokerVIP happy spam

all deleted ty

Great post!

Great thread as well, always gets the heart beating when we have the aces and facing aggression on these type of boards