Call vs. 4bet question.

Theory stuff. Thread is going to be a bit vague in details, because I would like to come up with a general approach and then figure out the specifics, though I encourage everyone to elaborate as much as they want. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

100bb effective stacks. Villain bets, we 3bet, villain makes a small 4bet. Assume:
- standard bet sizings (3bb-> 9-11bb -> 20-24bb)
- a standard polarized 4betting range (strong hands that are stacking off and bluffs)
- in case of us flatting the 4bet villain makes a standard(?) ~40% pot size cbet on almost any flop

I didn't include positions here, because with these stack sizes I don't think they are going to be important in potential post-flop play (though they certainly influence pre-flop ranges, but like I said I wanted a general theme).

Obviously the more his 4betting range is weighted towards air the less likely we are to fold. If we have a hand like A5s or 77 and his stack off range consists of JJ+,AK he needs to be folding a bit less than half of the time for us to shove profitably.

The question is - is it ever more profitable for us to call the 4bet than to shove or is it the case that when flatting becomes a viable option shoving was already a better one?

Reason why I came up with this is I recently caught myself flatting a 4bet with AQs and immediately wondering 'if I was to play this hand shouldn't I just shove pre? is calling ever better here?'.

This probably comes down to a pretty complex math+pokerstove equation, but who knows, maybe someone can come up with a simpler, cool answer.

--- Nuked ---

i personally think the 4 bettor has a huge advantage always because of how easily he can play the flop...your going to miss so often with marginal hands.

How often are they 4betting? You can't have one standard answer for all your opponents here. If they are 4betting like 20%+ I'm flatting QQ+ and jamming the others.

On November 06 2011 19:47 tomson wrote: Reason why I came up with this is I recently caught myself flatting a 4bet with AQs and immediately wondering 'if I was to play this hand shouldn't I just shove pre? is calling ever better here?'. This probably comes down to a pretty complex math+pokerstove equation, but who knows, maybe someone can come up with a simpler, cool answer.

The AQ example I think is interesting... if we, to be conservative about shipping, give him a 4bet/call range of TT+,AQ+ that's 4.7% of possible combos and we have 35% against it. If we say 34bb is in the middle and we are 100bb deep we need him to fold almost exactly 2/3 of the time. If he is raising pre x%= from a given position, and if he 4bets y% there also then we need 4.7%/xy < 2/3 to be profiting from a shove. Or xy = 7%.

So if he opens this position 40% say on the cutoff, we need him to be 4betting over about 18% of the time to ship profitably. Since we gave him a 4b/call range that is super generous considering he flats a ton of them pre (including a % of the big ones) I think this is clear reason for shipping AQ over a 4b in any kind of late position war, which I do.

On November 07 2011 13:36 JonnyCosMo wrote: How often are they 4betting? You can't have one standard answer for all your opponents here. If they are 4betting like 20%+ I'm flatting QQ+ and jamming the others.

That's one example I guess, but for me personally it's more interesting to think of less intuitive cases like KQs, 99 - is it ever more profitable to call with them than to shove?

On November 07 2011 17:50 Oly wrote: Show nested quote + On November 06 2011 19:47 tomson wrote: Reason why I came up with this is I recently caught myself flatting a 4bet with AQs and immediately wondering 'if I was to play this hand shouldn't I just shove pre? is calling ever better here?'. This probably comes down to a pretty complex math+pokerstove equation, but who knows, maybe someone can come up with a simpler, cool answer. The AQ example I think is interesting... if we, to be conservative about shipping, give him a 4bet/call range of TT+,AQ+ that's 4.7% of possible combos and we have 35% against it. If we say 34bb is in the middle and we are 100bb deep we need him to fold almost exactly 2/3 of the time. If he is raising pre x%= from a given position, and if he 4bets y% there also then we need 4.7%/xy < 2/3 to be profiting from a shove. Or xy = 7%. So if he opens this position 40% say on the cutoff, we need him to be 4betting over about 18% of the time to ship profitably. Since we gave him a 4b/call range that is super generous considering he flats a ton of them pre (including a % of the big ones) I think this is clear reason for shipping AQ over a 4b in any kind of late position war, which I do.

Cool, though I wouldn't consider giving him TT and especially AQ in his 4bet/call range to be conservative.

This wasn't what I was asking about though - my question was whether shoving with AQs is always more profitable than calling the 4bet. And that's a totally different animal to calculate. Pretty hard to write this one out in a manner you just did.

I would like to contribute something concrete but my approach to the game is very easy on the math, the question you are asking is if it's ever more profitable to call a 4bet with a hand like A5s-77-KQ type w 100bbs, I would say no, it's not, because you will fold the best hand sometimes or let him improve to the best hand when you could've taken a decent sized pot preflop. The only question is whether to fold or shove imo.

Now with other type hands like TT-AA or AQ/AK just calling the 4bet is much more plausible and you should do that somewhat often vs an aggresive 4bettor, doesn't matter if you aren't balanced here they won't know, and by the time they realize and stop cbetting almost all flops you can adjust and call with more speculative hands, and re-adjust when they re adjust, etc.

On November 06 2011 19:41 tomson wrote: The question is - is it ever more profitable for us to call the 4bet than to shove or is it the case that when flatting becomes a viable option shoving was already a better one?

I mean the short answer to this is an obvious yes.

Assuming a 5/10 game for example,
he makes it 30, you make it 100, he makes it 220, you call.
Then there is 455 in the pot, he leads out for 200. He has 580 left. Even when we ignore minraise possibilities a lot can still happen:

you fold
you shove, he folds*
you shove, he calls
you call, he shoves turn, you fold
you call, he shoves turn, you call
you call, he checks turn, you shove, he folds*
you call, he checks turn, you shove, he calls
you call, he checks turn, you check back, he shoves river, you fold
you call, he checks turn, you check back, he shoves river, you call
you call, he checks turn, you check back, he checks river, you bet, he folds
you call, he checks turn, you check back, he checks river, you bet, he calls
you call, he checks turn, you check back, he checks river, you check back

There are still a lot of opportunities to exploit your opponent, but mainly where I put an * is where I think its best. Simply put, if your opponent folds too much post-flop you will find a much better profit liberally semibluffing and floating flops than by pushing a marginal edge preflop. Your big suited broadway cards are best for this, since your shoves and floats aren't going to be profitable without that semibluffing equity. Against an overly aggressive player you may make some profit by just flopping something and calling twice, but you really have to be sure he won't shut down for your value gains to cover your losses on flops you just miss. I would recommend just 4betting pre if your hand is good enough or just not 3betting in the first place if not.

Edit: replaced you're with your about 5 times.

yeah its like call strong against aggro wide 4-bettors and call speculative against passivity postflop, theres no way to really balance it, if you want a more balanced style play 5-bet or fold

i usually only 3b AA or KK vs tough players because then we aren't in a very tough spot when we get 4b. Then on the flop perform accordingly:
with KK on A high flops its pretty easy to let your hand go.
with AA on K high flops sometimes he has a set of KKK so you have to be careful but you can generally get 2 bets in as long as no Q,J, or 10 come.

hope that helps.

i love 5bet jamming so much. It makes poker easier to multitable.
there are two times i like flatting 4 bets.
1) when someone is 4betting too much, in which case i will be flatting with AA and KK, and 5bet shoving 44/55 and TJ type hands.
2) when i am 3betting a hand that has a lot of value against their calling range, but plays very poorly against a 4bet-call a shove range. So when i 3bet KQ on the BB vs SB i would rather flat a 4bet than shove. problem is if i have such a narrow calling range vs 4bets it can make me easy to play against. So if i 3bet KQ and flat a 4bet, i will also be flatting 4bets with any Ax suited hands against the same player to help widen my range.

On November 06 2011 19:41 tomson wrote: The question is - is it ever more profitable for us to call the 4bet than to shove or is it the case that when flatting becomes a viable option shoving was already a better one?

The answer is - yes, yes and yes.

everything else you wrote including your question are very trivial things, you can talk about which is better and why for countless days because it doesn't really matter since there are so much other factors.

At the end of the day sometimes it's correct to 5bet shove 57o for 100BB pre.

I tend to think jamming pre if you think his bluff range is wide enough tends to yield better results if you have a weak hand, reason being they almost always put you on a fairly weak and sometimes very weak range if you flat the 4bet, and good players tend to play pretty effectively vs you in this situation, and stacks are going to be shallow relative to pot post flop so its not like you are going to have too many options vs a 40% pot bet on flop. If you think your opponent will put you on a strong range and c/f when he misses flops then it may be more viable with weak hands. Once stacks start getting a bit deeper flatting I think becomes a much more incising option vs 4bets.

just noticed this thread :S

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/925702

Wow., McNasty that was a really good post.

ye without those "you're"

On November 23 2011 17:00 MysticJoey wrote: ye without those "you're"

I'm terrible, going back to "ur".