Ok look a simple spot that comes up constantly. Here is how I try to wrap my head around the hand.

1. Villain is unknown, its his first orbit.
2. Vs my assumed random player's range here, AK is doing well. I can get called by lots of random broadways. I discount combos of AA,KK and if I get it in preflop I should be doing O.K. and I might learn something about villain
3. So I 3bet
4. Villain flats and I think his range is: all pocket pairs JJ or lower, JQo or better broadway hands
5. Flop comes 789r
6. I check fold 100% of the time

you don't have to c/f 100% of the time but c/fing is fine.

vs an unknown it's perfectly fine to just flat ur AKs here from the BB given that unknowns tend to be retards at these stakes

but if u want to 3bet it then this kind of flop is obviously a check/fold given that u know nothing about the player

if he's retarded why wouldn't we 3bet our AK for value?

i cbet like 30 / c/f 70

On April 24 2010 14:14 zulu_nation8 wrote: if he's retarded why wouldn't we 3bet our AK for value?

we don't know anything about him
if u 3bet ur AKs for value and he's some guy who calls with whatever, chances are ur often going to spew money at him trying to get him to fold some random bullshit, or he is going to fold the flop when u hit ur ace or king
that is what will often happen when u know absolutely nothing about his range


now, AKs is such a good hand that I still don't have a problem with 3betting. I just think it's arguably more profitable to flat here when u know nothing about ur opponent.

Well AK is way ahead of anyone's range I just don't see how it can be -ev to try to build a pot pre even though we are oop. If he's calling us with random shit he's gonna call us with all kinds of dominated aces dominated flush draws and also miss with his random shit more often than not and we win the extra $5 or whatever from 3betting. Also it's not like we're gonna try to triple barrel oop if we miss the flop, we're better than villain. If villain is a good player and can make it hard for us to play oop then it's probably good to flat. But if he's most likely a retard I just don't see why we shouldn't raise every time.

playing AK is hard. get comfortable playing single raised pots imo, and then expand from there
AK and 55-TT gave me fits