A solid opponant at a relatively tight table on my right raises 4xbb. I have AKs. I reraise to 16xbb,everyone folds and he pushes AI. We are both deep stacked with around 100 bb. I don't put him on AA or KK, but more probably a smaller pair. Is it correct to call and race with him? I'm not really a gambler, and early in a tourney I would probably fold, but this is a cash game.....I hate to fold such a strong hand, but I also would hate to lose a buyin to a random small pair if I don't connect the flop. What do I do?

If he seems to be a tight solid player you are losing. Unless he is a LAG (Loose Aggressive) player and you have stats of him being a donkey then fold.
But you may be commited in this situation depending on your stack sizes. If he is short stacked then its a no brainer to get all your money in here.
If i am going to be the one getting all my money in with AK i generally want to be the one that is pushing all my money in the middle and not having to call off my chips. Then there is fold equity.

Cheers,
Errol/killer_be_99

knightmoved wrote:A solid opponant at a relatively tight table on my right raises 4xbb. I have AKs. I reraise to 16xbb,everyone folds and he pushes AI. We are both deep stacked with around 100 bb. I don't put him on AA or KK, but more probably a smaller pair. Is it correct to call and race with him? I'm not really a gambler, and early in a tourney I would probably fold, but this is a cash game.....I hate to fold such a strong hand, but I also would hate to lose a buyin to a random small pair if I don't connect the flop. What do I do?

Great question - this is a case where you can analyze the hand mathematically to determine the correct play.

We first need to put our opponents on a hand range. Given that you said he's solid, I'd put his hand range when he pushes over your 3bet to be: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKo, AKs

You need to determine whether it will be profitable to call off your remaining 84bb to win a pot of 117.5bb (his 100bb, the small blind, the big blind and the 16bb you've already put in the pot).

Using Pokerstove, which you can download at http://www.pokerstove.com, we can analyze our equity as follows:

Code: Select all

Board:
Dead: 

   equity    win    tie          pots won    pots tied   
Hand 0:    42.806%     27.76%    15.05%          51337164     27822786.00   { AKs }
Hand 1:    57.194%     42.15%    15.05%          77946096     27822786.00   { JJ+, AKs, AKo }

So our AKs has 42.8% against his likely range. Please note that if you don't think he'd make this move with JJ, it will change our equity slightly.

So make a call profitable, we need to calculate the expected value of calling:

1. If we call and win (42.8% of the time), we win 117.5 BB
2. If we call and lose (57.2% of the time), we lose 84 BB

So our Expected Value (EV) is:
EV = 117.5*42.8% + (-84)*57.2%
EV = 50.29 - 48.08
EV = 2.21

So by making the call, we can expect to win 2.21 BB's each time in the long-run. Hence it would be profitable to call, as opposed to folding (folding would yield 0 BBs expected value - think about this intuitively). If our calculation turned out to be negative, then it would be most profitable to fold.

At the same time - please note that each opponent will have a different hand range. Some opponents will only 4bet push in that spot with only AA and KK. In that case, it would be unprofitable to call (try calculating this yourself). So it is very important to have a good read on your opponents and be able to come up with accurate hand ranges in certain situations.

I fell in to KK vs my AK twice today for a full 50$ buy in. Lost both.

The first time I 4-bet .... POT comitted myself (four times his bet), against a guy who had 3bet me 3 times in 12 hands or so.
Another hand was against real tight guy, I played it the same way.

So to win 2.21 BB I will fold this more often against real rocks, as the rake is more than 2.21 BB
2nd Bennefit of folding is you do not have so much swings in your bankroll.

Just had a weird session were a guy called big riverbets with middle carts... yeah cards not even a pair
won 200 BB in 20 hands from him .25/.5NL


GL
DM