KK 3 BET (FLATTED) IN POS LINE ON AJX - MTT PRE ANTES

[PRThomas]

Hi,

Stack sizes 40x effective.

So you have KK in cut off, facing a HJ 3x open, you make it 8x, which is flatted.

Flop comes down AJX rainbow.

Whats your best line here,

CBET fold/shut down is main consensus?

[AAroddersAA]

What are the blinds and ants any stats or reads on player?

[pokerpops]

Bet, probably 40% ish of pot - there"s a lot of smaller pairs in villain"s range.

Fold to a raise, check back turn, fold if he leads out (unless it"s a K obviously)

Probably have to call a river bet if the board bricks out, but not liking it much

[AAroddersAA]

Bet, probably 40% ish of pot - there"s a lot of smaller pairs in villain"s range.

Fold to a raise, check back turn, fold if he leads out (unless it"s a K obviously)

Probably have to call a river bet if the board bricks out, but not liking it much

Does he not fold most of them if we bet?

[AMRN]

It"s easy to be scared of a flopped A when we have KK, however need to understand how many Aces villain has in his range that he"s willing to call a 3bet out of position with.   If he opens with AK from a stack of 40x, is he likely to 4bet shove over your 3bet, or is he a conservative or trappy player?  If he opens with A2-AQ, is he likely to be bad enough to flat call oop - imo most decent players would fold or shove in that spot from a 40x stack, and flatting with a hand that might be crushed is sub-optimal.   Factor in how many times he opens with a smaller pair, or suited connectors, and then calls your 3b with implied odds.

So, assuming he is a good player (good or bad assumption, but without any other reads, I"ll assume worst case and that he"s good), the sort of range I would expect him to open, then call a 3bet out of position with (even though implied odds are wrong for set mining in your example), might be AK, 22-TT (assuming he 4bets JJ+) and a whole ruck of suited connectors.....  not too many Aces in that range, and for this reason, I try not to be overly afraid of the Ace on the flop. In fact, if we are able to peg him as a good player, there should be very few Aces in his oop 3bet calling range)

That said though, if you have reason to believe is anything other than a good player, his range probably leans toward most Aces.

[deanp27]

 Prob pot control as a default, how to continue depends on a number of factors including history, previous action in 3bet pots etc. I"d start with checking behind

[pokerpops]

Whose is the effective stack?

[TheSnapper]

The question here is, how do we best exploit our opponents tendencies?

Best line versus villain A is likely an awful line versus villain B.

So its all about reads, what range does villain flat our 3b, what range will villain call a cbet, if only with a hand that beats us then cbet would be a really bad idea.

[PRThomas]

Thanks for input all. Read-less on villain. No history. So its a blind line check. He is the effective stack, no antes, blinds are 80-160.

Its a spot I have played hundreds of times. I will normally CBet it around 6.5x, and play according from there, depending on action/reads/history etc etc.

This time however I checked behind on flop, hoping to induce 5-10s (and air) to barrel, which I believed make up the majority of his range. But read-less I hated my line. Because it puts us in such a ****ty guessing game spot. And as our check can induce those hands, we then are forced to call at least one street without gaining knowledge. Sure it could go ideal for us and he could check the turn and give us an easy time value betting. But when he does lead turn. Meh. We call. Then when he bets/ships river. We are generally forced to fold. But of course we have the induce line there to level us.

Made me think I really need to have a solid line for this spot, vs unknowns.

He actually had three Aces, but thats besides the point eh. You can guess how I know that. Check flop station f/r.