Did I stack off too light with AK?

[Sugarmaan]

Hey everyone, this hand came from a 1/3 session, effective stack is mine at $450, against a villain who had shown down a couple big bluffs previously in the session. He is an active player, and had been opening a reasonably large range of hands.

I’m in the sb with AdKh. Folds to the V in ep-mp who opens for 20. Folds to me, I 3bet to 60 and only the V calls.

Flop: Kc10s6d. I size down a little on this flop and bet 55, hoping to get called by dominated 6x, 10x, pocket pairs, and maybe straight draws with backdoor flush draws. He calls.

Turn: 5c; brings bdfd. I bet 150 leaving myself with 180. V proceeds to rip it in. Getting a shade under 4:1, knowing my opponent had the propensity to bluff, and thinking the only value hands V could realistically have here were 1010 and 66 I call.

River: 7s

I end up losing to 5h6h.
I have 3 main questions;
1.) Should my 3bet size preflop be larger given I’ll be playing out of position post-flop?
2.) Was my rationale for betting small on the flop incorrect? Should I have bet a more standard $70-90 here?
3.) Did I stack off too light with top-top?

Thanks everyone!

[Dave Thompson]

1) yes – I would 3-bet to at least 4x the opening raise because you’re out of position. In position, 3x would be ok with no callers between the raiser and you (add another increment of the raise for every caller – so 4x with 1 caller, 5x with 2 callers, etc.). Add another 1x for being out of position – so 4x with no callers, 5x with one caller, etc.

2) I think about 2/3 pot on the flop is better than your ~45%, yes.

3) IMO, this is a no-brainer call on the turn. When he goes all in over your 150, you only need to call 180 to win 710 (120 preflop + 110 on the flop + your 150 bet + his 150 call + his 180 effective raise). That’s almost 4 to 1. You have TPTK and there’s no straight or flush possible on the turn. So you are beating any one pair and you’ve got outs against any two pair. The only thing you’re dead to is a set, of which there are 10 combos. When you call, you’ll expect to be behind a lot of the time. But you’ll have the best hand some of the time and you’ll have outs a lot of the time when you’re behind (as you did in this case). As long as you’ll end up with the best hand on the river at least 1 out of 5 times (which I think is easily the case), your call is profitable.

[Sugarmaan]

Hey Dave,

I’m just curious as to why you think a 2/3 pot sized bet would be better on this flop? Not questioning it, just wondering.

[Saul Herrera]

I agree with everything Dave said, especially point #3.

As far as flop bet sizing. It isn’t a wet board, but isn’t dry either. There are a lot of combinations that the opponent has nut draws too, JQ, J9, 89, 79, 78, that are definitely within his range. Let alone all the paired hands that he will continue with. That’s why I think a standard 2/3 type bet is called for. You have top pair, but don’t have the board dominated like you might with a set or top two.

In this particular case, I don’t think the extra $20 bet on the flop would have changed anything, but in general I think $80 would be a better bet size in this situation.

[Author]

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