ACVA

Our core strategy for playing against a 4-bet is simple:

When you get 4-bet, assume you're up against AAxx and play accordingly

It's rare to meet players who 4-bet non-AAxx hands as a default with 100 BB stacks. Good players will adjust to loose 3-betting by loosening up their 4-3-betting ranges, but not as a standard play against unknowns with 100 BB stacks. If it's a mistake to assume the 4-bettor has AAxx every time, it's a small mistake.

The question is then: How do we play against a 4-bet from AAxx with 100 BB stacks?

In this article we will answer this question qualitatively, and in Part 5 we will dig deeper and study the scenario mathematically. Phrased in simple core strategy terms: With 100 BB stacks, our defense against getting 4-bet by AAxx consists of two parts:

1. We 5-bet AAxx all-in.

2. We call the 4-bet with hands that are coordinated enough to profitably call and then "cherry pick" flops.

The first part is obvious; the second part is more diffuse. But the main idea is that it will be profitable for many speculative hands to call a preflop 4-bet, planning to call the flop c-bet all-in whenever we have sufficient equity compared to the pot-odds we're getting on the flop. For this to work well, we want the 4-bettor to have AAxx almost always, since this makes it easy to estimate our equity accurately on the flop.

From Part 3 we know that a very uncoordinated hand like has big problems in 3-bet and 4-bet pots, and the reason is that is has so few flops with good equity. Dry pairs have a narrow range of flops with very good equity against AAxx (when we flop a set, trips or two pair), but beyond these miracle flops, there isn't much equity to find.

Therefore, when we get involved in a 4-bet pot with this type of hand, we are setting ourselves up for almost always having to fold to the flop c-bet. This means we don't get a good return on our preflop investment, and we're simply donating chips by calling the 4-bet.

The flop equity distribution graph below illustrates the problem has against AAxx in big pots. Most of our flop equity is "crammed together" on a small number of flops (top 15% of flops, or thereabouts). Outside of these top 15% of flops, our equity is always poor:

PLO From Scratch Page 63 In the opposite end of the flop equity distribution spectrum we have premium, double-suited rundowns like

. These hands will often flop a decent combination of made hand + draw that allows us to profitably call an all-in c-bet. From the flop equity distribution graph below we see that our equity now is distributed evenly, and not lumped together on a small top x% number of flops:

PLO From Scratch Page 64 This means hands like will often flop well enough to profitably go with the hand on the flop. When we call the 4-bettor's expected flop c-bet, we're getting a little more than 2:1, so we need a little less than 33% equity on the flop. The graph above tells us that we have 33% of better on a wide range of flops, approximately top 60% of all flops.

We will not continue this theoretical discussion here, but stick to qualitative guidelines. However, we will use the two flop equity distributions above to illustrate the general principle at work:

When we defend against a 4-bet from a AAxx hand by calling and then "cherry picking" flops, we want a suited and coordinated hand that often flops decent equity

Here is an example:

Example 4.12

$10PLO 6-handed Preflop

CO ($10) raises to $0.35, you ($10) have on the button. You have reads telling you that CO is a loose raiser who respects 3-bets, and he tends to play tight out of position after getting 3-bet. You have the button and a hand well suited for speculative 3-betting, so you 3-bet pot to $1.20. CO immediately 4-bets pot to $3.75. What is your plan?

PLO From Scratch Page 65 Oops! We have to assume we have clashed with AAxx here. But all is not lost, since we have one of the better hands for

"cracking" AAxx. We have 41.54% equity preflop (ProPokerTools calculation), and our hand has a very smooth flop equity distribution against AAxx, as shown below:

The pot is $7.65 on the flop with $6.25 stacks remaining. When CO pushes the rest of his stack in on the flop, we're getting pot-odds (7.65 + 6.25):6.25 = 2.22:1. So we need 1/(2.22 + 1) = 0.31 = 31% equity to have a profitable call.

From the graph above we see that we will have minimum 31% equity on more than 60% of all flops. So we will find enough equity to call (and get a return on our preflop investment) more often than we fold. This presupposes that we are able to estimate outs and equity quickly and accurately on the flop. But this is an easy thing to learn.

Here is an example of a flop where we can call profitably:

Flop: ($7.65)

CO ($6.25) pushes. Does our have enough equity (minimum 31%) on this flop?

Let's start by counting outs:

- Pair + 3 kickers (2 + 9 = 11 outs) - Gutshot (4 outs)

PLO From Scratch Page 66 - Backdoor flush (1 out)

The gutshot and the backdoor flush draw give us 5 pretty clean outs, and we will also often win when we improve to trips.

But our outs to two pair need to be discounted a bit. Whenever we improve to two pair on the turn, CO has 8 outs (2 aces, 3 kings, 3 fours) to top set or a better two pair. 8 outs corresponds to about 1/5 chance. So we discount the two pair-outs from 9 to 9(4/5) = 7.2.

We round this number off to 7. Also, since CO probably has more redraws than this (we don't know his side cards), we subtract one more out, and end up with 6.

So we have:

- Par + 3 kickers (2 + 6 = 8 outs) - Gutshot (4 outs)

- Backdoor flush (1 out)

This gives us a total of 13 outs against AAxx. This corresponds to 3 x 13 + 9 = 48% equity on the flop (Remember: We use the 4x-rule with 0-9 outs, and the 3x + 9-rule with 10 or more outs). A ProPokerTools calculation tells us our actual equity is 47%, so our estimate was pretty good.

This means we have a clear "cherry picking" call on the flop with god equity. After we call, our job is done, and we take the result as it comes.

About the profitability of calling a 4-bet from AAxx

We also discussed playing against AAxx in 4-bet pots in Part 3. There we used a model where our opponent's hand was known from the start, and we chose to play raised, 3-bet and 4-bet pots against him, even if we knew he had AAxx.

Not surprisingly we found that even the best "ace cracking" hands (double-suited rundowns) could not be played profitably in 4-bet pots against AAxx with a 100 BB stack. We therefore concluded that 4-betting AAxx with a 100 BB stack

is unexploitable, even if the caller plays perfectly on the flop. But this doesn't mean that it's unprofitable to call the 4-bet!

In reality, we never know that Villain has AAxx when we 3-bet him (if we knew, we probably wouldn't have 3-bet). So the information about his hand reaches us at a point where the pot has already grown big, and the money we have invested no longer belongs to us (it belongs to the pot).

This means that even if it's unprofitable to build a 4-bet pot against AAxx with a 100 BB stack if we know we're up against AAxx from the start, we will often have a profitable call of the 4-bet at the moment we learn that Villain has AAxx. We lose money if we count our preflop investment from the moment we put our first chip in the pot. But we make money from the point we call the 4-bet. In other words, even if we lose money on the hand overall, we lose less by calling the 4-bet than by folding.

The types of hands that can profitably call a 4-bet from AAxx will be an important topic in Part 5.

5. Summary

We have extended our overall preflop core strategy to include strategies for 3-betting. We have also thoroughly discussed isolation raising versus overlimping in limped pots.

We're now getting close to a complete preflop core strategy, and the remaining part is a more systematic and quantitative discussion of the theory behind 3-betting/playing against a 3-bet/4-betting/playing against a 4-bet. This work will lead us to postflop play in 3-bet and 4-bet pots, and we'll let this be our transition point to the discussion of postflop play.

So our plan is to complete the discussion of preflop play in Part 5, and start discussing postflop play. From Part 6 and onwards, we will mostly talk about postflop play

PLO From Scratch Page 67 Good luck!

Bugs

P.S. And remember to 3-bet someone today!

PLO From Scratch Page 68