Evaluating Ace Queen in Four-Bet Pots

This is the free version of the Crush Live Poker subscription podcast. If you enjoy this audio format of poker training and want to hear more complete episodes, check out our membership options at CrushLivePoker.com. What's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Crush Live Poker Podcast. I'm your host here, Bart Hansen, and today's episode here is Is Ace Queen Too Thin for Stacks? And in this particular episode, I am going to be covering a session that I played at the Encore this past Tuesday during the day, which consisted of a short 5-5 PLO session, which we'll just talk about one little bad beat. Uh a dread ful no limit game, a dreadful two five no limit game, which was the opposite of last week, and then a short little two two PLO session that we will actually be covering some hands from, and I'm going to talk about the pace of play as it compares to online because I also did an experiment as well. Now, what I did , because I was a little bit frustrated by the pace of play in my 2-2 PLO game that we ended the session with when I played on Tuesday. I didn't count the number of hands, but my biggest gripe about playing live PLO was that it would sometimes just go so, so slow. Now I don't really have that feeling now, now that I've played a bunch of hands, but it does go slow. And especially if you play double board PLO bomb pots in the game like they do at Chasers, it goes really slow. And I would say, I mean, I had I didn't really count, although maybe next time I will and bring it back to the episode, but I would say that on average, you might get like 25 hands in, maybe 20 to 25 hands in per hour. Before I recorded this podcast, I did a test over on Club WPT Gold. Of course, you can multi -table up to four tables if you play on the desktop app. So I fired up four full ring tables, not six max, but full ring tables, and I looked at my stats going in and I played for an hour. And I looked at the half hour mark and I looked at the hour mark for the number of hands that I played. And I got a pretty round result because right around after a half hour, I had played a hundred hands. And then at two hundred at at one hour, I had played about two hundred hands, and I was playing four tables at a time. So it was fifty hands per hour per table online. And because it was full ring, it wasn't really hard to play four tables at a time. It might be a little bit harder to play six max and you'd get more hands in, but I've actually found that the full ring games are actually much, much softer, especially at the 50 cent one-two level, which at the six max they don't play three blinds. I think it's the equivalent to 50 cent a dollar because it's a 200 big blind buy-in. The games are much softer and they much more mimic a live type of setting, which is what I'm looking for to practice PLO. So if I play an hour or if you play an hour of four tabling full ring PLO on there, you're basically getting eight to ten times as many hands as you would be playing live. So if you were to play like 10 hours, it would be the equivalent to almost 80 or 100 hours live. And it's probably not quite that extreme in Holdem, I would say , maybe five times more hands. But again, I'm just so enthusiastic about playing PLO because I've played probably like 10,000 hands on Club WPT Gold that now when I go live, I can just hop in the best game. Usually it's not hold 'em, whether it's a two-two game or a five-five game. And I keep trying to encourage everybody to do that. And I I just this is literally the first time that I remember an opportunity to actually like practice, even if you don't play PLO and you want to practice reps of no limit that sort of mimic a live game, it's really the first time I've seen a platform to practice like this because it really does mimic a live game. It's only open to Americans because all the other options like ACR and I don't know, Bovada or whatever you want to call it, I mean, it's kind of been proven that it's all there's no security people are using RTA which is real time assistance there's that that bot farming controversy that went on like this past week with Martin Zimani where he took, I don't know, where if he got the video or there was a video of like, you know, like a bot farm. That shit's going on all the time. The fact that this is American only and you have to verify and you have to KYC, I think kind of lends itself to avoiding that. And again, I know the security over there as well. And they're always sweeping through that stuff. But the point is, is that getting like eight to ten times the experience and just in terms of number of hands is just absolutely invaluable as a learning curve for a new game or just basically to sharpen up on no limit if you want to get, you know, a bunch of reps in and study the game. I mean, this is why back before Black Friday of 2012, like back in the good old days, say like 2005 to 2010, in the first couple of years when Moneymaker came out, you would see a lot of like good player, a lot of young players just absolutely like crushing it. They didn't even have to be that good, but they had a lot of money when they came into live games because they just had played so many hands and gotten like a lifetime exp of experience like in six months. And because we haven't really had that opportunity now, usually like if you see like a young kid, he's going to be a fish for the most part . I know that Club WPT Gold is still operating in California. Like they never closed down and they just brought themselves back to New York. I think like I said, the plan is that they're just gonna probably operate in every state with this new model that they have of quote unquote training. But if you haven't checked out checked it out, you can use the code BART. And the purpose of this segment isn't to necessarily promote them. It's to talk about how many more hands you can see online and how much experience I've gotten playing online . And it's really not even hard to really keep up with like in a full ring format for me at least for the most part I think I could still do it even six-handed but because you can click into people's stats and and I did this experiment at twenty five cent fifty a dollar which, is a hundred by $100 max buy-in. Cause usually I play a step up. I'm usually playing like $50, a dollar, two . But my God, the full ring, $50 , the the $25 , $50 PLO games on there. I I just it it just reminds me of exactly when I go and play 2-2 PLO at Chasers or at Encore. It's just limp, limp, limp. People guys play like 80 slash 10, things like that. But then when once you start moving up , like sometimes I'll go look at one, two, four or one, two, four, six max, you'll see a guy's played a hundred thousand hands already and his stats are like twenty two fifteen. And you probably see the same type of thing. I haven't played hold 'em on there in quite some time, but you probably see the same type of thing with with the hold'em games. I don't know how extreme it is, but it is the unbelievably extreme, at least in in PLO. So hand number one, there isn't like a ton to it. I would say that for whatever reason, me and this 5'10 reg, who is a decent player, kind of got we it wasn't really a battle. We just got like mixed up a little bit. And a lot of these hands are from this particular guy. So the first hand, yeah, it's not very in-depth, but I always talk about you don't want to get lazy in spots like this. So two five, and we're playing four-handed by the way, there's no straddle. Hand number one. I open a 20 on the button with King of Hearts, 10 of Hearts, and it gets folded to this dude in the pig blind, and he three bats to 100. So he makes it five X, playing four-handed, King 10 suited on the button. I make the call, so the pot's 200 bucks , and the flop comes out: Jack of Hearts, eight of diamonds, seven of clubs. Jack of Hearts, eight of diamonds, seven of clubs, and he checks to me. So this is where I think some people get a little bit lazy on the lazy side. It's like, okay, well, I've got a gut shot here to a nine. I'll just check it back. You don't beat ace highs. I've got a backdoor heart draw , an overcard to the jack, and a gut shot here to a nine. And I know this guy is probably three betting at at least approaching the right frequencies. He can have a lot of stuff that totally missed here. It's not necessarily a great board for him. It's probably even in four-handed type of format a little bit better for me. But he could certainly have like Ace 4 or something like that. And I think a lot of people miss this. He checks, I bet 7 5 , just over about one-third the size of the pot. And he doesn't think about it for too long. And he folds. So there wasn't really there isn't like a whole lot to that hand. Now, what kind of defense does he have here? Like if he had like ace king, ace queen, he's probably forced to check call at least once. But I was planning on on the right types of runouts emptying the clip. And I pro I I actually had it in my head that I probably was going to go bet bet here. If he checked. Now, with that being said, he has to call down a little bit lighter. And if he has some overpairs that he might check with respect to the board, he's gonna get me, that's for sure. But I just thought that there were some hands that he just couldn't continue with or couldn't call like a lot of large bets. So he just folded. Which leads into hand number two. And I actually asked Nate because I wasn't sure because this one felt really, really dirty for a from a baseline perspective. Sometimes I'll shoot Nate a text and say, Hey, what does the solver do? Or what is your you know, plug in your solver live ranges and you know how what do you think about this particular spot? So in this particular situation, for whatever reason, I was picking up hands that I needed to three bet in the small blind when we were short-handed. So it sort of appeared in the short term that I was being really, really aggressive when I was just basically like three betting the right hands. I was never flat calling from the small one. So there's that going in. It's possible like in the short term, it looked like maybe I was being a little bit over aggressive, kind of plays into this one. So 25, 1200 effective, and it goes early position limps and I think at this point we're like six-handed. And the guy who like limped in, he didn't last long or he got up and left or something like that. And the same guy raises it up to 20 on the button at 1200 effective. I look down at ace queen offsuit, ace of clubs, queen of diamonds, and i3 bet to 80. So limp raised to 20, I three bet to 80, Aceen Qu offe , gets back around to this guy, and now he 4 bets to 205. So he forebats to 205. Now, if your typical 2-5 guy puts in the 4-bet here, ace queen goes in the muck pretty quickly. But again, I know that this guy knows, and he could be doing it with a much wider range than just aces kings and ace king. So I think this is a clear defense. If I had three bet, like maybe ace jack off, I would fold. But here with ace queen off, I I decide to make the call. We go to the flop with it being 400 with a we've got about 1k behind in a four-bat pot. I've got ace queen offsuit from the small blind against a button kind of smallish four-bat. The board comes out, King of Spades, Seven of Spades, Three of Hearts, which is not a great flop for me. I check, and he bets 80. So about twenty percent of the pot. He bets about twenty percent of the pot. And I was really, really torn here because this is the I mean, I you're gonna be betting, you should be betting pretty much every single flop, right? In a four-bet pot. So, you know, it's kind of the definition of a ranged bet. If somehow he had like a pair, although thinking back, I don't know how much four-betting he does with like tens, jacks, and I block queens, you know, I have two overcard s, but it's such a small bet. I look back at my hand, I don't have a spade in my hand, and it just felt so dirty to fold to the 20%. I wasn't actually sure. I wasn't really sure . Now, with that being said, if it's close and you're against a good player, like a close to, I would say neutral to EV spot, I think you might even want to lean towards a fold because of the fact that the double barrels are gonna probably come at the right frequency if he's structuring correctly. Because I could be taking off here with really any piece to this type of size, and he knows that the double barrel is gonna come on turn, and I could be virtually drawing dead if he actually does have something like Ace King. Whereas if you're up against like a one and done type of player, you might actually realize if you've got the best hand by just calling. But with no spade, I decided to fold , and that's actually correct. Now, if I had a spade in my hand, it is a continue. Although Nate said that, I think he said queen of spades, ace queen, but the queen of spades is continued like 50% of the time. This just goes to show you how tight, supposedly, like the four-bat rangers are supposed to be in this type of configuration, even though it looked like it was a little bit on the wider side. But I think with a spade, obviously with the ace of spades, you have to continue. But with no spade, a king high board, especially against tighter ranges, is just not a great board for ace queen off. Even though it was just like a little little minor type of pot, I wouldn't say that I went on tilt, but I was thinking about that one. That's what I talk about. I don't go on tilt or play badly because of bad beats, but if I think I've made the wrong decision where I might have overfolded or I made a bad call, sometimes it can get me