Theory: 4 Bet Sizing

[clowntable]

Originally Posted by SEABEAST

yeah agree perdoom. i straight up shove against the real crazies who know what i'm doing and will shove their 77 or AJ or whatever but not call with it.

Really? I think one of the nice additional benefits of 4betting small is that it induces shoves from weak hands sometimes because it looks like they have some FE especially if they have seen you 4bet/fold.
I usually make a note on everyone at the table whenever I 4bet/fold to remember they have seen me do it.

p.s.: I'm not really doing it a lot and might take it out of my game altogether especially since I need to reflect a little more on what to do if the 4bet is called which basically leaves us with a 1:1 pot to stack ratio. It doesn't come up often but I'm sure I don't play optimally in these situations

[MYNAMEIZGREG]

Clown,

I think that SEABEAST/PerDoom are saying they would rather 4bet bluff by shoving against people who will fold 77/AJ as opposed to 4bet small and open themselves up to a 5bet bluff.

The most profitable play comes down to which is larger, the opponent's shoving range if you 4bet, or your opponent's calling range if you 4bet shove. Then you have to take into consideration pot odds and frequencies.

[phil]

4 bets

Sizing- 2.5x if commiting <30% of effective stack, shove if commiting >30% of effective stack.

Ranges- Much more often as a bluff if I can get away with the small 4 bets. Axs/AK/QQ+ if shoving.

[spiff21]

Originally Posted by PerDoom

Mostly just sounds to me like you like using fancy terms without knowing what they mean.

hehe, funny!

[WPT_Champion]

We all know important to balance your 3/4 betting hand ranges against v good players. But hopefully we are at tables where most players have leaks we can spot. It's useless to have a balenced range if you arn't first exploiting the mistakes other poeple are making and adjusting your hand ranges for each player.

[ehammer]

Out of curiosity...

If you 4 bet to as much as 33% of your stack, arent you committed with any SC at this point "unless" you can ascertain that the villain will not shove with anything except AA KK QQ AK? (and we would even have neutral EV against AK wouldnt we?)

(for this reason i have always 4 bet bluffed (SC etc) to about 111 or 105 in a 2/4 game.)

Is this not correct?

[Student Caine]

Originally Posted by MYNAMEIZGREG

The most profitable play comes down to which is larger, the opponent's shoving range if you 4bet, or your opponent's calling range if you 4bet shove. Then you have to take into consideration pot odds and frequencies.

I read things like this and I get so happy that I have learned something and so friggin' chapped that I did not come to this conclusion on my own.

Statements like this, which are so blatantly simple, make me realize just how much I have to learn about this game.

T'anks for learnin' me sumtin' and

[Toastedmoses]

I skimmed a bit quickly through the above but I didn't see anybody advocate polarizing your small 4-bet bluff range.

Against a tight 5-bettor (AK+,QQ+) you generally have about 30% equity with a wide range of your opens (mid/small pairs have about 35% which is why they generally suck as 4-bet bluffs), not quite enough to be committed if you keep your 4-bet size around 2.5xish. However, if your opponent starts widening his shoving range a bit (some AQs, some AQo, AJs, pairs down to 77 etc...) your equity gets up high enough with your range that even with a small 4-bet you can easily be making a mistake by folding to a shove.

Since its often hard to accurately gauge a villains 5-bet range, its a good idea to polarize your 4-bet range. Use the bottom of your opening range, hands like 78o, Q9o, J8s etc... to 4-bet bluff/fold since these still have poor equity against even a fairly loose 5-bet range. Balance this by 4-bet/calling the upper end of your range, and everything in the middle including broadway, pairs, and SCs you can mostly dump OOP and call or fold IP based on game conditions.

[JohnnyBgood4]

This tool was recently linked on 2+2 and I think it's pretty neat and relevant to the discussion in this thread: http://www.rvgsoftware.com/default.aspx

[MezmerizePLZ]

I like to mix it up, depending on stack sizes and how big I get 3-bet. If someone 3-bets me big and I'm only 100bbs deep, any reasonable 4-bet commits you so i generally just shove, but deeper than 100bbs or against a smaller re-raise i'll generally make it between a minraise 4 bet (yes i do this) or slightly over 3x.