Folding Pocket Tens Pre to a 4-bet

Patrick W

Game is live 1/3 NLHE "bonus" which in this room means you can match the highest stack.

We are $500 effective (villain) who I cover.

Villain is a young LAG who via table talk demonstrates he knows GTO, combos, blockers, and using solvers, etc...so his image is a tough, solid yet creative, thinking player.

Hero is middle aged with a decent reputation as TAG who makes fewer mistakes than most.
I may be worse than that...but that is my image.

I have some recent history with the villain...I have seen him 4-bet with air, and he has stacked me when he had AA vs my KK. He also saw me get stacked by a very loose gambly recreational moneyed guy who also showed up with AA vs. my KK. I have seen the gambly guy 4-bet with any pair a dozen times in the past.

Anyway..my point is the villain knows I may at this point in the session be a little tilted (the loss avoidance variety of tilt).

The hand....I am in the SB with

Villain is UTG, who raises to $10. Three players call, so pot is $43. I 3-bet to $80.

Villain 4-bets to $205. Everyone folds....including me.

Did I level myself into a fold based on recent run bad/coolers? Against most players, is folding the tens standard?

Thanks for all thoughts. By the way, he never showed but later when I racked my chips to leave I asked him if he "had it"....I think his answer was BS just to exploit me in a later session...I will post his answer later.

Jordan Power

My first thought is that calling in that situation when you are just trying to avoid being "had" again by this player is probably not a good decision.

I'm folding in this spot. Unless you hit a set, pocket tens is not going to stand up to a ton of pressure in a 4-bet pot regardless of the flop. How do you feel about playing for stacks without a set after the flop? I wouldn't feel good at all.

That's my instant reaction. Thinking about it after that reaction, I still think you fold here. How often would you say he is 4-betting? And how often with air? Given that he is the pre-flop raiser UTG, I would lean toward him having a stronger hand, to open it UTG.

Patrick W

Jordan, thanks for your post.

I haven't played enough against the villain to answer that with confidence. At this point he is more a type of player to me.... similar to many young competent 2/5 players in my experience....so only guessing he makes that move with only top of his range maybe 65-75% of time.... and bottom part especially medium suited connector type hands the remainder of time. As far as his 4-bet frequency I would say highest at the table.

In the moment I was thinking...if he knows I am either near the top of my range, or squeezing (which I do maybe enough to be noticed).... and he is holding QQ-AA... I assumed he would've just flatted to keep me in. This is why I posted this hand. I can't stop thinking he was exploiting me based on my recent history... against him and the gambly player.

Jordan Power

I tell a lot of people here to take my advice with a big grain of salt. I'm fairly new to playing regularly. But with that being said, if he's a thinking player, I don't see where he sees the UTG raise, re-reraise as being effective without a strong holding. Given that he's going to be acting first, I think he's more of trying to get his money in and apply pressure to you given that he's OOP. In my brief experience, I have not seen players 4-bet bluffing pre-flop with total air OOP (or IP for that matter!) Although it occurs to me I perhaps fold to 4-bets too often ;) lol

I think in this situation given that he:

a) Open raised
b) Did so knowing he was going to be OOP
c) Came over the top of your raise

signals that he is going to have a fairly strong hand a very large proportion of the time.

I wouldn't even have thought about this too too long.

(I also probably don't have 10s in my 3-betting range facing a tough V open raising UTG. I'd probably try to see this cheap, try to mine a set and be willing to press the fold button to a C-bet if I missed and the board was scary. But then again, that may not be the best play either).