3.5 bets cold to AKo

[Xhad]

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MUBS. The times you flop top pair and it's good will outweigh by a fair margin the number of times you flop top pair and it's no good. Why? It's a simple matter of needing lots of things to happen at once.

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Winning this pot is also a matter of needing a lot of things to happen at once. First, you need to hit your hand. Second, you need someone to not have the hand you hit beaten already. Third, you need one of your five opponents not to hit the flop harder than you do. Fourth, you need to not get outdrawn when you hit and have the best hand.

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This sort of scaling is a fundamental error in counting hands. You're drawing a false conclusion based on false assumptions.

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I run into players all the time who won't even three-bet JJ or non-pair hands even when they obviously should (and I'm not so sure JJ is an obvious cap unless button is a good player who knows the reraiser is a LAG); there are just a lot of bad passive players out there. Most players know to reraise with QQ-AA. Since I'm assuming this is a complete stranger, I shift the probabilities toward those hands because almost everyone caps those hands, while fewer people raise the other hands.

In other words, villain A will never cap JJ and villain B will, but both will cap QQ, but I don't know which villain I'm playing against, therefore QQ is more likely.

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So you're saying KK is a muck preflop if it's already capped? This is an awful conclusion.

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Some ambiguity on my part; I meant it sucks for you and your AKo when button has KK. I'd need ridiculous reads to even consider folding kings preflop in a non-tournament situation.

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This suggests another conceptual error. You do not turn down a profitable situation because you may not get Sklansky bucks out of it. Sklansky bucks refer to money you make when villains make FTOP errors...

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Point taken and noted.

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HyperLAG is one excellent reason to think it might get capped somewhere postflop. Also, your implied odds don't need to be very big because you're not starting with a tremendous deficit to make up.

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Some pokerstove numbers, assuming UTG has 77+, ATs+, KJs+, AJo+, KJo+, and everyone else but you and the button have random hands:

Button has AA: below five percent
Button has KK: 14.5%
Button has AK: 11.4%
Button has QQ: over 21%
Button has AQs (wishful thinking IMO): around 20%

So yes, in the nightmare scenarios you are wading in with an equity disadvantage, and it's an enormous one when the hand in question is AA. This is why this situation is so unique, normally you have no reason to assume this stuff is going to happen.

No, it won't always be the nightmare scenarios, but since they do happen and we have specific reason to believe this might be one of them, you do need a lot in implied odds those times you win to make it up. Even in the best-case scenario your immediate preflop equity is less than five bets (counting the 3.5 you're putting in), so the implied odds will indeed have to make up for those times you flop your hand and it's no good, or miss it altogether.