Facing a 4-bet: the ranges get tiny

Why do you continue with so few hands?

A 3-betting range is built from two parts: strong hands that want a big pot, and bluffs that want folds now. A 4-bet calls the bluff. The bluffs have no equity story worth stacking off with, so they fold, and that alone removes most of the range. What is left is the value hands, plus a handful of bluffs kept for balance and chosen for blockers, an ace or a king that makes it less likely the 4-bettor holds aces or kings.

How much of your 3-betting range continues?

Between 47% and 67%, with a mean of 55% across the fifteen spots below. That is far more than most players expect, and the reason is arithmetic rather than courage: by the time you have 3-bet, you are already holding a narrow, strong range, and the pot is offering a price that most of it can accept.

The figure is weighted by how often you 3-bet each hand in the first place, so it answers how often you really carry on rather than how many cells are shaded on the grid.

Why do kings shove and aces call?

Because they want different things from the hand.

Across all fifteen spots, pocket kings move all-in 98% of the time facing a 4-bet. Pocket aces do it 48% of the time and call with the rest. The best hand in poker is the one more willing to keep the pot small.

Kings are ahead of everything except aces, and an ace lands on about one flop in five. Getting the money in now removes that card from the story. Aces have no such fear. They would rather keep a 4-bettor in with hands that will continue betting, and calling does that where shoving folds out everything they beat.

Position sharpens it further. Opening the button or cutoff and facing a 4-bet, aces call 63% to 100% of the time. From the blinds, out of position for the rest of the hand, the same aces shove far more often: 79% to 87% from the small blind. When you cannot control the pot after the flop, you stop trying to.

Call or shove all-in?

The strongest hands often prefer to move all-in rather than call, because calling out of position with a big pot and a short stack behind is awkward, and shoving denies the 4-bettor any further edge. Hands just below that, which are strong but dominated by the 4-bettor's best, tend to call or fold rather than jam into a range that has them beaten. The exact split is in each chart's colours.

Which hands call rather than jam?

The ones that keep playing after the flop. Across the fifteen spots, AQs, AJs, ATs, KJs, KTs and T9s never move all-in at all. Neither do 88, 87s, 77, 76s, 66 or 65s.

Suited connectors surviving a 4-bet surprises people, and 76s continues in twelve of the fifteen spots. It is never continuing because it is strong. It continues because it is cheap to see a flop with, it is never dominated in the way AJ is dominated by AK, and when it connects it connects hard enough to win a pot this size.

How do you actually learn these?

Not by memorising every grid. The gap between knowing the right play on a page and finding it under a clock is where the money goes, and closing it is a matter of repetition. PlusEV deals these exact spots back to you and returns to the ones you keep getting wrong. The opening ranges these all branch from are in the chart library, and the positions guide explains why seat decides so much.