Fairly standard I think but with a wrinkle. Hero is older regular, recreational, winning player. Villain is mid 30s who just sat down at 2/4NL while waiting for a 5/10 seat to open up.

Stacks around 650.
I open mid position for standard 20 w 99.
Villain on immediate left raises to 65. Everyone else folds and I call. I don't mind playing a big hand with mid pockets against villain, who could have wide range.

Flop J82 rainbow. Pot 137.

I check. Villain bets 175. Wrinkle is the bet size.

Fold, call, raise, or shove?

Bet size is weird w/ the flop texture, but how often do you think he's doing this w/ air?

He's still repping a higher pair, even though the bet is weird.

Seems like an easy fold without some additional info, IMHO, but I'm a fish.

The hand is about playing 99 after a preflop 3bet. What combinations of board texture and continuation bets are playable, or not? I don't call with 99 and only continue if I hit a 9 on the flop. That's a big mistake.

Really need to know more about villain and history with hero or how hero is perceived to interpret the bet size correctly.

Could mean anything from "I'm bored I'll push everyone around until 5/10 opens" to "Lol 2/4 live players never fold so I'm going to bomb my value hands for sick profit."

Without reads I'd just fold to this bet sizing. Nothing really else to do as his bet size alters SPR in such a way that playing turn is going to be bad for us.

In general if bet sizing was more normal you could peel and have options ott based on villain's bet sizing and the card. Having back door straight draws is a plus btw.

Little history with the villain, but I think the dynamic was driven by hero's typical 5/10 aggression at a 2/5 table plus it looked to me like he was trying to isolate and play a hand with me, the "older gentleman" who he could push around.

My read was that the he was trying to buy the pot. It certainly wasn't a value bet. If he was huge then he'd bet for value. I didn't think that there was any multi-level thinking on his part where he was trying to make it look like a bluff when he was actually strong. I didn't think he had total air, maybe AK at the high end of his range, or maybe suited connectors like 9T and he was semi-bluffing. But mostly I felt like he was trying to buy the pot or maybe even trying to find out where he was in the hand.

However, after putting this much into the pot on the flop is he ever folding? Probably not. So, if I flatted his bet I can certainly expect to see the rest go in on the Turn, right? There are lots of cards for me to hate on the Turn. I usually play pretty fast, but for this hand I took a full minute.

The sizing is abnormal for sure and with no extra info it's very tough to interpret villain's intent.

Some questions you might have an answer to:

What are the stacks of some of the players behind you?

Are there any really short stacks who have yet to act that would force villains range to be tighter than normal?

Are there any whales behind that would make villain less inclined to 3-bet isolate a middle position raiser with the bottom part of his range?

I'm just folding without any extra information. To just get it in blindly, we are really doing a whole lot of hoping that we don't have sub 10% equity, which we do pretty often.

Good questions, but nothing about players behind was unusual or relevant. To me, the extra information lies in the bet-sizing, which said to me that something fishy was going on. How often does he smash the flop or have AA/KK/QQ and bet like that?

I ran some numbers in PkrCruncher, giving villain top 10% for his range and on the flop it's pretty much a coin flip. If he has the flop smashed with AA, KK, QQ, JJ, plus suited connectors down to T9 plus AKo then I would be 37/63 - not good.

Yea I'm expecting it all to go in on the turn. Like I said if you think he bluffs enough go for it, but then I would think we're basically calling down whatever the run out.

After thinking for a minute, I shoved and he called pretty quickly. Turn was a K and River was a Q. Not feeling real good about my hand. I flip over 99 and:

I seriously doubt that was his "logic" (now that you've posted results, I hope you can agree), and if you take nothing else from this thread, I would kindly suggest getting over that (or any other) persecution complex as part of your read.

It's just sooo much more likely in general that villain has plenty of their own reasons for doing XXX vs. that they are picking on you personally, barring evidence to the contrary.

Table image matters, until it doesn't. Clearly, something else was going on when he called. He left shortly after.

Makes me feel good inside knowing people are still this bad

Is $20 a standard open in 2/4 games? I dont think we can call flop

Not sure who played the hand worse tbh

ebet33 and worried, really? you can't fault villain for the preflop 3-bet. That's standard and then betting on the flop is obvious next step. Except the over-sized bet was suspicious and hero correctly figured out why. do you fold 99 to every 3-bet? how often do you fold vs 4-betting? I'm not saying every over-sized bet is a sign of weakness or a bluff, but it forces you to guess because it polarizes his range. My point to post this was to try and generate discussion around his over-bet. That's all.