Hi. I used to play poker a lot, but haven't for years and am just starting to get back into it. I've had a few good sessions lately at my local casino, and a big hand came up I wanted to run by you all.

Action game. Drinks are flowing. Deep stacks. Lots of banter and laughs. Very fun game. Big on action. I sat down maybe an hour ago, bought in for max $500 and am up to about $800. Main villain in hand has me covered. He is drunk but has been playing pretty solid. He usually seems to have it when the big pots go down. I saw him call a guy down after he flopped a set and rivered boat, never once raising (he had the best, obv). Pretty loose preflop but tight post. Money goes in, he's got it.

OTTH

UTG raises $10 and picks up a caller in between. Main villain calls as well. We look down at two red aces in the cutoff and make it $55. Button and blinds fold, everyone else calls.

Flop K74r. Checks to us and we bet $100 (too small?). First two in the pot fold, main villain thinks for a while, looks over and we make eye contact, he kind of grins and just ships it in our face for $600+ more.

Thoughts?

This deep pre is too small. I go $75. You don’t want to let the table profitably set mine

Flop sizing is perfect. Board is super dry but since you and main Villain are 400 BB effective I think betting is mandatory and $100 is good.

You know what to do based on your description. “Money goes in, he’s got it”

Make sure to throw Villain a red chip afterwards for saving you a buyin

The previous hand where he just called down with a set is what's bugging me here. It is such a dry board, why would he ship with a better hand? How are we beat? KK re-raises pre for sure, yes? 77 or 44 or I guess K7 is the only thing that beats me? I really pegged him for some dumb K7 suited hand that was afraid of getting counterfeit/drawn out. I guess it could be AK and he didn't know what to do so just panic shoved. Maybe 56 suited putting max pressure on a draw? I don't have one of those range calculators but if his hands are only 77, 44, K7, AK and 56, I'm guessing a fold is correct? But it's got to be close, no?

OP, we’re facing a $600+ shove OTF over our bet at 1/2 live from a player that you says always has it when money goes in. We have one pair.

Your description of this player is way more of a determining factor of what to do in this hand than logic. From a Minimum defense frequency perspective, we’re probably way too high in our range to fold, assuming your 3-bet frequency is low and you don’t have many nutted combos on this board.

It’s not close at all.

I used to 3! the same sizing but now i go 80 in these games or i get 4 callers and have no idea where i'm at and aren't as committed to the hand.

I think people underestimate the IO the field has when the original raise or 3! sizing is small. Especially when deep, it makes very little sense to allow 7 different opponents to risk 5-10% of their stack to crack your Aces.

3! can be a smaller in terms of proportion to the raise size because people don’t call as wide as they would a single raise but usually the PFR will continue even to a large sizing.