Hero is in EP with KK. Effective stacks for the hand are $650. Raises to $12 (standard for this table). Villain 3-bets to $35 (Older guy, I've been at the table for about an hour and he has limp folded a couple hands and that's about it. He has over $1000 on the table). Everyone else folds.

Hero 4-bets to $90. (Should I have just flatted?)

V tanks for like 2 full minutes then shoves.

Can I please just fold? I mean his range is definitely KK and AA. Not even putting QQ or AK in there. I hate it. I hate you, I hate the old guy, and I especially hate the dealer.

Edit: I don't hate you guys thank you for your time.

Effectively 325 BB deep with your reads I have no issues folding.

300bb deep facing a 5bet, I think a fold is fine.

Ugh. Gross spot.

How nitty is this guy?
As in, what do we expect his 3-bet range to look like?
I really doubt that it's ever light given what you've seen out of him. AQs+ & QQ+? Then how many of those call the 4-bet? Not Ax or QQ. The 3-bet might be as wide as AJo and TT+ or wider from a more active player, but not this guy.

By 4-betting we fold out the few hands that we're ahead of, and induce either a call or a raise from the hands we're tied or losing to. That's not a good outcome.

AP we pretty much have to fold to the ship. DON'T SHOW!


As much as I hate to put an old guy on exactly AA when he 3-bets ... that's what I think the majority of his range is here. But here's the crazy thing. We're actually deep enough that we can flat his $35 and *set-mine* if we think he'll stack off. $20 more to call with $600+ behind.

Flatting gives us that option, and it also keeps any weaker hands in his 3-bet range in the pot. I don't like check calling three streets though.

Looking back I think his 3! range is only JJ+. He seemed really nitty, but I could be a bit off because I only played with him an hour..

That's a great point I had never considered set mining deep stacked like that before. Kind of a weird thing to do it with KK, but seems like a decent way to justify flatting his raise. I like that line for sure.

That being said, the flop was A 2 K lol!

Thanks a lot for your insight sir.

Gross - and yeah, my first instinct is to just fold to an OMC 5-bet shove....but what's with the 2-minute tank? Is he hollywood-ing? This might be a case where I'd talk myself into deciding that he was frustrated after limp-folding for an hour and shoved with AK, and closing my eyes and calling.

I don't mind flatting the 3-bet at all, btw, especially if we think villain will fold AK/AQ/JJ etc. And I've done exactly that just a couple of days ago: see my current thread where I raised from EP with KK, got cold 3-bet from a non-spazzy player that had 3! exactly once in 3 hours (with AA), one caller in between, and I flatted instead of 4!, precisely because I thought V would fold out everything I beat and only call specifically with AA.

EDIT: so you saw a flop! You called then? Damn, set over set? that would be brutal....

If you haven't seen him raise a hand in an hour I'd classify him as nitty. (Or at least very straightforward.) A looser player would have either raised with a worse hand that they thought was good, or taken a couple of stabs preflop.

Sweet jesus, you called him?

That's a flop where I might go broke if we had flatted. Since we've kept more of the Ax hands in his range I'd have to pay off AA.

If we think his 3bet range is JJ+, then it begs the question: Can we just fold to aggression when we hit our set on the A 2 K flop since we know that a) he wouldn't take an aggressive line holding JJ/QQ on that flop, b) being weak tight, he's more likely to have just flatted with AK pre, and c) with us holding KK, there are three possible combos of AK for him and three possible combos of AA, i.e. combinatronics does not indicate a higher likelihood for AK at this point.

Someone called? Holy crap I want to play in this game.

This is AA like 10,000 percent of the time.

Yeah I called him. First I shed a single tear for my money, then I called.

I just couldn't find a fold at the time. I was a bit tilted from multiple bad beats earlier in the session and it was past 5am at this time (about 8 hours in). This was actually going to be my very last hand. Looking back I should have taken more time to analyze his range. Maybe him tanking for so long made me think he might have QQ and AK as well...

1) So he hollywooded for 2 mins with AA? People usually don't do that.

2) So you 3-bet to $90 and he makes it $910 more? That's really weird bet-sizing. Who plays like that? I mean if he really wanted a call would he shove his whole $1000 stack into a $90 3-bet? Even if this guy's a nit - he's obviously not a good player. A good player would never size the 4-bet like this. Maybe he's afraid of playing so deep postflop and just wants to get it in - but again, a good player is not afraid of playing deep postflop.

In all honesty I'd probably call given the above 2.

I've seen Ivey play Antonius AA vs KK pretty deep and this is how they did it and they were 625BB deep. $500,000 and $800 BB.



Here Dwan gets stacked also deep vs Antonius and they played completely differently:

Just call the 3bet preflop

What is he really calling a 4bet with? Premium starting hands like KK/AA/AK go down in value the deeper you get and hands that can make straights/flushes go up in value the deeper you get.

So yeah just call the 3bet and fold to the shove.

This deep we can 4 bet to get value from lots of hands. IMO that's being a little to results oriented but what ever. As played I am folding, he is obviously trying to show weakness by hollywooding that long. Snap fold and just shake your head, this is plenty deep enough to get away. This guy is obviously scared to play after be flop this deep.

Edit: Also, trying to compare a random player to pros is kinda of pointless IMO.

Gross spot, but as people mentioned above, the 2 minute tanking is kind of ridiculous. What was he doing during these 2 minutes? Staying absolutely still? Shuffling his chips? Moving around? I think it's important to observe your opponent when its their turn to act to see if you can pick off anything in these kind of spots.

Against an old guy tho, I'm probably just gonna begrudgingly fold and find another spot.

The tanking and all the **** doesnt matter. When old guy zips $900 in pre flop he has aces %99 of the time. Doesnt matter if he snap shoved or "tanked" for 10 minutes.

OK, I think you guys are right and I think I learned something from this thread without blowing $900 of my own. Lesson of the thread: it's OK to fold KK preflop superdeep vs a nit. AND playing KK superdeep calls for different tactics e.g. sometimes flatting the 3-bet as opposed to 4-betting, etc. Basically try to play postflop as opposed to getting it in preflop. Warm?

Results?

No. He made it $560 more.

Can we please go back to using the word "bet" instead of an exclamation point?

If you think V is capable of shoving lighter than KK pre then you should 4bet (like you did). If you think Vs range is so tight that he is only 3betting KK AA then just flat.

I would prefer a flat of the 3bet and essentially set mine.

Against this particular V, OP assigns him a 3b range of JJ+ and a 5b range of KK+. (I assume he's flatting JJ/QQ to a reasonably-sized 4b this deep.) Given those ranges, 4b/f is clearly the best line pf. It gets value from 12 combos of JJ/QQ and, though I don't know what lines Hero/Villain would take postflop when it's KK vs. AA, probably saves Hero a bit of money against the 6 combos of AA.

Note that all of this changes quite a bit if we include some AK in his range and believe he might 5b with AK/QQ occasionally, since then we'd sometimes 4b/f when we're way ahead and lose a crap ton of equity. tbh I'm a bit skeptical that V will NEVER 3b with AK here, though I'm definitely in the camp that his 5b shove is AA ~always. (btw the tanking might not be Hollywooding; he might be debating small 5b vs. shove.)

Good point.

Never. The hollywood tank shove is so strong, the only way he does not have AA is if he misread his hand.

+ 1 mirrion

Seriously, this is AA 99.9% of the time AINEC

Had this situation happen to me last week at 2/5nl.

I'm sitting on around $2.5k and have KK in the BB. UTG is a OMC sitting at $1.5k-ish. He raises $20, 2 callers, I make it $75, UTG makes it $175, I make it $295 (or something like that) and he tank ships it for $1.5k. I laugh and fold my KK face up and he shows AA and says, "Damn, thought you would call..."

In what universe is an OMC ever shipping 300bb preflop without AA???

Don't level yourself into thinking this is a call.

When V 5-bet shoves from $90 to $1,000 in 1/2nl we can be 99.9999% sure it is AA unless you and he are involved in a leveling war or he is on mega-monkey-gorilla-steroid-rage-tilt.

Barring that, we can fold KK here and feel good about it.

I don't like the emphasis here. The important fact in this spot isn't the hollywood shove but rather the amount. If we raised $25 and V hollywood tanks for 5 minutes then shoves all-in for $50 are we going to fold simply because the tell is so strong? No, that is ridiculous right? Also, as with all tells, you have to match the tell up with the player type.

Basically, tells are useful, absolutely, but we have to make sure we have the proper context and villain type. There are some players (thinking players) that will tend to use the hollywood shove as a semi-bluff...

just sayin...

Grunchy:

If you think his 4 bet cont. range is only KK+ then 4 betting KK is incorrect. That's not true of many players but this seems to be one of them.

As played, how many players put in $9000 without AA pre? I wouldn't.