Hero is a 23 yo white guy at a loose passive 1-2 table and has been for 4hrs. He has about 300$

Villain is a middle aged white guy. He has about 1k in front of him, he has established an open raise size of 8$ for his entire range from any position. Overall, he has been opening wider than most players at the table, and has not folded to any 3-bets. That being said, villain has not 4-bet at all, and has only 3-bet once himself since we've been at the table. We did not see his holdings

Hero has the most frequent 3-bets at the table, which isn't saying much, but has shown that both 99 and AQ are in his 3-bet range.

Villain opens to 8$ from MP, CO and Button call.

Hero wakes up with KK in the small blind, he makes it 46$

Folds to Villain who makes it 146$ (Max bet of 100$ in this casino)

Folds back around to Hero.

Hero??

Never folding here, so....

Either Call or Raise to GII. I raise to get it in. GL

Raise the max and get it in pre-flop. In the unlikely event that he folds, thats also fine.

We're not deep enough to put villain on a narrow range of AA/KK and consider folding. Villain's range is QQ+/AK he possibly even has as wide as JJ.

He is almost never folding after raising to 50% of effective stacks so no point in getting cute by flat-calling and risk an ace-high flop which would let AK catch up with us or might prevent us from getting paid by QQ/JJ.

Sorry if he had AA. if effective stacks were 600 rather than 300 you could consider playing it differently.

I agree with this. With only $300 effective there is no way I'm getting away from this, especially with an active player.

I thought about it for a while, would've looked like Hollywood if I ended up being ahead. I just didn't feel like he was making this play with QQ or AK, he really seemed like a player to flat with those hands and see a flop. Also, he did not waste any time reaching for a full stack of chips; He sort of riffled them around for a bit to make it look like he was thinking about it.

Hero tanked and sigh raised to 246$, the rest went in immediately..

(I'm realizing that whenever I make these *sigh* raises, deciding that a call is committed enough and I might as well raise, but I'm not feeling great about it, I'm almost always behind)

So far everyone has said that you can't fold this spot given stack depth. I've been second guessing my play for a while since obviously I ran into AA and lost my stack.

When does stack depth approach folding? Nogyong, you said that when stacks are 600$ we can think of playing this differently...

I'm curious what sort of lines you are taking with QQ+, AK,

are we flatting or folding with KK, min 5-bet folding? flatting with AA? also are there any suited connectors we may have three bet with that we can consider flatting with deep stacks.

Thanks for the help, sounds like I just ran into a really bad spot.

Also, for some reason this thread posted a few times. anyone know how to cut threads??

It is tough because a lot of players at this level have a 4-bet range of only KK and AA. Even myself have only 4 bet with less than QQ, KK, AA, or AK 4-5 times in my life.

I just cant get away from KK unless it is the nittiest of all OMC's. I have fold KK preflop once so far.

This is by no means an exact science but in this spot I feel like 3-bet/folding becomes more defendable if stacks are $415 or deeper. Maybe it helps a little that villain's raise size seems a bit exploitable i.e. he is clearly committed to getting all the monies in preflop.

And if stacks were $1000 or deeper, I feel like its deep enough to flat call the 4bet and play post-flop. But I'm still worried about his large raise size (i.e. why not make it 110 with stacks this deep? Maybe he only raises this size with KK/AA?).

I think you've correctly identified that a decent lag can play a wider than normal range of hands preflop, be aware of their spewy image but when significant chips go in, they tend to have decent equity.

So if effective stacks were 430 or more and the same action unfolds, then I think its quite defendable to fold to the 4bet and take the low variance route here rather than stack off for 215bb preflop. Our 3bet and stack size should also be scary to villain and it just seems more likely he has AA/KK.

In any case, with 150bb stacks, I feel stacks are too shallow to get away from this.

This is very good and right on. If you never folded KK preflop for 150 blinds, you will come out ahead.