8 or 9 handed. I can't fully remember as people were getting up and sitting back down often. Three new players had recently joined our table, which had been uncharacteristically nitty previously. Starting to become more standard for 1/2 or 1/3 casino NL. We're at a Midwest US casino.

Players of any consequence:
Hero ($700) - is on button w 33 (don't remember suit). Solid image. Not 3-betting a lot. Haven't gotten out of line. Have shown down plenty of winners and also losers where I could have easily given away more bets. White male, I think my image is a few years younger than my actual age (33). I'm friendly and jovial at the table win or lose.

UTG+1 ($1,200 - What I perceive as a winning reg. Middle aged Asian American. Plays solid TAG. Rarely see him show down without a good the goods.

MP ($600) - Definite novice. Mid 30s Spanish speaking Latin American immigrant. Has trouble understanding live actions like checking signals, straddles, etc. Understands good hands. Overvalues TPGK type hands, as well as big draws. Recently won a large pot against his wife, who had just sat down.

HJ ($180) - White, middle aged, degen gambler type. Buys in between $150-$250 and dribbles stack after stack away.

CO ($750) - Late 20s Mexican American. Lots of bravado, and Laggy, but really more donkish. Friendly, but through his convo, you can tell he doesn't know what he's talking about.

SB ($800) - We'd been next to each other for 2 or 3 hours. Knows the game. Never really got out of line. Capable of making moves tho. We'd actually talked about coolers with some many deep stacks in the game.

Preflop
UTG+1 call
MP call
HJ call
CO call
Hero raise $18
SB, UTG+1, MP all call.

Flop - AK3 rainbow.

SB bets $100
folds to Hero who thinks for a bit before raising to $300 ...

SB's donk bet sizing here is pretty strong, I would just flat since I think raising in this spot definitely gives your hand away, and by flatting you can still keep air in SB's range since he is capable of making moves plus it keeps your range wider against a thinking player. If checked to on the turn I'd bet $200 so that way if SB calls you can easily get stacks in by the river since there would be $675 in the pot at that time and you would have $380 left making a good half-pot shove on the river.

Think you get a lot more value by flatting flop and raising turn. You fold out all his bluffs and most of his mediocre hands. He probably folds two pair here a non-negligible amount of the time.

Call flop. Hopefully he puts more in on turn

What are his most likely hands? AJ+? Seems like we get way more value out of those by flatting. This board is so dry, we're afraid of pretty much nothing. If he slowplayed AA/KK, good game him.

Since you don't have a question for us, I'll ask you a question.

Why raise? Being in position it seems like it should be very easy to get stacks in without raising.

What's the question OP?

I didn't ask a question, because I figured I'd get the feedback I needed without it. Honestly, the reason I raised is because I thought it unlikely that he'd have AA or KK, and that he had a good chance of having AK and would call or pop it up again.

Afterwards, when thinking about it, most of what has been said here came up in my head, and I figured I'd been too aggressive there. AQ, AJ might make that donk bet and indeed villain did tell me that he folded AQ.

Misplays don't sting as much when you still win a decent pot, but the $$ lost is still the same.

Why the raise preflop? I could go either way with this but I suppose it's fine at this stack depth.

I like flatting this flop in position and GII on non A/K turn cards. I think you fold out some value by raising flop. Villain probably donk leads again with worse on turn, if he has a better set he played it weird and it's just a cooler.

Raising flop is a catastrophic error

overlimp pre ..

OTF It`s okish. maybe make it a bit less. Never the less, I prefer to call here.

Flatting flop is best, IMO.

Regardless, your raise size is too big. $240-$260 is a much better sizing than $300. The only hand that calls $300 is AK.

Why did we raise preflop? It was a small raise after many limpers, which means we had zero chance at narrowing the field. So now we're going 4ways to the flop where best hand will most likely always win and it's highly unlikely we're going to end up with that hand. If we're going to raise and take the dead money / narrow the field so we have postflop FE, then make it $30+, otherwise just overlimp, imo.

Because we are so deep, it is definitely not impossible for SB to showup with AA/KK, although it does seem a little strange that they would overbomb the pot like this as there is no reason to do so. I don't think there's any reason to raise as we don't want to blow them off a good but second best hand (or a hand that is making a move, although that seems silly in a multiway pot), plus we can still easily play for stacks by the river (especially being in position).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I would have flatted the flop bet, but regardless I doubt you get much more from him unless a Q hits the turn -- or he gets some type of backdoor draw.

Call otf, keep his range as wide as possible, lower the boom ott.

Ya please just flat. Raising pre is ok given deep stacks but it accomplishes less as stacks get shallower

Sent from my XT1031 using 2+2 Forums

Thanks all for the feedback. Exactly what I thought it'd be, especially with regard to the flop raise. I got ahead of myself and rushed to try and get the stacks in, but really just stopped it from happening altogether. Lesson learned, hopefully.

As for the flop raise, it was kind of a funny night. I'd mentioned the odd table dynamics in my OP. For the first 2-3 hours it was an especially tight table with many people folding preflop, and smallish raises easily clearing out hands to 3-way or HU.

It was a process adjusting to that, but then 15-30 minutes before the hand in question four new players joined the table. I obviously didn't re-adjust my raise sizing back up enough. Normally I'd of raised to 21 (3x + $3 for the four limpers), but again, earlier table dynamics effected thought process. Perhaps even 25 would have been better.

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

definitely flat the flop and disguise your hand and let him hang himself. Perhaps flat again on the turn if it comes dry again.

p.s. I lol'ed pretty hard when you said the spanish guy recently won a large pot from his wife.