10 player

utg (Hero = k k): $600
co $600 <TAG>

preflop:
hero raises to $15, mp calls, co calls, sb folds, bb calls

flop ($62): 5 T Q
hero bets $40, mp folds, co raises to $100, bb folds, Hero?

he would have re-raised me with TT/QQ preflop, so he might have bottom set?
ironically, I've seen him flat ak in position to a raise preflop, so he could have AQ and raising w/tptk?

2 pair with TQ? 9J ?

What's the best line vs a TAG here? Fold and pick a better spot?

Besides being a tricky spot, I would guess the reason you haven't got any replies yet is because I think we need more information first.

Simply saying TAG for a description won't get a lot of answers, at least not the most accurate ones. Would he have absolutely 3bet pre with QQ or 1010? He's already shown the propensity to just flat AK pre, so maybe he's more passive than you think?

What else..? How has his play been in general? Has he had to showdown any hands so far? How did he play them? Have you seen him play any draws? What's your image at the table?

Even if you don't know all of these things, anything more than TAG is helpful.

Initial thoughts are to raise more than $15 pre. 3xbb raises pre in my games will get about 15 calls.

Without any other information, I'd say flat and re-evaluate the turn.

leaning towards a fold in this case. if V is truly a TAG, he shouldn't be calling very wide after you open UTG, with action behind him, and without the button

if we give him a solid preflop calling range, we are not doing great here. he should have sets of 5s or Ts in his range. i have to imagine he would 3B queens preflop. a few combos of QTs and KJs because we're deep, and some AXdd for the same reason. we are obv crushed by the sets, slightly ahead of the NFDs, behind QTs, and way ahead of OESDs

the fact that we have the Kd doesnt make me feel any better. sure, we have backdoor diamonds, but not the nut re-draw. obviously, if *we* have it, he doesn't have it, and this reduces the number of diamond / straight draw combos he has

we are a slight dog to what i think his raising range is: crushed by 6 combos of sets, behind 3 combos of QTs, slightly ahead of 8 combos of AXdd, and way ahead of 8 combos of OESDs. with those combos i estimate we have 49% equity

obviously we can find a call on pot odds on the flop, but that ignores the facts that 4 players saw the flop and he's a TAG raising an UTG raiser here. he's ready to gii imho. we won't know if a diamond completes him on the turn, OOP sucks. i think i fold and go take a walk.

ah, guess we need to include at least some combos of AQ in his flop raising change to account for your read, which boosts our equity obviously.

i think overall i'm not excited about playing a huge pot OOP vs. a TAG with my range kind of face up

OP, how do you think V sees you? TAG as well?

Preflop is too small for 2/5. In EP it should be $25/30 unless the table is really tight, in which case I might open to $20. As is, the small preflop raise makes this hard to read. There are more worse hands villain can have that might be raising thinking they are best. Even a TX hand might think they are ahead in this situation. Depending on villain and your history fold, call and raise could all be right. Absent any more information on villain and what villain thinks of hero, I would call and evaluate on turn.

yes, he should see me as a TAG as well.
I don't play many hands, and for those I've played, I've always raised or 3b preflop.

ah.. forgot about Ax
the old raise flop, take free turn card line.

so I'm behind his set/sf draw/2pair, slightly ahead of his nfd and way ahead of tptk.
cant think of anything else he'll be raising with.

yes about not wanting to play huge pots OOP vs his range.

one more thing about villain:
he bought in for $600, lost that slowly with his final $300 to a set vs his tp and fd.
re-bought for $600 and lost all of that when his set got sucked out by a flush draw.
and re-bought for another $600.
All the while he was calm.

Make it 275, shove a nondiamond turn, check/evaluate a diamond turn.

I don't really see folding as an option here, since he could be raising any number of draws or even weaker made hands. Calling and checking most turns lets him use his position to the max. That leaves us with 3 betting, which I want to size to give us a reasonable turn shove.

AP ... Bigger to open UTG yes. We don't know the 'norm' but $15 for 2/5 UTG just widens the range of late callers IMO.

AP ... Bigger on the Flop. This board hits a lot of speculative hands and provides drawing opportunities. Once you get one caller, the pot odds get very reasonable for others to jump on board. Again, not knowing the table dynamic this just looks like a standard c-bet.

AP ... Options ... fold, call, raise ... $60 into $140 really isn't that 'great' of a bet either (giving you $60 into $200, 3.3 to 1, to call). This could be to induce, to bloat the pot for his draw or 'test' you from LP while narrowing the field by forcing the bb out of a 'cheap' ($40 into $140) calling opportunity. Does Hero auto c-bet? If not, would Hero c-bet with a draw here? I think this is key information in this spot.

Fold ... probably not ... Even with AK (V range for Hero) here you have a gutter and overs. If Hero would normally c-bet often, then V may expect you to fold out your lower pp now with a minimal risk bet. Even if Hero 'knows' that V only does this with made hands (KQ+) he is still getting a great price to call against a range that goes 'that low'.

Raise (3-bet) ... Not such a big fan of this. V range will drastically narrow into WAWB (OOP) and we really do need to consider folding to a shove. If Qx was on the board, then we would consider more draws in the shoving range. We also have Kd, so that eliminates the AdKd (but not Ad5d or AdJd) from V range. We could take it down here but did we lose value from c/c Turn and/or miss to improve.

Call ... Great price to continue, lots of scary cards can come out regardless of V holdings. I think the bigger question here is do we lead out on the Turn if blank/scary card come out? Being OOP we could risk 'allowing' a free River card when V checks through. If we even thought about raising OTF, I would rather put my chips into action OTT when a blank or scary card come out and then evaluate V actions.

The obvious different approach would be to allow V to bet 'nice' again OTT and hope to see the River just as cheap as the Turn. If V goes into 'pot' mode OTT then we have to make our mind up against V range and fold or shove there with 'only' $60 (12bb) extra invested.

I want to see a Turn card and evaluate after calling at a 'nice' price. TAGs are pretty straight forward ... we will find out if he's there or if the Turn got him there but I at least want to see it first. GL

call flop quickly.This guy is losing a lot this session so he is more willing to gamble. We cant discount diamond/straight draws from his range. Another reason to call is the simple fact that it's only $60 more. If I saw opponents folding overpairs on the flop to raises in I would be attacking them from late position mercilessly.

Check turn. If he's on a draw, he wont bet the turn since he cant expect to have any fold equity against our perceived range of overpair/ top pair. He would also likely check behind a Q. A big bet on the turn is two pair+ a large percentage of the time. Even if he is aggro, we cant call off here since the pot went 5 ways, and there is too good of a chance the guy simply outflopped us.

Tough spot of course, but at 120BB it's prob more about variance tolerance since it's just very close all around - Vs tendencies too of course as this gets easier and more profitable against "easier" opponents. However, against a standard 2/5 Reg type, KdKx is not near the top of hands Iwant to bet/3b/gii with here.

Bet/3b
I can't think of many hands tag V flats vs 275 on 600 stack that already raised 100. His one pair hands we beat will have to hero 4b/fold (and always have some equity anyway) and most drawy stuff along with 2p/sets are in the same spot. (If he's calling QT pre then his range is going to include all FD, SD, Tx, Qx, 5x and then of course determine how much that he would 2.5x against our UTG line)
Is this what we want? It could be, but we're not doing great against a lot of what 4b that were ahead of now anyway - it's close against a wide drawing range paired with stuff we're losing to.
If he is somehow calling the 275, he's barely making a mistake calling off any FD that bricks turn - that didn't already shove flop. (3-1)

Folding
KdKx feels too soft on the surface but the pot is relatively small and I'm not too happy about building to stack off on this particular board either. V doesn't know what you're folding and as long as you don't feel like you're getting owned here with a fold then it might actually be ok to fold here on these types of flops against this V and actually improve your win rate. (Debatable, but is it ever terrible?)

Calling
You sized it well enough to defend your cbet range with a call if you so chose, though I'm aware it feels face up and the hand is hard to play per above. But it isn't necessarily easy for V to continue betting if he has SDV and kind of removes some of his FE instead of amplifying it.
Calling and betting safe turns is alternate line to 3b/bet suggested above. It's not as awkward as it seems at this depth. Also, some of the time this is a pot control maneuver from V expecting to get folds fromyou enough times and just ck down unimproved a bunch knowing that when you call flop you are likely checking most turns.

He could be leveling a little since maybe he would expect you to expect more calls with his draws IP against your UTG open, cbet range w player to act but that gets dicey and is not happening all that often vs a 2/5 taggy type.

This all may sound a bit messy, and maybe it is, but my aim is to illustrate that these spots more than any other are very Frequency based and I don't believe any of the options are significantly worse than the other big picture.

I like 3-betting on the flop to $275 if the pot is heads up or 3 way, but in a 4way pot it is too likely that our opponent has outflopped us. I think we can get away from our hand here, but Im not ready to give up for $60 more to a late position raise.

Call flop. Evaluate turn. Only serious aggro players will shove their draw on the turn rather than take a free card. This opponent doesn't seem to be a hyper aggro so if the guy pounds the turn we can be confident that we are beat.

i'm really not expecting to be good if all the money goes in in a 4-way pot with an SPR of 10 on the flop and we have just an overpair. Vs. a mega-fish, sure, but i dont see that in this V description

i can get down with a call given the pot odds, but whats the plan for the turn? x/f any diamond, 9, A, and x/rai other cards? or leading?

I like a call, eval turn (Cuz the raise is stupid small, almost like he wants you to stay).
Really funny sizing for a flopped set with that FD on the board.
Does a TAG raise a TPTK hand into the pre-flop UTG raiser?

the fact that you have KKd strips away a good portion of his semi-bluffing range. you're blocking KJ and any Kxd hands so that portion of his range is going to be smaller. call re-evaluate the turn.

that being said your PFR is really small for 2/5. i don't know about the particular game that you're playing but most live games are 5x + 1x for every limper. you 3x'd and got called in 3 spots with KK and the flop is pretty wet. its just a **** spot to put yourself in. also, your bet sizing preflop and post flop make no sense. if you're going to play small ball poker by 3xing UTG with the nuts then you need to check/call when the board flops wet. if you're going to play small ball play small ball if you're going to play big bet playing big bet but don't be some where in the middle.

pre flop sizing is horrible.

as played I am calling the flop. Raising is only asking for trouble. The board is wet and there are draws that would raise, and if he has a NFD he will just jam it then what are we doing?

Also, the read of the player is important here. TAG is not really a read :-/

I'll be redundant and say definitely raise more pre... with min being to $25.

But as played I think a folding is not an option. Here are some quick calculations I did.

Flop: Q105

V (Hands that beat you): TT, 55, QTs
I feel he would have 3 bet QQ pre and don't think he'd play QT off pre. But I'll add these two hands into my 2nd calculation.

V (Hands you beat): AKs, AKo, AJ,A5-A2, AQs, AQo, KQs, KJs, KJo (possibly),QJs (possibly), J8,98

Vs this range you are a 63.7/36.3 favorite.

Now lets add QQ & QTo and take away AKs, AK, KQs, KJo and QJs.

You are still a 54.1/45.9 favorite.

So now the question is to 3 bet or call/fire a blank turn.

I personally like 3 betting here. I think it gives you better information on where you stand. If he just calls the flop 3 bet I'd feel confident we have the best hand and now you can shove a blank turn card.

My question (to everyone) is can we fold if villain shoves after we 3 bet?

I think you answered your own question. I will only 3bet in these spots if I feel good about calling off a 4bet/jam. I wouldn't be too happy in this spot if he shoved, so I would just call.