New game 9 handed, only 5 hands in. Villain has said he's here to gamble and borders on manic in talking. Has raised 4 times, and called once pre. He's built his stack to 350 through aggression. Obviously early, but rest of table seems fairly passive and not ready to play back at him.

Villain UTG says "no look", doesn't look at his cards and bets 15

Hero UTG+1 with 22, calls.

Folds all round.

Flop KK6r.

Villain checks Hero bets 20, villain calls and says no look, did you look at your cards. I say nothing.

Turn 10

Villain checks, Hero bets 40, villain pauses a bit more and says something like still no look. Did you look at your cards? hero still smiles and says nothing and calls again

River 3 (no flush possible)

Villain checks, Hero ???? I don't entirely trust him not to look if I bet and then decide. He's not completely crazy so he may fold to a big bet or shove, or he may call it blind.

Comments on pre and all streets, and general approach in situations like this appreciated.

Fold pre.

Or 3-bet. But probably just fold. Leave it to a 1-2 table to fold around to a no-look raise though. No one seems to know how to play against a random hand.

As played just take your free showdown.

Yeah flatting pre UTG+1 is not good. Too often you get 1 or 2 overcalls and you're stuck in bad relative & absolute position and no way to get value when ahead. Even when it's HU it's not like 22 is crushing ATC.

Postflop is all fine assuming you checked river. You're about 52% against ATC, so if he ever looks after you bet, you're just value owning yourself.

If you're immediately to this player's left, wait until you're in LP before opening up your preflop range. And try to change seats so you can pick up some sweet, sweet dead money.

So much this. What are you doing with 22 here? You are even money against a random hand with no idea how to play it post.
As to how to play it, you are in bad relative position to the rest of the table. Play it like you are in a 5-15 NL game and you are UTG.

Clearly fold pre is right and id normally do this again an UTG raise, but the no look through me through a loop and I figured I may get his stack if I hit a set.

UTG+1 with 22? Fold pre

fold pre

call flop

check turn

check river

your hand is way too weak on all streets except maybe its a bit better on the flop, though not too much tbh. When you have a weak hand, you don't want to be bloating the pot.

Fold pre, check flop, check turn, check river. Look in Equilab or something. You are an underdog to a random hand on both flop and turn.

^You are correct. I just assumed w/ a board pair this wasn't the case, but it most definitely is.

Yeah, although they are less likely to have paired their hand than on an unpaired board, you lose to literally everything if another 6 hits.

hitchens97: Am I missing your own stack size in the OP? Hopefully it's just a simple oversight and you're aware that this is essential info in a HH.

We'd be calling for set value, and that seems to me like the appropriate way to play it if we expect a multiway single-raised pot. Against UTG we have stack odds of... who knows based on the OP but probably better than 13:1. OP has the read that opponents aren't playing back at this guy, although we have to discount that read for tiny sample size.

As it happens, we didn't get a multiway pot, and the flop is paired which is terrible for us. I don't mind the flop bet anyway (helps us get to a cheap showdown). I wouldn't bet the turn; we're a slight underdog vs a random hand but our plan on the turn should be to call the river if he doesn't look and fairly often if he does look (depending on our read of bluffing frequency).

On the river, we breath a sigh of relief that we're not playing the board. If he checks, I'd check back. If we somehow knew that he'd call blind then we could make an extremely thin value bet (52%), but the small chance that he doesn't makes this bet unprofitable.

AKQJ10, the problem is that we are sandwiched between a raiser who has openly stated that he hasn't looked at his hand and the entire rest of the table. Sure, OK, the table is passive. There is a 22% probability that someone behind us has been dealt { TT+, AK } which even your average LLSNL moron would recognise as a hand they probably want to be threebetting here, before we even get into whether anyone at the table is competent and will threebet wider.

Let's assume we are 350 deep with villain. That $15 is essentially a blind bet; he's like a non-live big blind. 350 is therefore 23 "big blinds". With a stack of 23BB in an MTT, is your play with 22 to limp UTG?

Edit: The other thing is that set mining is only as valuable as the chance of getting someone's stack. Here (unlike a normal preflop raiser) the original raiser is very unlikely to have anything if we make our set. It's going to play out like it did in the actual hand, where he will check call two bets, then probably look at his hand OTR and fold. We're counting on someone behind us in this hoped-for multiway pot to have something they want to put a lot of money in with, only that had also better not be a larger set. We're targeting a super-specific outcome here.

Fold pre and give up on every street postflop.

Sorry stack size 300.

Yeah even worse flatting pre then.

Thank you all. Don't disagree with much anything here. Key mistake is clearly not folding pre just as I normally would have done, and the macro level mistake is not to get caught up in the gamble weirdness, and take some time to think before I act.

I did contemplate shoving river for a few seconds before the sensible gene finally kicked in and I checked back. He had 55 and whooped and hollaed when the cards got turned over. I basically got what I deserved.

I agree. My post was premising set mining on the idea that the table is so passive that basically they'd all give the blind player credit for a raise and only 3! their standard 3! range and upon reflection I agree that's optimistic. Honestly IME $1-2 players are so passive that it wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of them would be scared to 3-bet JJ or AK even with the weird circumstances here. It's like they just have an idea what a "reraising hand" is or a "40 dollar hand" and AK doesn't fit the bill.

But you make a good case about the uncertainty. We don't know they're that passive. Four hands doesn't mean anything, really. And all it takes is a few who aren't ridiculously passive to make 22 really bad here.

This only makes sense if you expect people to react to the $15 "big blind" the same way they'd react to the $2 big blind. As explained, I reject that assumption in its strongest form (so it's not a $15 big blind) but agree that a reasonable expectation is somewhere in the middle.

Actually the OP said there was some chance he might call off blind. When people do things we'd consider completely irrational, even a substantial minority of the time, implied odds on sets go way up. Plus given his play it's quite likely he'd call the river bet with something like J5 on a J4497 board, so the lack of premium hands in his range doesn't matter as much as you indicate (although the worst garbage like 82 is going to have a hard time making anything to pay us off).

So I agree we should fold 22 but I think some of your arguments are more nuanced than you presented them.