1/3, nlhe, $300 max, Sunday night...

H (800) has AA utg+2, and decides to just flat UTG's (900) $15 open since stacks are pretty deep and he's a good regular, hoping someone 3bets...

V (350) is BB in the hand and is a big gambly recfish and makes it 65...

UTG just flats and H now makes it 185...

V goes all-in and UTG folds...

H calls and wins... V shows TT, and UTG shows his folded KK after the hand saying he put the the gambly recfish on AA and made the best call of his life, because he was about to go all-in preflop...

Is this hand played fine? I don't see how much would change here if we 3bet pre to say 65, recfish in BB just calling and UTG just flatting our 3bet most likely (as he did vs the recfish)... infact, we would win lesser that way since board came Q high and the recfish would fold his TT otf and UTG might have paid one flop bet due to our tight image...

It's more like UTG played their hand well than H playing it bad...

Well, depends on H's image too after you went all in.

and what image recfish is to V?
Some gambly recfish are extremely passive, they are gambly, but often only call raises.

I'm cool with the preflop flat. We're very deep, plus opponent, even though he is raising in EP, is obviously "good enough" (for better or worse) to never stack off with KK preflop (as he has shown in this hand, although he did put the wrong player on AA). If anyone behind us is aggro, I think this is a good spot to hope for a 3bet. The danger is that a few others come along for the ride and we go 5way to the flop (not desirable), but it's an ok risk, imo.

I would also reraise now that we have a bunch of dead money in the middle. Any reasonable raise will setup an easy SPR to stack off too postflop, so I'm cool with the smallish 4bet sizing to attempt to get action.

I think we probably played our hand the best. Fish in blinds is obviously terrible 3betting a good players EP open, and our flat/4bet has to be setting off warning bells. In the end, I think UTG played his hand ok. With deep us behind him, he has to be wary that we flatted a monster, so I'm not sure he should be reraising preflop due to that; his just flatting the aggro fishes 3bet will most likely allow him to see a small SPR pot HU in position where he can commit against the fish postflop on non-A boards (although it sounds to me like that perhaps wasn't his thinking). His worse mistake is sitting to the direct right of another deepstack.

GbothyouandUTGplayedyourhandsfine,imoG

Kind of a weird spot for KK to be in but no I don't like his play. Particularly flatting the $65 is just terrible. He's way too deep to do that with you in position on him. BB is never raise folding that spot so KK should put in a raise for value at that point. Also, putting BB on Aces seems like a terrible misread based on your description of him and his actual holdings.

ugh.

<results-oriented>

if you put that 3b in yourself, V with flats, UTG 4bets, and you win a much bigger pot

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Who knows what he does with the part of his UTG opening range that is KK-, though...

But isn't there a raise size from fish that is big enough where UTG doesn't have to worry about re-raising to isolate? The fish's raise size might already be big enough where he's isolated himself, so UTG doesn't really have to worry about Hero coming in with speculative hands. Although I guess Hero would be getting 17x implied odds to come along for the ride, in position; but on the other hand, flatting does allow UTG to possibly get away from his hand if needed (such as in this case, although flatting might also get Hero to overplay his hand where he would end up folding the best hand).

I still think KK's biggest mistake far and away is sitting in the seat he's sitting in. It makes for a difficult spot, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

UTG showed that he could get away from KK here (even though his read on who was the one with AA was incorrect). You really think he's putting in a 4bet to a 3bet this deep OOP? No way, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I've only seen the flat original raise, then back-4-bet line a few times, but it's always been AA.

You didn't give any reads on UTG, but assuming he is decent, his UTG range should be super narrow, and we should be 3-betting him almost always, as he is likely at least calling a 3-bet with almost his entire range. I hate calling the raise and hoping for a 3-bet behind as it just isn't going to happen very often, unless you have a particularly aggro table or a few squeeze happy players in the blinds. more often, you are going to start a string of callers behind you and end up in a big pot multi-way OOP with a vulnerable overpair.

I know we are deep with this guy, but you are going to have position a very good idea about his range, and you should be able to play almost perfectly after the flop. Make it $55 preflop and proceed accordingly.

Yup. I see no reason not to 3-bet pre. Being deep is a reason to play your hand straightforward. There's no reason to get fancy here.

There is nothing to worry about. We have KK and we crush both villain's ranges and the fish isn't folding if we raise. i want to raise for value right now before a flop with scare cards comes out that could kill our action. However, the fact that we are so deep makes it even more important that we raise because the other grinder could call with a wide variety of hands and I'm not really looking to play a big pot OOP vs him with little information on his holdings when we are 300bbs deep.

UTG just analyzed the info well. When fish 3! I get real wary because they are usually only doing it with QQ+ and maybe AK. Then when you 4! After the flat it becomes apparent that someone has a monster and KK may not be good. I'm actually surprised the fish 3! TT though

Yeah, which means we should have given him less.

"Gambly recfish" probably has a wider range than QQ+ when he 3-bets a UTG raise and UTG+1 call. He sees a tight opener and a single caller - if UTG is that foldy, he may be 3-betting with air as a squeeze play.

By backraising when it comes back to us, we all but announce we have a monster. Put simply, what else is in our range when we 4-bet? That is not a rhetorical question - I think if we can construct a balanced preflop coldcall-reraise range, that's fine too.

But if our coldcall-reraise range would be only AA, we should just 3-bet the first time around. And if UTG is tight and foldy, we should 3-bet a wide range, not a tighter one.

FWIW, if table is loose/passive and not 3betty, I'm totally on board with a simple ABC 3bet preflop.

Gcalli,whatthehellareyoudoingdownhere,youlost?G

So let's say a reasonable player 3-bets behind us and UTG calls, we're still going to backraise?

I play a non-zero amount of NL and lurk quite a bit. For a while my LHE games were on the ropes and I decided it was worth it to learn how to beat 2/5-ish NL in case the whole LHE ecosystem collapsed down to 6/12.

Ya, I would still backraise in this case, unless stacks were so small that we could simply disguise our hand and easily get stacks in postflop. I've actually done this before and had players say "I know exactly what you have, either AK or JJ", so it's not always transparent (although, lol, I would often do this with AK).

Lucky you that you even still have a Limit game; Limit games (even the lowly 2/4, let alone the "big" 4/8 with kill) don't even run in my room any more.

Gcometothedarksidecalli!G

The benefit here of 3betting AA is that we can potentially cooler someone, certainly more frequently than if our hand was KK and we were this deep. I can get on board with flatting for the reasons stated by gobbledygeek, but I think in general we need to be 3betting. The gambooler will almost never fold TT here, which would then give UTG the opportunity to squeeze, or flat and see a flop OOP with a strong but dominated hand.