1/3 live.

V1 $520 +2 is 30’s male. He’s been passive other than 3 betting KK. I’ve seen him limp a bunch in the hour or so we have been playing. After he 3 bet KK he overbet jammed heads up on a KT3 two tone flop. I think he jammed about $150 into $80.

V2 $450 LJ is 50’s male who limped KJ and raised turn with top pair after checking it.

Hero has been winning in the game and has been fairly active in general. I just opened 2/3 hands and the other hand I 3 bet KQo button v HJ. HJ is very wide pre and opens hands like J7s. This time HJ has AA and 4 bet and took it down. He showed the AA and I said I had KQ. That being said, I don’t know how much the other villains are paying attention.

UTG straddles.Hero opens AsAh to $20, v1 calls, v2 3 bets to $40, folds to hero. Hero 4 bets to $120. Both call.

Pot:$360.

Flop QcTd9c.

Hero?

Hero checks, v1 jams for $400, v2 tank folds. Back to hero. I’m leaning toward a call when he starts talking about how I’m never going to call here and how he has has me beat etc. He says some iteration of this about 3-4 times in the 1.5 min that I’m tanking.

Call is basically break even but slightly losing if his range is 99, TT, JJ, QQ, AKcc. If he has KK then call is slightly profitable. If he has KK but not JJ then call is slightly profitable. If he has just sets and AKcc then I have 15% equity.

There’s 400 in the pot, you have a PSB and AA?
Shove the flop and spare yourself this nonsense decision (call)
3! size seems good to set up the psb jam otf

Think checking is fine, would rather check AcAx but regardless all the money is going in whether now or later.

Ap snap call. Cant ever fold here

Nut worst flop for AA obv but don’t see folding as an option with this SPR. Also, checking seems bad. If you’re going to call, might as well just shove yourself. We don’t block AXcc.

Your pre open sizing seems really small for LLSNL assuming straddle to 6.

This isn't that gross of a flop for AA given the action. Neither should have KJ ever. 99 also seems unlikely. So you're really looking to dodge top and middle set against two players. Considering the much larger number of combos of JJ, KK, AK, AQ in their range, doesn't seem like too much of a concern.

I would jam the flop btw.

4b more imo. Shove any board.

$150 pre/jam any flop/hand over. As played can’t fold with SPR 1. They probably have you beat but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Your first raise is too small. Your 4 bet is too small. Now you're in a pickle.

Lets see....

1) His tiny 3 bet normally means AA/KK/QQ
2) His speech on the flop normally means hes strong...which leads me to 3)
3) I would kick myself in the nuts for my preflop sizings.

I havent done the math but I would figure my equity against AA/KK/QQ. I dont think he has any other hand. I dont think he would be confidant enough to give that speech with KK because he beats nothing. Obviously AA is unlikely...so.....

see bolded

you 4-bet
he's shoving into you
your beat
save your chips to buy ice for your nuts

Hem haw. SPR is 1 but given the bet size by V and board run-out and limit we are in, I would fold.

Not all that certain he jams with KK given pre flop action. Losing to AA/QQ. Might check back and hope to see a turn.

I’d lean more toward JJ. A passive opponent less likely to 3b TT/99 pre. From a combo perspective and the SPR, I’d call.

Given the Villain description as well as both the PF and flop action, this looks a lot like a set that he's trying to protect by his flop push.

You may have to call due to SPR but it just feels yucky.

I probably limp to reraise but that's me.

We've recently had another semi-trainwreck of a thread where I argued for a flat of KK preflop instead of 4betting it. Here, I'm totally cool with the 4bet cuz (a) much better chance of this going 3ways with a flat, (b) we're OOP, (c) ok dead money in the pot (if everyone folds it's actually not a disaster collecting ~$70 rake free), (d) we seem to have an aggro image, and (e) while 3better may fold a lotta hands we hope continue he's very unlikely to fold KK. I'm cool with our sizing and lol at results (two calls of a 4bet, lol); I honestly think all of poker is just treading water for as long as we can before we encounter a situation where someone(s) just hands us money in the most lol of manners, which is what is going on here.

Horrendous flop, but with these stacks I just don't think we can get away from our hand here. So I just shove, but it's a sigh shove.

As played, I sigh crying call even though I hate it.

ETA: Unlike others, I'm fine with our 4bet sizing. As far as I can tell it offers < 6:1 IO against the raiser (more against the flatter in-between although I doubt we saw that coming, lol), so we're laughing in the face of ~setminers (i.e. we can stack off profitably postflop every single time they flop one because they aren't going to flop one enough, plus we'll outdraw them some of the time when they do).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Preflop is weird. Our initial raise is too small for the stakes and players. Against a more balanced player we could go for this small 4 bet sizing. Against this guy, I just don't think he's folding when he 3 bets, so we can go for bigger. Like if we want to throw bluffing out the window and play total ABC poker, then we're raising for pure value. So if they're going to call 160 at the same rate that they call 130, then why not make it 160? It's already better.

I'd actually begin to discount hands like 99 and TT from this villain's range. Passive players love to call and take flops. So now if we have a range of QQ, KK, AA, AcKc, we're actually slightly ahead and should comfortably call off here. But I'd have jammed myself so that his JJ/AK gets to pay to see 5 cards.

Given that he could hold AK here and play it this way, I think you have to call. If we held the A I think it is closer, but I would have led the flop and not been in your spot.

I think TT/99 are less likely as a min 3!/call 4! preflop line just aren't that likely with those hands. So this is either QQ/KK, or AKss clubs to me. Against that range, I call.

More every point. Shove flop

Probably not a great hand to post since it’s an obvious snap call without the speech and no one on this forum was there to hear it. Maybe even if everyone was there for the speech they would still snap call, a fold could be pretty terrible here and calling can’t be too -EV. I decided to fold and got a little lucky I guess, villain showed QQ.

Even passive Villains will occasionally shove flop when the pot is $360 pre-flop and they have equity.

Book of tells says:
- Quiet or shaking Villain = Nuts
- Talks a lot and confident Villain = Bluff

One of the big problems with tells is that Villains may not understand the game of poker. He might think QJ is the nuts or that AKcc is the nuts.

It sucks, but I'd call and just hope Villain didn't outflop us.

I wouldn't read too much into villain calling $120 pre-flop. In my LLSNL games, villains make all kinds of pre-flop calls with cards that have no business being in the hand. That's what makes them profitable. It also makes it very difficult to range Villain.

It's tough to know what kind of villain this is in order to range him. If you saw this guy 3bet KK, and is not positionally aware (limping pre implies not a good player) it is hard to say that he wouldn't 3! QQ. 99, TT, and KJs make a lot of sense to me that he would call an UTG open and call when it gets back to him if he's a bad passive player (again, limping preflop). I guess we can be ahead of hands like AKcc or JTcc, but I don't think we're getting nearly the price.

Against what I would consider a best case scenario range of JJ, TT, 99, AKcc, and JTcc, we dont have the price to call, so I think this is a fairly standard fold.

Preflop I would have raised to 25 or 30 over a (presumably $6) straddle, and if he clicked it to 50/60 over my raise I would make it 200.

Really? That's your best case scenario range?

My best case scenario range:
AQo / AQs (not clubs obviously)
AJo / AJs (with some clubs)
AKo / AKs (with some clubs)
KK
KQo / KQs (not clubs)
KJo / KJs
QQ
QJo / QJs
QTs
Q9s
JJ
JT
J9s
TT
T9s
T8s
99
(random hands) / complete air

In general, the smaller the pot, the less profitable it is for a villain to shove all-in as a semi-bluff. If Villain is semi-bluffing here, either one of you could have KJ and have him drawing dead.

Because this is a huge pot, Villain's semi-bluff only has to work 40% of the time, assuming Villain still wins 20%+ of the time when called.

I'd call. We only need to win 34% of the time to break-even. Conventional wisdom is that having the A would give us backdoor draws and more equity. Blockers wisdom tells us it's better NOT to have the A as it increases the number of semi-bluff hands Villain can have.

Ten days late to the party

I think he flatted pre and overcalled the 4 bet. But I agree, with that speech a fold isn't terrible. When people call 4 bets their ranges are gonna be very well defined. They aren't even gonna have half or even a third of the hands in the "best case scenario" outlined by paperboy. KJo? No way! He flatted pre, KK isn't likely. QQ isn't either but it's more possible. TT is certainly possible and 99 might even be because he wants to set mine for a bad price. AQ is also possible. The question here is would he do that with AQ? Would he semi-bluff shove JJ? If the answer to either of those is yes I'm not folding. If the answer to both is no I'm folding and feeling great about it.

I'm going to have to start writing down pre-flop action and hands at showdown in my games.

Not sure why we assume Villains in these games understand pre-flop starting hands and are disciplined. In fact, so much of the profit in these games is because Villains lack both.

I guess it depends on your definition of "Best Case Scenario". Passive player donk shoves middle pair+gutter into the preflop 3bettor. I guess its possible, but so unlikely that I wouldn't consider it "Best Case". In my experience when a passive player donk jams the range is really nutted, and I wouldn't expect a hand worse than pair+strong draw to play this way.

It doesn't take much discipline to not put in $120 pre with KJo. The people that do are big whales. Even the fish at the table smile and shake their heads at their play.