Hero: mid-thirties white guy, well known in this card room. Perceived as TAGish overall.

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Hand 1:

Villain: Young Asian male...one of the top 5 most competent players in this card room. This kid has no fear, and is never afraid to get it all-in without the nuts.

Hero (utg+1) $900: KJo

Villain (sb) $480: ? ?

Pre: Hero raises to $20 pre, folds around to V who makes it $85, folds to Hero.

Hero?

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Hand 2:

Main Villain: late 40's, early 50's white guy. engineer type, quiet. have played with V on numerous occasions. capable player, rarely limps pre, and NEVER open limps pre. very deliberate with decision making.

V2: complete donkey who just loves to gamble. HATES folding pre, but will fold with complete trash hands.

Hero (utg) $1000: QJo

Main Villain: (bb) $600: ? ?
V2: (mp) $500:

Pre: I make it $20, V2 calls, folds around to Main V, who makes it $85. Hero?

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Hand 3:

V1: snug mid 40's Asian woman, likes to gamble, but never gets TOO out of line

V2: late 40's, early 50's white guy, loose passive overall, not afraid to make big shoves without the nuts

Hero (utg) $1100: Qc 10c

V1 (mp) $380: ? ?

V2 (btn) $650: ? ?

Pre: I make it $20, V1 calls, V2 makes it $65. Hero?

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Hand 4:

V2: white guy, late 30's competent TAG, good player overall

Main Villain: late 40's, early 50's Asian male. NO FEAR whatsoever. reads board textures well, quick minded. Only leak is he's a bit too loose passive at times and will call down with marginal holdings. Probably winning player overall, but I've seen this guy have multiple sessions where he's stuck 3K+.

Hero (utg) $1350: Ah 5h

V2 (utg+1) $800: ? ?

Main V (hj) covers: ? ?

Pre: I make it $20, V2 calls, Main V makes it $180. Hero?

Is there ever a situation here where calling or 4-betting is correct? Please help!!

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Feel free to comment on any or all of the hands above. Any and all feedback is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Assuming you're playing 9 handed, hands 1 and 2 should be folds preflop anyway, so definitely fold to a 3 bet. Hand 3 I could see a case for calling because you're getting such good odds and will realize your equity more easily since you're playing against more straightforward players in a protected pot. Hand 4 is jus strange. I would just fold because it can't be that bad to fold the bottom of your range to a 9x 3 bet. If you know this sizing from him is unbalanced to bluffs you could raise, but I can't see calling here ever being good.

As Venice always reminds us to remind ourselves...'They are not playing back at me. They are not playing back at me'

Having said that....it seems to me that your UTG raising range is too wide and maybe some of these villains know that? Why are you raising KJ off utg? fold that ****.

Hands 1 and 2 IMO are clear folds utg, not raises.
Hands 3 and 4 are OK to raise, albeit at least imo, but dependent on the table and my image

I would consider calling the 3 bet in Hand 3, because the sizing - 40 into 105 with 600 still behind and there's a decent chance it's going multiway but..if he's really a loose passive opponent, be very careful with your top pair hands because you can get yourself into decent trouble

Hand 4 you're deep, but my word that's a big 3 bet and you're not getting flush mining odds. Lol live reads, but 180 looks like a scared JJ-KK looking to take it down right there, so perhaps your A is good as well but how would you know? Again, you're described him as a bit passive and he's 9xing an UTG raise.

H1 fold pre
H2 fold pre
H3 Raise/call
H4 Raise/fold

Hand 1 - just fold. No need to get into a dick-measuring contest with one of the most competent players in the room, with only KJo.

Hand 2 - fold pre. Fold to 3! One of the nicknames for QJ is "Hawaii." As in... if you never played a hand with QJ, you would save enough money to pay for a trip to Hawaii.

Hand 3 - villain descriptions are confusing... V1 is snug but likes to gamble??? V2 is passive but shoves w/o the nuts??? Raising pre with QTs from UTG... R commend hero write down your own range for opening with a raise UTG,. Then cut in half. Then cut some more.

Hand 4 - "is there ever a situation here where calling or 4-betting is correct?" Wrong question. The right Q is: "is there ever a situation where not folding in the first place is correct?" A: no, never when UTG w A5hh.

Grunch.

All four of those opens from EP by Hero are pretty marginal depending on the table conditions. I would fold in all cases after getting 3bet. If you are getting 3bet this much when you open from EP, you should definitely tighten up your opening range.

h1: fold pre
h2: fold pre
h3: fold pre
h4: fold pre

Grunch

I know i'm nitty, but Hero's UTG raising range seems super wide to me if this is full ring. All of these go into the muck UTG for me barring any special reads or circumstances.

If the game is pretty opening QTs and A5s some % of the time is fine. That said, people are definitely punishing op for opening too many hands.

This sounds like a bad table to make splashy raises from EP. H1 and H2 seem obviously bad at described table. I'm not inclined to open H3 and H4 either, and would rather go to me l/c / l/rr / l/f bag of tricks, but opening is potentially profitable with this stack depth.

As played, H1 and H2 are lol snapfolds once it's 3!. You've gotta be butthole tight as an UTG opener facing action from anyone who isn't a total fish. When there's someone squeezed in between, etc, we can expand our 4! range to AKo, but there's nothing you can do with KJo and QJo.

H3 is an easy fold too. Dude's range is super strong, we're out of absolute position and out of relative position.

H4, I mean, he made it $180. You hardly ever need to continue here ever.

KJo and QJo are pretty loose ep opens. not that they cant ever be profitable, but (no offense) if you are asking these questions its pretty strong evidence that you shouldnt be opening them.
h1:fold, fold
h2:fold, fold
h3: prob fold but w/e, call
h4: prob fold but w/e, fold

[x] correct
[ ] incorrect

Fold pre all of them

Cliffs:
+1 to all the fold pre flop advice given here so far.

tl;dr version
Most of these hands, (all of them maybe) could be an open from UTG and you could likely show a profit, but you need the right conditions. Such as a good image, a shorter table, people who like to fold too much, etc.

But it's clear that you are opening too much in general from EP and likely too much all around and people are picking up on it. You need to change your perceived image before you start trying stuff like this, or change you actual range and capitalize on your perceived image. One of the two.

fold everything pre.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using 2+2 Forums

my man - if I see you opening QJo UTG in my games I do not perceive you as even remotely "TAGish". Based on these hands I would honestly classify you as positionally unaware.

Nailed it.

Guys, I sincerely appreciate all the responses.

Here's what I learned in this one:

-generally speaking, my UTG raising range is too wide

-frequent 3b's against my UTG opening range -> tighten up

-pay more attention to my table image

-maybe i'm not so TAGish after all - more like positionally unaware (that was one of my fav's )

To-do items:

-list my UTG raising range, and pare it down to at least 50% of that

-be hyper aware of my image during sessions

Thanks again guys!!

Players who are not at all aware of their image are great. No offense OP, but I doubt anyone sees you as a TAG.

I assume your playing 2-5?

In regards to the 3bets: fold to all of them [An argument could be made for calling w/ Q-T: it's not a great argument tho]. Getting 3bet after making an UTG raise is the ultimate sign of strength. 3bet ranges are already super tight in LLSNL, combine that with the fact that your range is supposed to be super tight and were usually looking at QQ-AA, AK.

General Advice
Static preflop ranges are perfectly fine for LLSNL, but the hands you open really should depend on table dynamics along w/ position. Paying attention to table dynamics can drastically increase your winrate, and allow you to put yourself in more profitable situations postflop

If I'm at a really nitty table I'll definitely open KJo utg, because I'm likely to get to the flop HU or 2-way (God I hate nits)
If I'm at a table w/ a bunch of aggro regs (shouldn't be here anyways), my utg raising range in FR is going to be super tight. Like [AKo, AQs+, 88+)
If I'm at a table of all passive fish (2-5 semi-frequently, 1/2 all the time). My range looks something like (ATs+, AJo+, KTs+, KJo+, JTs+, 22+)

It appears your playing at a common table. A few good regs and the rest are fish. Stay tight, play in position, cultivate your image, and reap profits. Don't worry about 4bet bluffing, and polarizing your range, and out-leveling your opponents.

Lastly, a good rule of thumb of when to call raises to strictly hit your hand is this.
Effective stacks need to be:
15x the raise size to setmine
25x the raise size to call with suited connectors (IP is much more favorable)
35x the raise size to call with gapped SC's

damn. sounds like the whole table is picking off your weak opens. change tables.

Nah, you want people playing back at your UTG range. Consider all of these hands advertising, now open tighter and print money.

If people IP start ****in' with your LP opens, then it's time to tilt.

... but seriously, it's unlikely these players were even playing back at OP. Without doing any math, you will probably average something like one session per month where one of the 8 players left to act wakes up with a premium 4 times in one session.