1/2nl

daytime weekday game at Maryland Live. Table is mostly regs playing make-a-hand poker. Table has been running for about 2.5 hours.

Main villain is an old man -- white guy in his late 70s, looks like an OMC. But he raises to $10 preflop with medium pocket pairs+, big unsuited aces, and suited broadway cards. He's only been 3-bet once before (by me), and he folded without much hesitation.

V2 is a short stack. Not particularly relevant to the hand.

Hero has a relatively aggressive image, but has had to fold on the turn or river to a few bad runouts, so our image is more "aggressive" than "winning" at the moment.

OTTH

V1 (covers) raises UTG to $10. 3 callers behind him, V2 is on the button and raises all-in for $65. Hero ($330) is in the small blind and wakes up with KK.

Hero decides to underrep his hand by just calling the $65. The table has been pretty gun-shy, and my read is that they'll fold suited connectors and aces weaker than AQ/AJ rather than gamble for stacks with a speculative hand. I'm not too worried about creating a multi-way pot oop with my call. By calling the $65, I'm hoping to keep 10s/Js/Qs in their ranges, and possibly induce a shove from Js and Qs.

V1 thinks briefly, then clicks it back to $130. Rest of the table folds, and it's back to hero. (Uh oh.)

...My plan was to snap-call a shove. But the min-raise 4-bet feels sooo much like aces.

The pot is $290, and hero technically only has to call $65 to see a flop. But realistically I think we're deciding right now whether or not to play for stacks.

Visual read is that the villain seems comfortable. Six combos of aces, one combo of kings, six combos of queens. But I don't know for sure if he plays his queens this way.

Stick to the plan and jam with kings here, or run and hide from the monsters under our bed?

Just because V is old doesn't mean he's and OMC. From your description, he seems to have a standard preflop range much wider than an OMC.

With that being said, he may 4! With QQ or AK but if he doesn't, you're in a world of ****. Not sure I'm disciplined enough to muck it. We're getting like 7:1 IO. Yeah, this is a ****ty spot

Oh, as for your 1st call, I'm never raising here with AA/KK

Just gii - you don't seem to know that he doesn't play QQ (or other hands) this way either.

100% shoving.

He doesn't sound OMC based on his range. We flatted the V2 shove to underrep. We underrepped.

To clarify, he definitely isn't an OMC. I was trying to write "he looks at first glance like an OMC, but obviously isn't because of his raising range."

Should've made that clearer.

This is not a typical 4bet dynamic. V2's short stack shove 3! throws that askew. Particularly when you flat, even an old man type player can look at a hand like AK/QQ/JJ and think that he is most likely ahead of V2, doesn't think you can be that strong because of your flat, but wants to isolate.

This has to be a shove, IMO. I have no desire to flat and lose my stomach on flops that contain an Ace or Queen.

you can't look like an OMC, you can only be one if you play tight.

I'm not a fan of flatting the first time around. As played, "OMC" might just be tyring to isolate the short stack and get you out? Do you think he might raise more if he had AA both for value and for protection?

Look at him with a puzzled look like "That doesn't make any sense" then jam.

You can definitely make a case for folding. Super hard to do live, but I've run the math on these types of situations and if V1 has AA more than 54% of the time here, you're getting it in bad.

This is actually true whether V1 folds everything but aces when we jam (then he has to have AA less than 52% of the time for jam to be profitable), or whether he calls if we give him AA, AK, or QQ. He needs to have AA less than ~54% of the time for a jam to be profitable if he's calling 100% of the time in this spot.

Add in the benefit that we get to see V1's hand thanks to V2 being all-in......and I can argue for a fold if you truly believe 70-year old man has aces at least 50% of the time in this spot. But yeah, if he can have a wider range -- easy jam.

I think it's kinda close, but as mentioned, we are under repped. For sure assumed not to have KK.

Does V have any bet size or timing tells for us to rely on in this hand?

From the info you've provided, I think we have to shove. Unless you have enough info to dictate that he wouldn't play AK, AQs+, JJ/QQ this way we have to shove. We are seen as an aggro loser currently, so he could very well jam those hands for value imo. If our image is nittier, or if his is nittier, I could see stronger argument for a fold.

I'd like to think I'm disciplined enough to fold KK in this situation. Forget whether he's an OMC or not. 1/2 players don't min-raise 4 bet light. Especially in a protected pot since the short stack is going to see all 5 cards. If he had AK, he'd want you to fold, not call. He would be shoving.

Yea I guess the min 4 is so heavily nutted. Would be pretty strange for him to min charge our range with QQ/AK.

But isn't our range capped at like JJ/AKo? Couldn't this be a 'thin' value raise? It does seem unlikely though.

Pretty sure villain can min-raise trying to isolate with anything from TT+ / AK. He min-raises to leave himself an "out" in case hero comes over the top. Not folding <150 BB's deep given the way this played out. Only question is whether to shove now or x/call(jam) the flop.

It's precisely because the hand was underrepped that the minraise screams aces. If he felt that you were strong, he would have shoved because as you already stated you would have snap called. The minraise screams that he knows he has to raise his aces but doesn't want you to fold.

I don't know if I would be able to do it, but I think the correct play is to fold.

This.



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Thanks all. Results:

If villain had shoved, I would've snap-called. The min-raise screamed aces at me, so I tanked on it for a little while. In-game considerations were...

(1) this sure looked like aces/I don't think he'd play queens or ak this way, particularly with three people left behind him.

(2) But I didn't have enough history with him to completely rule out queens/jacks/ak.

(3) I had just recently lost a big pot (~275 big blinds) with kings against aces at the end of my last session. Couldn't decide if that was making me overestimate the likelihood of aces or underestimate them, but I knew that recency bias was messing with my thinking a little bit.

(4) Tie-breaker: my plan was to call the $65 in the hopes of playing a big pot. This guy was fitting into my plan. When I find myself genuinely on the fence, I usually revert to "just follow the damn plan."

So I jammed. He snap-called with aces. Short-stack on the button had jacks. Aces held up.

In retrospect, I've been thinking this should've been a fold, but also wondering if that thought is too results-oriented. So I appreciate the discussion, it's been helpful.