The TL;DR is villains are bad loose passives except for the straddle who raises every time he straddles, seems to be very good post flop, made some very light calls downs and was correct and seems to be pretty balanced between bluffs and value when he bets and raises. Game is playing very loose pre.

V1 ($300 is a loose passive bad rec)
V2 ($150) is a tilted spewy bad rec
V3 ($1200) is a pretty face up abc player.
V4 ($250) is an old guy who is new to the table
V5 ($500) Would probably be a crusher if he didn't VPIP 75-80% 6-7 handed. even at this frequency though I think he's a pretty winning player. We have been playing for 5 or so hours, a lot of it 6 handed and I would say he's raising about 90-95% of his straddles when it's limped to him. He 3 bets far less often, but definitely will mix in light 3 bets and squeezes.

Hero ($550) Has been card dead and playing somewhat tight but I have mixed in some light 3 bets including showing 45s after 3 betting.

V5 straddles.

Hero looks down at AhAd UTG+1. Hero???

I honestly can't remember the last time I limp reraised aces because I think it turns your hand pretty face up, but this seems like the perfect spot for it. There are going to be a ton of limps which the straddle will raise and/or v2 is going to shove or open Q9o etc.

Hero limps. V2calls, v3 calls, v4 calls, v5 makes it $65.

Usually his bet sizing is pretty standard so this seemed to be on the smaller side.

Hero??? How big are we making this?

Tank and make it $200.

I love it. Limp/reraise AA or KK is such an underrated line at many LLSNL tables its ridicilous. I have been arguing positively for this play countless times on this forum, and ive won an insane amount of stacks or huge pots because i went with this line at the correct times. A big percentage of the time that is stacks i woudnt have won if i went for the "normal" open line, due to x amount of different good things possibly happenning when you limp/reraise.

1) It doesent matter if you think "it turns your hand faceup". Many of your villains is so bad/non believers that they will still pay you off in huge fashion-being thrown off their game by your limp pre. The fact that the table also have seen you bluff 3 betting garbage like 4-5 suited, makes it even more perfect of a spot in my opinion.

2) Youre putting dead money in the pot and "caps your range" from many players perspective: especially in straddled pots where they expect anybody with a premium hand to open to a large size themself. This can accomplish several unexpected nice things to happen for you. For example big spazz behind you. Hands like KQ or AJ can open big to punish your "capped weak range", and then medium stacks with hands like 77-88-99 or AQ can spazzshove allin pre: before its back on you with the stones. Its freaking beautiful when it works well.

Regarding sizing the important part is that you choose a pretty big sizing. Its several reasons for this, one of them is that a bigger sizing contributes to the levelling aspect of this line: building upon the illusion that you often can have AQ or AK, and you trying to max out your fold equity with a huge raise pre from your opponents point of view. Around $200 sounds good to me in this spot, maybe around $180 for that matter, due to the mental aspect of your raise being below the $200 mark- but i dont think it matters that much.

I like the min-raise preflop.

As played, make it 130 and expect to be heads up with V5.

So tempted to flat and allow others to jam over the top though. Some of them have the perfect stack size for it. But V2 seems like the only one who might jam.

Just a side note, upon review villain and I are a little deeper than I thought. He has $420 or so left going into the flop so he started with $585 and I cover.

Hero tries to make it $175 but misclicks and makes it $165. V2 is all in for $150, the other villains fold, V5 takes a few seconds and makes the call.

We now have an interesting scenario where the main pot is $490 and the side pot is $30

Flop:Q64r.

Villain checks. Hero???

Oh man, flatting and letting V2 jam would be pretty dirty but it didn't occur to me. I'm not sure how I feel about chancing that but I see the appeal.

Bet 80 into 490 to induce, leaving 340 in effective stacks.

If he doesn't C/R shove the flop, but calls, the pot will be 650 and we're shipping all turns.

Just jamming the flop is also fine.

Pre is fine. Lots of options. Love the call and hope V2 shoves line, but just raising is fine. On flop, I would bet somewhere between $100 and all-in. Basically what Nogyong wrote, but a little higher.

I might even put out $165 again just because it seems so odd to be less than the pre-flop raise, even with a small side pot. We're still going for the main pot.

Pots are 520 with 420 back. Any non-trivial bet is committing. Hell, we might have passed commitment preflop.

I very much doubt we're inducing anything here.

Side pot is thin and dry. If we lead 80, pots will be 680 and we're inducing someone to bluff into a protected pot, giving us 3:1 odds on a call. I'm not feeling it. Are there any hands you'd lead here but wouldn't call?

Any bet is pretty much committing. Any bet looks strong.

So I think we should either bet 0 or stick the rest in. If we want to dink around and hope he'll decide his hand is good and bet to get us out and protect it, fair enough; check it back.

I'd just stick it in. I think there's more chance he'll have a hand that'll he go with than that he'll bluff. If he has some weak hand, that isn't going to pay us off ever, I'd rather fold it out than give it a free shot for some miracle suckout.

Hero opts to bet 100. I haven't been in this kind of situation often so I defaulted to what I thought would be a good theoretical sizing. I figured it's a low SPR 3 bet protected pot on a dry board, let me use a small sizing that I would want to use with essentially my entire range. Thought I could get some hero calls, sometimes induce, sometimes get folds to protect my equity, and definitely get value.

Villain calls.

The turn brings an offsuit queen. Villain checks. Hero?

Lol, if villain had a 6 or a 4, hes now drawing to only 2 outs.

I can't put him on the 75 or 53 after calling the raise to 165 preflop and choosing not to C/R jam the flop.

Check it back and let him bluff jam 320 into 690 on the river. If he magically sucks out on us, write a post about it on twoplustwo.

Preflop: make it $130-$150 so that you don't look pot committed. I think that anything over $150 is excessive, given we're only $550 deep.

Flop: On a Q64r flop when the SPR is less than 1, we want to bet really small. I suggest something around $80 into $490. Obviously snap call any flop jam and jam all turn cards too.

Case2 is correct, imo.

I see the appeal of betting small. I think it is that we have already decided to go all in, so let's milk it for a little more or try to get some weird spazz. And if we wind up losing, it's the same thing because we were going all in no matter what.

However, V is described as a very sharp player who just plays too many hands PF. I would not count on him spazzing out, especially with most of the money safely locked away in the main pot. What would his objective be? To make us fold AK and hope to win a showdown with whatever equity he has?

It seems to me that betting super small mainly just gives him nice odds if he happens to have some equity.

Same thing with checking, but even more so, because he gets a free shot with stuff like PPs bellow Q.

So just go all in. There is a decent chance you get called by a Q. Prob more likely than him just going nuts with nothing. Maybe he has JT.

The OP said he felt his hand was faceup here and I agree, especially with most of the money in the main pot.

That's totally fine, as he implied, because we got 30% of stacks in with AA and got the tag along to arrive at the flop with an SPR of less than 1. The hand is effectively over and you got what you wanted. You're running to the endzone with the DB 10 yards behind you. Don't start high stepping as you waive the ball around in one hand.

If he floated you or called with JT and then tried to bluff you off the sidepot, great job. If he had a Q, bad job.

Just a side note: player in the straddle isn't raising preflop every time it limps to him, I'm sure.

I think the set of people who are very sharp and raise their straddle every time is pretty close to empty. My guess is either he's sharp and just had an amazing string of cards in his straddle, or (more likely) he's not that good and has just had hands that fit his leaks well.

What suits are the queens

Honestly don't remember, no phones at the table in this casino so I didn't take notes.

We had played for 4-5 hours, a lot of it 5-6 handed and I think he checked in the straddle once or twice. He clearly thought he just had a massive skill advantage over the table or just didn't care. He flatted someone with 42o when he was in the CO. As I said, I don't know how profitable a player he is, but he seemed to be making good decisions post flop.

The reason why you want to pay attention to suits is because of blockers. If the Queens are a spade and a club then the AQs combos are totally blocked. Which is a good thing.

Hero opts to check back the turn, maybe I should've bet small again to protect my equity given how much is already in the middle but I wanted to be able to bluff catch and/or get value on the river.

So the board is now

Q-6-4-Q-3. Board was rainbow on the turn.

Villain now bets $140. Hero?

@Avaritia very true, the suits will help come up with AQs blockers. Reduces amount of combos V is betting for value.

I don't see myself ever folding here unless I level myself. It's probably JJ, or TT trying to go for cheap showdown/razor thin value against AK, like a blocker bet.

Folding seems out of the question, to me it's between calling or shoving. In the moment I didn't really think it through and just called.

Calling is better than shoving, perhaps min raising is okay.

What worse hands will call a shove OTR when V will see your hand anyway?

So he had like 320 left going into the river so a min raise is basically a shove. There would be something like 450 in the main pot and 620 in the side pot and it would be 180 for him to call so he would be getting an outrageously good price with a hand like 99-JJ.

Im going to spoil the results by saying after I called and he said I was good but didn't immediately muck. I didn't make him show, I just showed and then he mucked. It was a really weird bet, I guess there are a few possibilities.

1. He was tilted and clicking buttons.

2. It's a weird merge/blocker to get me to fold the side pot and he has a hand that will probably win the main pot. If he has a hand like A6, 65, or 88 there is a good chance he will win the main pot if he can get me off 99/TT/JJ. Maybe he plans to call a small bet with those hands anyway and he's giving himself a good price to occasionally fold out a better hand.

3. He was bluffing just to win the side pot. I mean I guess he folds out AK but for that sizing I don't think I can ever fold 99-JJ.

Oh I thought he had more in his stack for some reason. Side pot is only 370, right? Still a call for me. I see no reason to jam. If you wanted to jam, it should have been on the turn.

I guess his blocker bet worked. It might actually have been clever in a way that there's so little fold equity if you jam that you can only jam with AQ, maybe KQ.