Hero is $600 effective

V1 is a white lady in her 40s who is an actiony player. Seen her make light calls on the River with garbage etc but not big action pre (unless she’s cold calling a 3bet). She’s rebought once already and is $1000 effective.

Hero has KdKc in UTG +2

Straddle is on to $10.

Hero limps (another action player at the table who likes to steal blinds pre. I got a 60% chance he’ll raise it up with any two if it’s limped to him) 4 callers to v1 on the button who raises to $50. Folds back to hero who raises to $150. Folds back to V1 who snap shoves.

Hero?

Hero has a very tight image. Got kings like 3 times in the last hour and nothing other than that. Not even a suited connector.

If you have $600 in your stack villian isnt 1k effective. She's 600 effective. Effective means the shortest relavent stack in play because that's the only money that can go into the pot. Ie "she effectively has a stack of $600."

You can't fold kk for 60bb vs anyone imo. If you have years playing with the same player and they've never shown a 4bet without AA then maybe you can fold if 3 players in front of you raised and then the super nit 4bet jams.

Sorry she had AA. That's poker sometimes

And don't limp premiums unless someone is raising 100% of hands behind you. There are a bunch of nits who will disagree but if you're raising a reasonable range that includes bluffs you need to have kk in that range

Ah duh ok that makes sense. $600 effective. It’s 1/3 so I’m 200 BB deep. Does that change the thought process at all?

The $10 dollar straddle makes your stack 60 bb effective.

Unless she shows you that she has AA, you shouldn't fold.

Especially based on your description of her.

When I read the title of this thread my first thought was “no”.

KK, 60bb effective. You have enough information there to make the decision.

I go by the straddle to do the BB math too, but I wonder if our opponents also think the same way. If they don't, and instead they think $600 is a lot to bet without AA, then we get to a different conclusion.

Maybe against a nittier player I'd fold but the read states this is a more actiony player who may think JJ is the nuts (but still has a fairly narrow shoving range)

I'm cool with the limp/reraise preflop plan.

I like offering poor 8:1 IO if I can preflop, especially since a 3bet will often create a situation (SPR and board) that we won't be able to fold postflop. So that would mean we'd need to make it $75 more, so $125. But when that creates something less than the "standard" 3x, I'm cool with rounding up to 3x. So I'm cool with our preflop 3bet sizing.

I've only folded KK 3 times preflop in 5255 hours of 1/3 NL (twice shown AA, other time unknown), so it isn't something we have to be massively overconcerned about. But I would certainly consider it here. Our play looks massively strong, and yet she doesn't care for very decent sized $600 stacks.

ETA: TBH, I would completely ignore whether this pot has been straddled or not with regards to how many "bb"s we're dealing with. We're dealing with $600 stacks. This will be game dependent. If your game allows unlimited or match-the-stack or $1000+ BIs, etc., then maybe $600 stacks will fly around easy. If your game has a capped BI at something like $400 (like my game) then it is my guess $600 stacks don't fly around too easy. But the key is to deal with the $$$ size, not the "bb"s, imo. She just shoved $600 against a tight looking limp/reraiser with no other significant money / callers in the pot to deny equity to / etc.; a fold should definitely be considered, imo.

GcluelessfoldingKKnoobG

This is a good point, it's still 600 in a 1/3 game, so unless everyone is straddling every hand people usually view the straddle as a raise so it depends on other factors too, but here I would still call based on her description of being "an actiony player" who often makes light calls otr. These kinds of players usually have money to burn which they don't seem to care too much about. She probably just wants to show that she won't get pushed around, and probably isn't even thinking about it being a l/rr.

Hate the spot. Im trying to talk to her and see her reaction. Likely getting no tells, i begrudgingly call until playing hours and hours seeing her never make this play with anything else

The first raise is to $50 = 16.67BB that's already 1/12 of your stack. 200BB sounds like a lot but you're in fact pretty shallow here because of the 3.33BB straddle.

There's also a decent amount of dead money, including your $150. Therefore you have the odds to call if there's only 3 combos of AK/QQ in there with AA/KK.

I know when there's a straddle, the eff bb stacks are cut in half right from the start. But what about in games that let you straddle for more, like if a guy straddles to 50, does that mean we're only 12 bb's effective so we should gii with ATo?

I don't usually assume "we're only x bb's eff because of the straddle" when I'm in these situations. I just view it as blind raise and I play accordingly from there. It's not a tournament where bb's matter so much. Just my opinion of course.

I think it depends on position. In your example hand I'd think about jamming ATo if it's folded to me on the button or in one of the blinds. But not utg or if some reg coldcalls the $50 ahead

60bb effective vs. an 'actiony' player, this is a snap call and its not close.

Vs “actiony” yes
Vs “not actiony pre” as described its a sigh, ask do you really have aces and call after 15 second

Fair, it's still only 60 bb though making this a mandatory call IMO and I'm going to just snap it off. Without the straddle it's a legit bad spot and I don't know what's best. I have folded KK pre twice, I was "right" both times because I was facing AA but one of those times was a terrible fold due to newbie nerves.

No

It doesn't matter if it's 60 BB pre or 30BB or 20BB if villain's range is AA. What if you had a HUD and you could see that her VPIP/PFR is 50/2. Do you still call the 4bet? How would your range villain in that scenario?

I also don't think that villain's shoving because she thinks it's 60BB effective. Many people, especially recreational people still look at the situation as one that involves 200BB stacks. And they don't get it in for $600 pre unless they have the goods. A major idea governing loose passive villains is to call pre to see a flop and then decide to do depending on the action and the board. Then at some point they have to deal with the extra hands they hold and most end up overfolding while some overbluff. But just because someone is overbluffing rivers doesn't mean they take risks pre.

That doesn't mean there aren't player profiles you should call against with KK pre. I just don't think this villain is that type of player.

You and I approach the game from fundamentally different angles, so we are on different pages most of the time but here we are in complete agreement. This is a really well-stated point. The (vast?) majority of people do not make decisions from a straddled big blind perspective, but from a dollar one. Pointing out that it's only a 60 BB stack are ignoring this and it's extremely relevant to the decision here IMO.

I don't know if I've ever folded KK preflop but this might be a spot to do it. I don't know if I could do it in game though. It is much, much closer than most people in this thread make it out to be.

There are times where folding KK pre is correct, especially at low stakes where players showing huge strenght is always AA.

However this is not one of those times.

It has to be exceptional to fold KK pre. I'm essentially never folding KK pre in a live game.

Maybe if I'm much deeper than 100bb. Maybe online if I had like 1,000 database hands on a player.

With 60bb live the thought of folding wouldn't even occur to me.

I go from a thread telling someone to call off with AQs for 3 'units' and now I may agree with folding KK PF for 4 'units'. Live poker is definitely a moving target.

The open makes it 12 units and the 3-bet makes it 4 units, so this should be an easy call off. But you have given us different information than from the previous thread I was looking at .. and yet, it's not the information we need here.

So V has open-4-bet us here to 4 units all-in .. what is that range? If it includes AKs/QQ, then this is an easy call. If the impression is that it's only AA/KK then it's a fold .. 6 combos of AA and one combo of KK make this possibly break even with the dead 190-ish in there. So why 'break even' for more 45 bb? (See, you can spin it however you want to make you feel good)

Another factor I consider is what is the best way to get chips from this V? We have the information that this is a POW, so there should be plenty of opportunity to get 'more reliable' value out of this V in future spots.

There's constant reference in threads about images from Players in 'standard' spots that don't necessarily apply to 'this' spot. I'm constantly seeing where those images blind Hero's mindset in 'large' spots.

I haven't said it in a while, but 'Win the war, not every battle'. If you truly feel that this (4-bet) battle is 'serious', then just muck it and pick a better, more reliable spot to acquire this Player's chips .. maybe even show for tilt effect. GL

Y’all are way overcomplicating the situation.