This hand comes from a 1/3 game at a casino in Vegas. Villain in the hand seems to be the most competent player at the table. No direct history with him, but he bought in for $300 and has worked his stack up to $500 or so. Usually wins pots before showdown so I haven't seen many hands, but he seems solid (not passive, he's aggressive when necessary) and I haven't seen him make any dumb plays.

Hero's stack is $300, villain covers.

Villain raises UTG to $15, folds to hero in the CO, looks down and sees QQ. Hero re-raises to $50, villain thinks for a few seconds and 4-bets to $135.

What is hero's play?

So far the villain has shown nothing but the goods, so it's hard for me to imagine him doing this with something like AK/TT, especially UTG. It almost has to be QQ (unlikely obviously) or better, but folding QQ at a 1/3 table feels kinda ridiculous.

Thoughts?

What do you think his UTG raising range is?

Honestly I'm not sure this is even a 3 bet

The 3-bet is fine pre-flop. Competent villains can raise under the gun with all sorts of hands that you're ahead of.

Once he 4-bets you, since you have no feel for his 4-bet range that you mentioned, I think you have to fold as you are behind the typical LLSNL villain's 4-bet range by a pretty wide margin. To make matters worse, you're basically committed as he's got $165 behind into what would be a $270 pot, so it's hard to fold on most flops (and clearly you can't set-mine).

I'm sighing and folding.

I'm probably too much on the passive side here, but I would often flat preflop. If stacks were a lot smaller, I'd be cool with 3betting / getting it in because players stack off with small stacks a lot easier, but not so much with 100bb stacks. Plus, this guy is a solid player and just opened UTG; I'm not exactly thrilled about 3betting him. Plus we can just quietly fold if he bets a A/K flop (if he has JJ-, whatever, nice hand, you can have my $15). And 1/8 times we'll flop a set and play a very easy pot postflop, hopefully for stacks. A 3bet also gets us in this very spot here, where we're reraised by better hands and have to fold a potential nutmining hand, or sometimes fold out worse hands that we're fine seeing a flop against in position. But that's just my take on it.

Goftenflattingwiththe3rdbesthandinpokerG

If fold without more info on his range. If u knew he was LAG it would b a tougher decision but you don't have the implied odds to flat and set mine

The 3-bet was to get value from AK/JJ/TT/99. Seems like we are behind now based on V descript. Implied odds not there either. Tough fold.

Also folding QQ at 1/3 is not ridiculous for 100 bb given there are a pretty decent % of players who won't 3 bet without AA-QQ, let alone 4 bet.

Not 100% sure, but based on what I'd seen through the session I'd say the standard 99+ and AK/AQ. I see your point about being on the fence about 3-betting, and I think gobledygeek makes a good point about just flatting and seeing a flop, particularly in position. I think both the 3bet and flatting are reasonable plays.

I think this is a great point. You're absolutely correct that a 3-bet in a 1/2 or 1/3 game is AA-QQ nearly all of the time. The 4-bet virtually has to be AA/KK.

I would never 3 bet here unless I was comfortable getting 100bb in and/or I didn't know what to do if I was faced with a 4-bet.

Yeah, pretty much this. I 3-bet QQ the vast majority of the time, but that's because I'm usually willing to stack off or at least can withstand being 4-bet. In this spot I'm not happy about it. If there were some callers putting dead money in between us and the PFR and/or we were from the blinds where flatting is less attractive and/or we had an aggro dynamic with UTG it swings to a 3-bet, but in this exact situation I think I prefer flatting.

QQ in this spot is a hand I'd 3-bet sometimes and flat other times. Generally, you want to avoid putting in money against the best player at the table and I get what people are saying about pushing the pot close to the point where you are committed, but you can't let him run the table. You will face a similar commitment decision on many runouts when villain fires two or three barrels against your underrepped hand. And then what?

As played, you can fold as his range is something like AA/KK/AK/76hh until further information is acquired -- and you're now being asked to play for stacks against a range that is much stronger than your hand. Your other option is to shove, though that's a decision you have to make based on reads and tells.

Would you guys much rather 3bet/fold a hand like JJ-99 since the folding to the 4-bet part is much easier?

It's not so much an issue of avoiding commitment as it is of manipulating the range you're playing against when the commitment happens, and trying to maximize value from his entire range.

The problem with a 3b/fold line is that it only realizes your hand's equity when he specifically flats the 3-bet: if he 4-bets he wins the pot, and if he happens to be 4betting you with worse hands like AK or god forbid AQ/JJ it's a very costly outcome; and if he folds you only get significant value from it if he folded a better hand, which will never happen when we hold QQ. But when we're IP like this and he has no expectation of being 3-bet light as UTG, he's unlikely to flat our 3b with a wide range to play OOP against our strong one; he'll more likely 4bet his strong hands and fold his weaker ones, which is a bad outcome when we 3b/f QQ. That's why I'd rather 3b OOP where he can flat with some more speculative hands and give us value (assuming around 100bb stacks; with deeper stacks this kinda goes out the window since his wide flats are closer to correct), or IP against an LP PFR (or just a looser player from any position) who will have a wider 4b range that we can profitably continue against.

No, those are even more clear flats because there are even fewer hands they beat with which villain could flat the 3b (essentially only underpairs he's setmining with, and he won't put much money in postflop unless he cracks you). 3b/fing those hands is pretty much explicitly turning them into a bluff, which might be +EV against some people but is certainly less +EV than flatting with them and 3betting suited trash or whatever.

The re-raise by hero pre flop is too much. A raise to 35-40 is more comfortable.

+1

3 bet here even saves us money a lot since we will be taken to value town on lower than Q high boards if villain has KK+

Flat and play in position. You don't really want to be going up against a range of QQ, KK, AA, AK all in pre. I think you have to either get it in or fold now, can't flat after the 4!.

I'd 3-bet JJ, perhaps not in this spot, to get value from AK/AQ/TT. Consequently, folding to a 4-bet is ez.

This. 3betting might in fact save us money as he has defined the strength of his hand. If no A or K on flop, we'd have to at least call given he could be c-betting with anything like AK or JJ.

Also, you guys do realise that by calling we may invite calls from BTN, SB and BB...you can get in a lot of trouble if the board runs out something like 10 7 2 and BB has 10 7

Granted you and villain will have a small number of observations from which to infer hand ranges, but if you are seen flatting the likes of JJ and QQ, your 3-bet range becomes very slim and opponent will never call your 3-bet with anything. Then you might as well be flatting AA and KK.

The "turning your hand into a bluff" argument with JJ-99 doesn't hold water because we don't expect him to fold a better hand to a 3-bet. We are expecting him to 1) call with hands like AK, AQs, maybe some other stuff hoping either a) our range is weak enough or b) we'll pay off if he hits, and 2) to fold hands that have positive equity against our pocket pair. Both of those outcomes are good. Myself, I would not 3-bet 99, but I was wondering what you would do to balance your AA-KK raises if not raising QQ.

Also to anyone paying attention at the table, if we 3bet fold we can probably be easily exploited. Flatting is probably best because we want to see flops with our value hands. We don't want to be raised off decent holdings pre flop. 4 bet folding here is better than flatting but if we're going to fold to a 4 bet we probably should be 3 betting. Might as well be 3 betting with JTs.

I don't like 3 bet/folding with value hands like that, I'd rather 3 bet/fold with the bottom of my preflop calling range/top of my folding range.

Recognize that 3 bet is more of a bluff then and not a value play.

That's only true if you're a bad postflop player, though. Don't get married to a 1 pair hand.

How does calling the flop cost us more than 3 betting unless our 3 bet sizing is tiny?

And I'm not that worried about "inviting calls" from the cutoff unless I have a read. Plus we have position on 2 of those three players. The goal of preflop isn't to make hands easy to play, it's to set us up to maximize our EV.

This is legitimate concern, I agree. However, it's mitigated by the fact that this situation (known tight reg raising UTG, us in position on him) is essentially the tightest our 3-bet range will ever be. If you're never 3-betting QQ then the narrowness of your range will become a problem, but if you 3-bet QQ in 95% of situations and 3-bet worse hands than that often for both value and bluffs sometimes (all things I personally do, though obviously I can't speak for OP) then the fact that you passed on an opportunity to 3-bet QQ in this specific spot won't matter much.

In my previous posts I've already listed a bunch of factors that would make me 3-bet this hand, but I'll add that I would 3-bet an unknown UTG raiser in this spot. A TAG reg, however, will probably flat your 3-bet OOP much less often than will the average player, which is bad news for a plan to 3b/f QQ. Luckily for us, the sample size he'd need to determine the exploitability of your IP 3b range against specifically other regs raising UTG is too large to ever be seen in live poker.

The hands you're referencing in both #1 and #2 are limited to the following: AK, AQ, KQ. You're very slightly ahead of all of them, so 3-betting against them gets us a small but admittedly non-trivial amount of value whether he calls or folds. You have to balance the small EV gained against this part of his range with the extra money you lose against the big pairs in his range. I 3-bet hands like TT-JJ fairly often (99 not as much, but sometimes), but I prefer to save it for situations where the dominating pairs are a smaller portion of the villain's range, and there are more one-over-one-under hands (AT when you have JJ, etc) that he can either fold all of, adding up to a nice slice of EV for us if there are enough of them in his range, or make a big mistake with by calling. His UTG range probably has lots of big pairs and none of these weaker hands. You also lose a ton of money when he 4-bets you with AK (or less likely AQ) and you fold.

To summarize all of my overly wordy posts, I only like to 3b/f in the following 2 situations:
1) we have reason to believe that villain will specifically flat our 3b with a range we are ahead of, and this range is a big enough part his opening range to make up for the times we get 4-bet
2) we are bluffing

and while both come up fairly often, I don't think either is true in this specific hand.

Fair enough. I think the fact that it's a TAG villain opening UTG might be cause for flat-calling. If he had opened in later position I'd be adamant about 3-betting since his range is much wider and so is ours. We still may get into some tricky situations postflop but I suppose the smaller pot and position can give us enough flexibility.