Villain ($400)
Is an older guy, maybe 50's? Sunglasses and a suit/coat. Seems like he has money and this is a hobby, not a grinder. I have never seen before, and has been at the table maybe an orbit? not even. Hes played I'd say half the hands, and seems like a fish.
He just played a hand in a limped pot where he limped from MP and BB led out for $15 on a 839 board, and Villain made it $30, then check check turn, and check check river.
Villain had q8 offsuit and BB had a naked 9.

Hero Covers

Villain raises to $20, the grinder to his left calls, and Hero looks down at AK and makes it $75 to isolate.
Folds around to Villain who makes it $175 with ~$225 behind.

What are we doing here? Flatting and hoping to flop a FD/Pair?
Folding?
Or Allin

If we call, i Don't think we can/should get out on any flop. Broadway flop, we will have TP or good draw. Lower flop we will have two overs. So it's fold or shove now. Don't know if we can find fold button having put 20% of our stack given your description of villain. Then we have only played him one orbit. So idk. AKs is strong enough of a hand to play 3 handed. I would have just called 20 pre.

Fold. 4b at these limits pre is almost always AA/KK. You'll win his money easily just playing ABC post-flop poker.

Even a fish can get AA or KK.

Even his QQ, JJ or TT is 55-45 or so ahead of us.

Surely we can wait for a better spot?

Agree prob best to let this marginal spot go since we are pretty much guaranteed to find ourself in a much better spot in the very near future.

I'm prob 3-betting this V 100% of the time here. Why let anyone else in? Isn't it better to 3-bet if almost all V's will 4-bet when we are beat and allow us to fold our dominated hand?

Read OP's description of V. That's the reason hero 3bet to isolate V. He got his wish but now can't muster balls to go all the way.

When was the last time you saw a fish do anything other than call, if you honestly feel he is 4! With AQ or AJ, jam it in. I'm folding this spot.

Very good 3 bet. Now fold. It's 1/2 and he 4 bet you. At this level you have to show me you are capable of doing this without AA or KK for me to not put you on it.

A pre-flop 4-bet that is not all-in is always AA or KK at LLSNL.

If you played full time you'd probably only ever see this a few times a year. And only a few times a decade would it NOT be AA or KK.

I would fold KK here.

It's the right play to isolate V but once he tells you he has AA or KK, it's time to fold.

I don't mind folding here. Our hero is spewy not to have a plan when attacking an aggro. When you attack an aggro, they will come on top more than 50% of time. Our hero should know that. You should have a shove button once in a while. Otherwise you will be run over by good villains.

are you insinuating that an aggro player will come over the top of a 3bet over 50% of the time? or am i reading this wrong?

^^^
you know he is a maniac or bully. And they don't want to be raised. Given Your description of villain I m 99% sure he doesn't have AA or KK. May be QQ-. Well If you lose to QQ- hands, I don't have anything to say. That's what you get for overvaluing AKs. It's not hyper turbo tourney, or late stage of a torney. It's llsnl. Don't inflate pot too much pre with AKs.
With AA, KK, these villains will over shove not 3bet. They are sadistic.

As much as I hate to say fold.... I don't really like to call when the villain will have AA or KK so often. I am all for being very aggressive with AK, and it worked really well at the home games I played that had a lot of action. But I have been keeping track of 3bets and 4bets in all the 1/2 NL games I play and they are almost always AA or KK. And when the fish at 1/2 does have QQ or something funky they cant get away from it. So without any fold equity it doesn't make as much sense to be so agro with AK.

I don't want to advocate just calling raises. I would still 3! with AK, but if I am the original opener and I get 3! by someone else I am much more likely to call depending on stack size than I am to 4! or shove preflop.

The spot itself is just gross because I you are up against KK, you need an Ace or a big flush/straight draw. but if you see an A you will lose action because KK shuts down at LLSNL. and If you are up against AA, you will be dead when you hit a K on the flop. when villians rarely c bet like they should, you will RARELY be calling against another AK.

I don't think anybody here thinks this is a call. Serious leak to call with ace high vs a relatively unknown.

And generally I play my AK like a draw, if I have FE, I jam it. If I don't I fold it, so I would fold.

it's 2/5

I don't think we have nearly enough info to make any assumptions about how villain plays when the 3 bet does manage to isolate him. Personally I call in this spot all day and see a flop 3 ways for that reason.

That said, as played, I think this is a fold because villain has QQ or AK about 5% of the time and KK+ 95%. There will be a better spot. This is interesting to me because it points out a potential flaw in my game - if we are right and villain has KK+ and I flat the 20 and hit the flop I am stacking off to a set. The 3 bet let's you get out cheap. Fold!!!

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this

you didn't mention it but assume the 'grinder' folds?

so, if we shove and villain calls with 100% of his range here then we are betting 325 to win an additional 507 or a total of 827

which means we need to have 39% equity.

we are 23.2% against a range of KK+. So if he only ever has KK or AA this is an insta fold.

But I'm not ready to range him that tight yet and I've got no idea why everybody is so excited to fold.

we've played less than an orbit with this villain and he's played half his hands. we've seen him bet into a crowd with middle paid third kicker.
It's 2/5 and not 1/2 and this makes a difference. Most of the worst 2/5 fish are more aggressive (and spewy) than the 1/2 reg fish.

if we add QQ to this range, we are 34.6%
if we add AK and QQ to his range we are 41.9%
if we add AJ, QQ and JJ to his range we are 42,8%

add in the (IMO) larger than non zero times when he has mid pocket pairs, AQ and the times he's 'making a move'.

and add in the significantly larger than non zero percent of times he will fold a load of the hands we're flipping with

I'm shoving here

Seriously? On the basis of the hand described in the OP, your conclusion is that we're dealing with a "maniac or bully"?

Seriously?

In game I'm probably always shoving, thinking "AK suited, 80bb, clueless fish, whatever, I'm going for it".

But in theory, I'm inclined to recommend folding.