Fairly new 2/5. I've played with most of the villians before for 5 - 15 hours, but we have no specific history. 9 handed.

Hero: I should have a very clean image for the session. I won a medium sized pot where I 3bet OTB against an EP open and caller cBet the flop and won. Sitting on $570.

V1: I have lots of history with him, all at 1/2. He generally views me as very laggy, and very agro. $135

V2: Fairly competent player, but limps/calls too wide pre flop for small ammounts. Almost never slow plays pre flop.

V3: Mostly non-descript younger Asain kid. Talk is that he's pretty good, but I've never played with him before. He's opened 2 times so far, both for 3bb, and limp 3bet 2 times during the course of 2 hours. He hasn't shown down yet.

V4: Random. A regular in the 2/5 game but I've never played with him. He hasn't opened yet, and he hasn't shown down a hand yet.

All cover hero except V1.

Hand:
Pre flop
V3 posts $7 in MP
V2 limps UTG
Hero raises to $30 UTG +1 with AQo
V3 calls
3 folds
V4 calls OTB
V1 plays with his chips for a bit, and eventually shoves for $135
V2 tank folds
Hero?

V1s range here is 33+, ATs+, AJo+, KQs, KQo, and maybe 5% other.
I feel if we had $400 or less here this would be a super easy shove here given the money in the pot. I just feel our stack size is a bit akward to 4bet/fold or 4bet/call.
I don't really know what the flatting range of V3 is here, but I think that V4 would 3bet JJ+ and AK pre flop.

Generally in these situations, if by flatting the 3-bet, the players behind are getting a bad price to call, then I will just flat. If they are getting an excellent price, I'll 4-bet.

$135 is an amount that its tough to say, since it's sort of a medium amount.

If we flat, pot will be 330 and it will cost 105 to call. I consider that pretty good odds. So I'd 4-bet the minimum here, about $200.

That should get JJ and worse to fold and might even get AK to fold.

If you 4 bet the minimum are you calling a shove? I think you would pretty much have to. But given how far ahead of V1's range we are and the fact that i expect a 4 bet to accomplish its objective 90% of the time I think I go for it.

I would be paranoid that V3 or 4 behind me might pick up on the weakness if we flat and think they have an edge with a jam. 4 bet to 275 and sigh call a shove.

If V3 shoves, we'd be getting a little better than 2-1 so would need about 26-32% equity to call, but the side pot situation against the shortstack complicates things.

Since we could very easily have KK+, I'd think villain's range would be pretty strong if he shoves so I think we could get away from it.

If V4 shoves, I think I'd call since his shoving range should be a little wider due to 2 facts: first, he's less likely to have flatted KK+ against a raise and a flat. Second, he's only got to get through 1 player (hero).

But I agree, a 4-bet should get both players to fold the great majority of the time.

Btw, I just noticed something interesting.

If we had AA here, the highest EV line is actually flatting. By flatting, the first villain will be getting about 3-1 and if he has the hand most likely to outdraw us (a pocket pair), he's 8-1 against to flop a set while we don't flop a higher set. This means in order to set mine, he needs to be able to extract another ~$500 post flop from us to profitably call pre. But we'll only have another $435 behind.

The actual EV of flatting with Aces here is actually even higher, since it might induce a shove pre from hands that would fold to a 4-bet and it may bring in hands even LESS likely to outflop us (i.e. any non-pocket pair).

Why does this matter? It's because if we will just flat with aces pre, villain cannot bluff 4-bet comfortably, allowing us to flat with hands weaker than aces.

But we'd probably 4-bet QQ and KK, since flatting allows A-X to profitably call.

This, though hard to see those hands in V3's holdings given his flat pre and Hero's read. We're way ahead of V3's range here and I don't want to flat in case he has the top of his range, which will also encourage V4 to call.

Seems like V3, based on Hero's read, would be more likely to do this...and if Hero has been thinking about it before acting, he'll DEFINITELY want to raise instead flatting.

Given player descriptions it seems pretty unlikely that anyone has a monster, but a player may have us beat. If we are going to raise-call then a shove is much better because we fold out JJ and AK type hands.

Be more inclined to 3ball with AA or KK to bring along Vs. As played I would ship.

Click it back to 250 and fold to a ship if deeper like 700 eff, I just rip it in here