Villain in this hand is a late 20s spewy/aggro player capable of getting out of line preflop, but he's shown a tendency to shut it down post flop if his flop bluff cbet gets called. Him and I have been the most active at the table up till this point and he's been showing up with some questionable hands at show downs so I know he's been opening / 3b way too wide thus far.

OTTH: I'm the effective stack with $750 and I open AKo in MP to 15, he 3b button to $75. I 4b to $250. He quickly calls.

FLOP ($500): J64r

What's the best play here? Why?

Against this type of player I would have preferred to just flat the 3! and play a less bloated pot. AP, I don’t really see any maneuvering that helps your situation.
You’ve basically put yourself in a shove or give up situation, and I think give up is the better option here almost always.

You have to check here and hope to get a free card or that he will check down AQ or ATs. He is not folding 99, TT to your cbet as he will reason even with a tight range, half your range is AK and he is getting a good price... Lots of his QJs, TJs type hands connected with the jack high flop as well. This is just an awful flop / situation to put any more money in.
For these reasons I dislike the 4b preflop as you are out of position and rarely do I see anyone at this level 5b all in without AA or KK. You can shove and fold out all hands that you are ahead of and probably get looked up by a pair a lot of the time. Very few people drive to the casino to put in $250 preflop with a pair and fold on a jack high flop....

Bet $175 flop, jam turn. Or just check/fold. Either is fine.

Any idea what his huge 3bet sizing means?

My read in game was that he was FOS and wanted to end the hand right there and then.

Like others have said, this is why you just flat the 3 bet. Based on your description of how he plays, I think it's really likely he bets if you check here, so maybe throw out a small blocking bet and see if you can see a cheap turn and reassess. Otherwise, you can just check/fold.

I usually would lean towards flatting the 3b, but I really felt in game like he was just messing around preflop--AK is doing so well against his range pre that flatting just felt too passive.

But I agree that this is a ****ty situation on the flop, I'm towards the bottom of my range and I don't think any of my options are particularly +EV.

I’m on the other side of this one. If V is 3bettung super light you need to open up the 4bet range and play it. This is a great hand to do it. Not an excellent flop, but you still have a strong hand. I’d check flop and most likely even float if he bets since you said he tends to shut down.

Marsh

The biggest problem with this hand is that the pot OTF is $500 and we have about 1 PSB left.

So we can't really go for a x/r or even x/c since we're not going to be able to price him out of the hand.

I think you could have 4b to $175 and left yourself a bigger stack OTF.

Alternatively, if you actually had AA, the 4b to $250 was great.

As played, shove now. Its not that bad a spot really. The only hands you really don't want to see are JJ and KK (and its really unlikely he has KK). You have 6 outs to catch up and are ahead of plenty of his range.

I changed a few things here in the HH for effect.
I also shortened your description of V because the first part seems most important.
AP above you have far more flexibility postflop.
You can x/call or you x/raise as a bluff and try to end the hand right here.
I personally would just x/call frequently here and see what happens on the turn.
You say yourself V shuts down postflop frequently if his flop cbet bluffs get called so why not play postflop poker here?
When you 4! bomb pre so huge here you are often going to end up in these spots, where you’re usually up against 10’s+/AK, but you have the disadvantage postflop everytime you whiff flop.
This also isn’t a terrible spot to be OOP against a 3!
Imo here I would rather just let V be the aggressor pre, because that can be an advantage postflop against hands like AQ/KQ/AJ. You should still be able to get stacks in a fair amount of the time on favourable boards.
(Except for the times has 10’s-QQ, and the board is A-K-4. But there will also be plenty of times the board is 8-10-Q etc.)

You managed to get the SPR down to 1 w/ initiative, so an ideal shove spot in that sense. And beyond the FE we have, our overcard equity will hedge our bets adequately.

Check/fold might have a place on a more textured board.

This is actually probably better than my original advice for AP.
I don’t even dislike a 4! here, but this is where you’ll often find yourself when you do.

A lot of the time bad players will 3-bet huge with AA because they'd prefer to win the money that's already out there rather than risk getting their aces cracked. I'm not at all saying it's correct, but a I see a lot of rec-fish playing this way. All I'm saying is be very, very careful with this read as it can sometimes mean exactly the opposite.

That's certainly true and I don't want to suggest that my plan is to mindlessly 4b GII with AK every time I get 3b. There's a lot of lineups I play in where 3b are super rare and are always nutted (not unusual for LLSTNL).

It just felt totally off in the moment, idk. I hesitate to talk about live reads in HHs but I was almost 100% my hand was way ahead of him when he threw out those green chips. Obviously he could still just have AA some percentage of the time but I was really sure of my read in game and I stand by it now.

Yeah, in retrospect I wish I had just jammed flop. We can maaaybe get 88,99,TT to fold sometimes. We have a chunk of equity against his calling range.

The problem is I want to be betting small here with QQ+, JJ. I guess it's probably fine against a weak player to just exploitatively bet small here with my nut hands to keep him around, and bomb it with my bluffs to capitalize on fold equity?

On low connected flops my plan would be to check range, and check give up with this particular hand.

If you were almost 100% sure that you were ahead preflop, then he doesn't have 88,99, TT. You are still ahead post flop most of the time. Jam your chips in.

I think you do a good job of explaining why there's merit to calling pre and in a lot of situations that would be my go-to line. If I had flatted his 3b pre and seen this flop, I'm proceeding with a c/c. I think he'll barrel the cards that improve me a lot and I have a disguised hand that he won't expect me to show up with. In this hypothetical line I have too much showdown value to want to bluff raise flop IMO.

But anyways back to reasoning for the 4b: my read was that villain was getting OOL preflop and I have a great hand... Like if I'm not willing to go to war here than what hands am I 4betting? Just QQ+? If my read is correct and V is 3b wayyy too wide would it be bad to expand my 4b range to include a ton more bluffs KQs, A4s, A5s?

Yeah that's a good point. I butchered this hand I ended up betting small and he jammed over the top.

It’s more about how you described V’s postflop habits that make me want to flat here. Against a very well balanced player postflop that is 3!ing a wide range I want to 4! here all day and just GII on most flops.

The fact that you described V’s postflop habits makes it seem like AK would be an easy hand to play OOP, without losing much/if any EV. Especially at this stack depth. You’re not deep, but you’re not short either.

I would want to call the 3! at a higher ratio because of this specific stack depth, and because it seems like you have a tendency read on V’s postflop play.

AP, I think I agree that just jam flop is going to be best here with SPR basically dead even. You’re ahead enough to just rip it.

Thanks a lot, this is really useful. I think I just stubbornly thought this had to be played as a 4b pre and I'm pretty sure flatting pre is higher EV now after thinking about your feedback.

4! pre would likely be very slightly more +EV for the mathematicians, but that’s if you’re playing perfectly. I get the feeling that you didn’t play this one well postflop unfortunately. Got to screw up a few to learn lessons the hard way unfortunately. (And then you still screw up sometimes regardless)

These are hard spots.

Obviously, if you flat here, you are going to have to continue with a lot of unpaired hands post flop against an agro V who has 3! the button and likes to c-bet/give up. So, if you do flat, you need to have some sort of plan for that.

I don't think a small flop lead was a bad play. That's what you'd do with value hands.

I agree with those who said your big mistake was the large sizing on the 4!. It looks exactly like you have AK and want to take it down now. Most people are reluctant to put that much in with tt-qq and find themselves in a crushed or flipping scenario. And if they have AA/KK they want to keep the V in the pot. So, what does that leave when they make a larger raise?

I also don't like shoving into a bone dry flop for this reason. If you had a set of jacks or an overpair, you would be trying to coax a call out of 99, TT, AJ, QQ.

If you played this guy again, you could try to make your AA and KK look like AK, assuming he subscribes to the logic above. Or, just knowing he will call huge 4 bets, whatever his logic might be.

Slam dunk 4bet

Now shove flop. 1/3 bet was nut low in this situation.

Just think of it as a semi-bluff. You're live unless he has AA (3 combos) and JJ (3 combos), and he has 9 combos of AK that he could fold here which would be a phenomenal result.

Flatting the 3bet is 100% asinine

Agree with this guys right there.