Hero is at SB with KK.

UTG+1 raises 20, MP1 calls 20, MP3 calls 20, B raises to 85, Hero raises to 250, UTG+1 folds, MP1 folds, MP3 folds, B goes all in for around 900-950 or so.

Hero?

Easy or tough fold? Easy or tough call?

Perhaps Hero should have played hand differently and flatted? That sounds a bit gross as well.

And a more general question. Having played mostly online tournaments, I am neither experienced with deep stacks, nor with ranges of live players.

It seems to me that after stacks get higher than 40-60 BBs, it doesn't make sense to go all in with anything other than AA; beyond those stacks, and considering the uber tight of most live players at those levels, a 4 bet with even AKs or QQ, becomes a bluff most of the time.

Which only underlines how uneasy I feel about this spot.

What say you?

I think your thoughts that people onl gii with KK+ once they get to 50bb is completely false. Just earlier today I got it in with a V for 65bb each with my AWQs vs their K9s.

People do dumb ****.
Here though, his range is obviously super strong.
And you cold 4betting is really strong too.

It's gross.
I think I'd call, and just be unhappy to see AA.
Because really, who folds KK pre flop?

Without any reads we are completely guessing. Generally folding KK pre is a mistake but against the right opponent in the right spot it is a trivial fold.

More info needed

ya pretty bad spot, probably shouldnt have 4bet which intention of getting it in which is probably why i call it off if villain isnt an old man or a woman

vs young males this is an easy call

as played i dont mind your libe since flatting with 3 other players left to act is bad as well

however if this hand was heads up or 3 way for sure i would just flat the 3bet then c/raise and get it in on non ace boards

The most important detail your missing is Bs player description. Without one, the hand is somewhat meaningless.

Was B an old man coffee, young hoodie wearing internet kid, asian lady who thought she was playing black jack? What hands had you seen B play prior to this hand? How often was B opening, 3 betting, or 4 betting?

Is B capable, based upon your reads, of 4 bet shoving with QQ or AK or even KK? Or would they just call with those hands?

Also, your bet sizing is off. When B makes it 85, you know they have a hand, 3 bet ranges at this level for non thinking players are very narrow. Bs range from 3 betting the 20 is AA, AK, KK, QQ, so what are you trying to accomplish by 4 betting here? First, you want QQ and AK to call, because you're way ahead, and you want AA to 5 bet, and you want KK to fold lol.

So what's a good bet sizing to get AK and QQ to still call, but at the same time not lose too much when AA 5 bets and we decide to fold? I think a better bet size for you after B makes it 85, is to make it 185-200. When you bet 250, you're turning your hand face up...250 would be a good bet as a bluff here, but not with KK.

Unless the villain is some super aggressive player that's been 3 betting light and showing big bluffs, this is an easy fold this deep at 2/5. You could have saved your self some money with your bet sizing though...

Villain is in his early-mid thirties, wearing a checkered shirt. Put together and not disheveled.

His game has mostly consisted of limping somewhere around 55-60% and raising 15-20% of hands. I think I have a read in that he raises his bigger hands to 20-25 and his more speculative ones to 15.

He spend a good portion of the night trying to steal pots with probing bets, bluffs and outright semibluffs with not enough FE in my view.

In other words, somewhat thinking but with a ton of leaks, especially preflop, like most live players.

However, up to that point I don't think I ve seen him 3 bet. I think he either called with Aces from the blinds or raised limpers. He then proceeded to spew a good percentage of his stack against a hyper loose asian middle aged fish on a very wet board.

After our hand, he 3-bet JJ from the B again with a similar bet size.

As for myself, I am far more aggressive, running around 30-14, open raising and raising limpers a lot and having shown both good and more marginal hands. I have won a couple of big pots, but I have also been seen bluffing a couple of times.

That's my first 4 bet. I was 3-bet by what I ve seen so far to be an ABC grinder (running 20/8 or so, only showing premium and semipremium hands on his raised hands) while holding AKs and AKo and refrained from sticking it because I thought my AK was behind his 3bet range.

I think that subconsciously played into my action here, because I was somewhat frustrated by having to play AK OOP and not stick it in there with a good hand.

But this is what I was trying to say before. Without a shadow of a doubt, there are some donkeys who will shove pretty wide even with 40-50BB. However, the 3-bet range of most players who have a basic grasp of poker at this level is extremely tight, so even AK and JJ are not good enough for 4 bets.

The truth of the matter is that I don't have enough of a sample to have any kind of a reliable read.

My sixth sense tells me that he's got AA, but all the same, my instinct told me to commit with KK.
My 3 bet sizing is around 2.75x the bet when in position and around 3.1-3.2x when OOP so as to deter calls IP while charging for the disadvantage I will have post flop.

I haven't thought about how the B reads my 3 bet, I think the act of 4 betting comes as insanely strong regardless if it is 250 or 220 or 195.

Need more info and reads on B. Some Vs this is a snap call, others a pretty comfortable fold. His line is incredibly strong btw

vs this player its a flip of a coin
folding or calling is fine

i may call because if he has that many leaks he may think qq is the nuts tbh

This was the point I was getting at. In online games your 2.75x-3.1x bet sizing probably works really well in a game where people are 3 betting a wider range than AA,KK,AK and maybe QQ, and doing so way more often. You're probably even playing six max online?

The quote I highlighted is a huge distinction between live and online. How many 3/4 bets did you see your entire live session? How did that compare to how many you see during an online session? You nailed it when you say 4 betting alone is super insanely strong...

So if the act of 4 betting itself is viewed as insanely strong at a live table, should that affect our bet sizing? If the act of 4 betting is enough to make our opponents play fit or fold, then, in my opinion, we should try to lose the minimum (without min raising) in those situations if we plan on folding to a 5 bet shove.

On a side note: Sounds like you're a strong player, which makes this an easy fold. Something I've learned is that whenever our edge significantly exceeds the rest of the tables', then we should be folding a lot of the times in these borderline situations. We can easily make money by just continuously playing aggro in position, why put ourselves into these stack offs unnecessarily?

Biggest leaks online players have converting to the live game is a lack of understanding of live players.

In the live game, 3-bets are almost exclusively JJ+, AK, AQs and 4-bets are exclusively QQ+, AK with 80% of 4-bets being AA/KK

5-bet shoves for 180bb+ is exclusively AA/KK unless V is a drunk tilt monkey who has overdosed on Viagra and steriods...

the only way 3-bet, 4-bet, and 5-bet ranges in the live game can be less than QQ is if there is some serious leveling ego wars going on or if villain is just completely incompetent or super aggro to the point of being a Kamikaze pilot.

Barring that, 98% of the time with 98% of the LLSNL player population, a 5-bet shove for 180bb preflop is AA like 90% of the time and KK the other 10% of the time.

Last piece of advice.... I only skimmed your posts but I get the impression you can't help but compare live play to online play...

don't.

seriously, that is a recipe for disaster. You can't pound a square peg into a round hole. You need to pay attention to your villains and exploit their mistakes, and their mistakes will be different in type and magnitude to online play.

For instance, a lot of rec-fish feel 100% compelled to call their flush draws. Even if the pot is $100 and you blast the turn for $300, some will still call. The trick to live play is figuring out which fish will make the call and when to blast it for $300...

but if you are stuck in your online paradigm about betting 2/3 pot you miss out on all that value...

conversely, in live play most rec-fish will only c/r river with a seriously strong hand. Its rarely a bluff. Bluff raising is something you just rarely ever see live but you can level yourself into making a bunch of horrific calls if you start thinking about how online players would/could bluff raise in this spot and therefore the live player can be doing it...

no.

There are an infinite # of examples but my point is simply you've got to separate live from online play and my spidey sense tells me that on a fundamental level you can't help but use online play as your blueprint for live play. If that is the case ,you are in for some disastrous results

GL

You can 4bet/fold KK for value because the 3better will often call with worse and only shove AA.

I'd fold since you are so deep and have already displayed strength.

I don't even think villain would do this with Qq

When V goes all in, is the total bet 900-950, or is it an additional 900-950 (let's call it $925)? Assuming that the total bet is $925, it is only going to cost hero $675 to call. I understand that V 5-bet all in. But are we really going to fold KK for 135 BBs, pre-flop? Once hero puts $250 into the pot it is no longer in his possession. The spot is gross, but minus a sick soul read, I think the correct play is to call.

Sick spot, but I find a fold here. How fast did he 3 bet and 5 bet you? My friend laid down KK to my AA several weeks ago at a 2/5 game when I insta 3 bet his open and insta 5 bet shoved after he tank 4 bet. Exact same situation, he opened for 25 I made it 65, 2 callers in LP, he 4bet to 225 and I jammed for 900. He insta folded when it got back to him. Did you notice how fast he 5 bet you? If he did it instantly then it's AA for sure.

Why do I feel like there might be a story here?

I'm calling. Would love to gain input from fellow 2+2ers on this..

Why is the button jamming with AA? Would make sense if Button squeezed with AK...

QQ-JJ could jam looking for a coin flip or push Hero off AK....

Which is why I'm calling. Wish I had more info on villain

I think you made the 4bet a little too high to lay it down at this point.

get it in.

Joey: villain isn't 5 bet bluffing here with Queens or Jacks. A 4-bet in live poker is already perceived as super strong and is heavily weighted toward AA and KK. A 5bet here is AA 100% coming from a solid villain who isn't trying to pull any fancy moves. We can heavily discount KK here because there's only one other combo of KK he can have. There's no reason for AA to flat here, there's already $250 in the pot from the Hero and villain would be fine taking that down and even more happy if Hero calls with KK

Don't flat pre because you would give the early raiser and caller a great price to call which would mean you are playing KK oop vs multiple opponents, which is never fun. Your sizing seems fine, I prolly don't fold. Think about it, but in wouldn't fold unless the button is some kind of ultra nit and never plays a hand

Don't level yourself. He's got the aces and is just thinking about vegas and the bleepin mirage.

This is probably AA > 80% of the time I'd say.

OP you shouldn't flat the 3-bet, but your 4-bet was way too large.

We can't flat because we don't want to play KK in bad relative position multiway. 4-bet should be enough so that V will call with hands like JJ/QQ/AK.
We aren't stacking off on Q/A high boards so you needn't worry about giving him set mining odds. Our goal is to iso him.

That's fine as a rule of thumb, but this is not a 3b. Think about what it's trying to accomplish. If his range is JJ+/AK, you don't want to "deter calls." You want value from his JJ/QQ/AK.
It does, but Villain is way more likely to talk himself into calling with JJ/QQ/AK if it's 195 than if it's 250. He's getting such good odds! There's also the added benefit, as others have mentioned, that if we believe his 5-bet would usually be AA in either case, we lose a lot less when we 4b/f.

Your logic is seriously flawed here and corrupted by your own knowledge of the game and your inability to separate how you view the game vs how recreational players view the game.

The live game evolved to its current state because the live game is primarily made up of recreational fish who play according to a host of incorrect mantras and commonly held beliefs.

As a consequence, our villains decisions are NOT based on longterm +EV, Sklansky bucks, ranges vs equity, or other more mathematically GTO based winning strategies.

No.

Their decisions are based on results oriented retroactive winning vs losing rec fish mentality.

This is why a rec fish will grossly overbet his AA preflop, have everyone fold, then show their AA and actually not only be HAPPY that everyone folded but will feel that they were correct in folding everyone out preflop because they prevented their aces from being cracked!!!!

This sort of player is just never 4-betting or 5-bet shoving for 180bb without AA. And because this sort of player makes up the majority of the player pool, as a consequence, the live game has evolved such that it is mathematically incorrect to have a default position to call a 5-bet shove with KK.

The only way I'm ever calling a 5-bet shove with KK for 180bb is vs a very very specific villain in which we have a lot of history that involves leveling wars and/or villain has proven he is not only super aggro but super incompetent and 5-bet shoves with AK or JJ. Then sure, absolutely against this very specific narrow subset of villain I will call a 5-bet 180bb shove with KK. But for the remainning 99.9% of the LLSNL poker population you are delirious with fever if you think your villains show up with anything other than AA in this spot.

It doesn't have to make sense to you, you just have to recognize that this is the poker physics of the LLSNL universe.

Just as you don't have to understand how gravity works to know its there and that if you step off a cliff you will plumment to your death.

Well, same thing here. If you routinely call in this spot with KK then you are going to be a 80% dog to villain's AA 99% of the time and the best you can hope for is that V likewise has KK and you are chopping because the vast vast VAST majority of the LLSNL population is never 5-bet shoving for 180bb preflop without AA.

If you don't understand that nor understand the fish mentality that enables this sort of play/thinking then you cannot be beating the LLSNL game.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh but its the truth. You are leveling yourself if you can somehow rationalize that V can show up here with anything other than AA/KK....

We're really not 4betting to 250 then folding 28% of our stack to a 5bet, no matter what we had.

you could have 4bet/clicked it back to 155 and have gotten the same information.

Playbig: You still have 3/4 of your stack left if you fold, if you're sure the villain has AA it's mathematically incorrect to call, even with 1/4 of your stack in there already. You can't call off another $700 to hit your 2 outer. If your are calling off with KK here to a 5 bet shove, if love to have you at my table. NH, fold, and live to fight another day.

EDIT: I like your concept of clicking it back to 150, although if villain is tricky he can flat a smaller 4 bet and stack you on a T high flop.

As others have said, unless there is a very very specific read on the villain that he can make this move (and I like the term levelling wars that others have used as it's so apt), this is an easy (although painful) fold.

we should never compound mistakes and throw good money after bad.

Equity is equity,

ranges are ranges.

If we don't have the equity to make a mathematically correct call vs our villain's range, then we fold.

Doesn't matter how much money we put in the pot.

If our 4-bet is such that it now more narrowly defines our villains range to exactly AA (which is the case here) then folding our KK is the correct play...

to use an extreme example, lets say we are $10,000 deep and we have KK and the board is

Board: A K K J
villain checks, We bet $9,999 and villain calls.

River(19,998) A
villain shows us his hand and he shows AA
Villain bets $1, should we call simply because we put in $9,999 already?

that is how I conceptually view these situations. Yes, we should have just bet $10k on the turn, yes we should have done of that or this or that....

but however we got to where we are, however we arrived at the information/decision point that we are at, we NOW have to make the best decision going forward.

I find too many players have rigid thought paradigms when it comes to "Well I put in 1/3rd of my stacking therefore I'm not folding"

that is the wrong mindset to have.

The reason we "often" are correct in calling has nothing to do with how much money we put in but rather our equity vs our villain's ranges. usually, the situation will be such where if we did get in 1/3rd of our money we will often have the equity to call vs villain's range.

but that is not always going to be the case, and when it's NOT the case then we need to fold and not throw good money after bad...