I would agree if this was a recreational player, but it wasn't, so we're not 100% sure. He could be tilted that hero has shown so much aggression, or he could be looking to maximize fold equity. I just don't like betting so much knowing in advance we would have to fold to a 5bet. I Have folded kings before, I would fold kings in a heartbeat in the right situation but not after 4betting that amount - we need to know what to do to a 5bet in advance and if the answer is fold, then the bet was too high.

The short and simple answer is, they just do.

Leveled myself 2 days ago at 1-2. Guy opens 12 I 3! KK to 40. He ships 350. Why would he do this? Why does he want to end the hand? I call. AA. Its LLSNL. Caveman level 1 poker usually. Me has AA. Me bet all monies

It's very difficult for me to fold KK pre at 1-2. I was listening to some guy the other night bragging about how he has laid down KK 4 times pre and was right 3. I've folded KK once pre and was shown QQ. It's tough for me to fold this for less than 150bb. The way 1-2 Vs play and all the crap I've seen people shove pre at 1-2 and all the times I've seen JJ, QQ, AJ+ played like AA it's very hard for me to fold KK pre. The spazz factor is incredible at LLSNL. Everyday I see Vs spazz shove AI pre with crap like 56o. Would have to be very V dependent and we obv need a lot more info on him here to help you out. But in a vacuum, this feels like a fold. Once they creep around 200bb I'm heavily considering folding and weighting him towards AA almost always unless he has done this before with less.

@dgiharris

Thank you as always for your excellent insight and analysis.




/end derail

for 100bb or less I'm only folding KK to confirmed nits and scared money players. Otherwise, yeah, I make a crying call with KK

but once you break the 100bb threshold and definitely beyond the 150bb threshold, your KK is up against AA like near 100% of the time in this spot.

in fact, I'm grateful for the gross overbets, it saves me SOOOOOoooooo much freaking money.

I remember a few months ago playing normal 2/5nl and effective stacks were $2.2k and I covered. V limped UTG and I raised to $25 from the BTN like I always do. He 3-bets to $125, I 4-bet to $255, he snap ships it for $2.2k

I bust out laughing and muck my hand and without fail he shows AA and says, "yeah, I knew I'd get you eventually always raising..."

He had no idea how his "getting me" saved me $1k easy post flop. Very next hand, i raise from the CO $25 and he folds

Instead of being "upset" that I have to fold my KK, I take the opposite point of view, I'm freaking HAPPY!!!!!! I love love LOVE folding my KK vs these spewtarded level 1 cavemen who have no concept of +EV poker and think strictly in terms of result oriented winning and losing

I mean, these guys are saving us money by turning their AA hands face up!!! what's not to love about that

your 4bet is way too huge

Seriously this.

Like DGI said, most live players dont fold kk pre. Ever. Try an experiment. During a session claim to have folded KK in some kind of 4bet spot(should one come up). The responses u get will solidify this. Everyone will be like "u folded kk?! Ive NEVER folded kk pre. NEVER!"

I personally have folded KK pre prob a dozen times. And no, im not a nit. Ive just been in obvious spots where 4bet/5bet wars break out multiway and i muck. Its easy. And its not always from bad players overbetting, although sometimes that is the case.

This is a fold. He has AA.

This is %95 of the time AA. When I jammed my KK to over a 5 bet or cold 4 bet I nearly always faced with AA. 5 bet ranges are so tight in LLSNL. 95% is AA 3% is KK and 2% is AKs who wants to flip or gamble. Although i'm not fan of folding KK pre up to 150 bbs without leveling war history you are facing with AA here.

What does villain look like?

I was thinking $185 after reading OP, but I'm not really sure it makes a difference. He's probably shoving or folding unless the raise is stupid small. What is a better number? Why? Serious question.

If there's one thing I've learned, its dgiharris has his finger only the pulse of the LLSNL mentality.

If villain is just a run of the mill 2/5 player, he's not thinking about you 4balling light, and as an adjustment/counter strategy, sticking in 200bb light.

$175 most likely elicits the same action from villain as $200+ does in this spot, the caveat being that he isn't adjusting to you/you guys have some serious dynamic in play. Standard villains will look at $175 in an absolute sense. $175 can buy some serious stuff in the real world.

$175 is cheaper than $245, no? That's like a couple buffet dinners you can save yourself next time this spot comes up.

Grunch.
Op,
To pass along my own painfully learned experience, both times I got 4bet at 2/5 (so same as your situation except one less raise because V opened) all-in when I had KK, i knew i should be laying it down and didnt, both times it was aces. Once it was against a young dude and the other with an old dude.

Trust your instincts/reads at the time. Dont get wishful that V is doing it with qq/ak/aq

Easy fold ap. 4b could be smaller. Call pre is also an option. But folding flop on a low flop should ne left open depending on read on V then.

Dude he put 700 on top of your raise. You're too deep stacked to call this. Expect AA a million times to one. That's one of those that you call and he shows aces and you say, "god, I knew you had that" and some fish says "ya dude, so obvious" and you want to sock him in the jaw.

Always raise there... But lay it down now


Edit: yes, raise was a little big, I agree... but not by much. I would make it 200ish, IMO

I would NOT flat this pre.

$250 is huge and villain gets to play his entire range correctly (fold everything that isnt AA) which we don't really want when we have the second nuts.

Also in general 4!/folding KK is like the nut low play of poker and the stories itt of "all the times I 4! KK and get 5! it was Aces" or "I've folded KK pre countless times" are quite tilting bc that means you likely play KK incorrectly vs. villains range.

This is a rare example of a correct 4!/fold in llsnl

For ex.

Utg 20. Mp 85. Lp 220. Btn 500. Hero sbKK. easy fold.

Extreme example but this is the kind of thing i was talking about, big multiway raise fest

For those telling me to raise lower, I ve got the following question.

How do you play the rest of your premium hands at this spot? Like, what do you do with QQ, JJ, TT, AKs-AKo?

I suspect many would fold TT and at best flat with QQ and JJ. I also suspect that many would raise AK higher than they suggest raising AA.

Unless you advocate raising everything lower, playing my premium range in such an unbalanced way is what betrays the strength of my hand.

Moreover, if villain is ready to just shove AA and fold the rest of his range it's best to raise all of those to 250 and make money off his folds. Hell, if I am going to be perceived as having KK+, I might as well 4bet ATC.

This isn't to say I am not open to raising lower. I just need a logic behind it for my whole range, not just one hand.

I also agree he's likely have AA on that spot.

You don't really need to worry about balance here, unless you play with the same people over and over again (as you would online). This spot simply won't come up often enough with the same Villains to worry about them nailing down your cold 4b range of various sizes with these stacks.

But what is your 4b range going to be in this spot? This is Villain's first 3b, and it's over a raise from UTG+1. His range is premiums already just based on the 3b.

What can you 4b for value here? Pretty clearly only AA & KK, imo. There's simply nothing else that's ahead of a nutted 3b range. (You may have good enough odds to setmine with QQ-TT, especially since your call is likely to induce an overcall or two. It'd depend on a few things.)

Can you 4b bluff? If you had some random trash like 95o, you can't 4b bluff to 250 profitably here, because he's never folding AA/KK (12 combos), and not all of the QQ/AK combos (22) are in his range. You'd need to get folds about 63% of the time, and you won't. 4b bluffing small, like 180, means you need folds a lot less of the time, but those small 4b will get called by QQ/AK pretty often. This is the wrong Villain to 4b bluff w/ ATC. 4b "bluffing" with AK is better due to blockers, but still -EV if he's not always 3betting AK/QQ.

But again I'd maintain that an unbalanced 4b range at LLSNL is fine in general. This Villain is folding QQ/AK for another $110 virtually never. And postflop, he's never folding QQ on a 964 flop.

Sorry to tilt you with my aa/kk hh. It probablt tilted me more though.

I think there are a lot of reasons where 4! Fold kk may happen without having incorrectly played against V's range. Feel free to correct.

Eg. V 3! Otb over a raise and a bunch of callers, you have kings in the sb. You 4! 3x, V raises 5x your 4 bet.
Or my hand where I knew I shouldve folded. V opens for 7bb. With a bunch of loose players behind I 3! to 22bb. He reraises to ~85bb. Like neither of us have been spewy so there's nothing im beating or not chopping with.

The point of my prev post is to say that you should trust your reads at the time, not to make it a rigid rule to fold kings to 4!/5! every time.

grunch: need more reads, but probably call

your raise pre is certainly not wrong (though there could be some villains that trapping might make sense)

if you think villain would only do that with AA, then fold. if he may do it out of spite of being re-raised than stick your chips in. this is enough money to make pause and think but against most players i'm putting the chips in. even if i give a blanket read to villain as "average and tight 2-5 player" he has AK in range.

once again after grunching and reading posts i realize i'm the fish at the table. this thread, as simple as it might be, made an impact in my game as of now.

You absolutely should not flat call in the SB and play the hand OOP against 1-4 opponents. Their stack sizes would be helpful.

I think your 3-bet was bigger than necessary. I'd prefer 210 or so, and I imagine others will advocate even less.

The point is if you 4! at all and then want to fold to a 5! you should not have 4!

I have played over 1K hours of live poker and I've been in a situation where I wanted to fold to a 5! less than 5 times.