Villain has played about a rotation worth of hands. Below are HH's detailing villain. Sat down with 1500. His stacks are all 3-4 inches apart, jagged, and was playing out of the rack for the first couple hands. He had a tendency to scoop pots and forget to return his cards to the dealer until they had entered the shuffler. He is not a regular.



HH1: Vil is in Seat 6. Pot is straddled and is multi way. Villain completes in BB.
Flop 543cc. Villain bets out 30 into field of 6 opponents. Seat 7 calls. Seat 9 raises to 110. One other player calls. Villain folds. Turn is Tc. Villain lets out a strange animalistic cry resulting in table cracking up. River ends up being another T and villain claims he folded T5.

HH2: Vil on BTN Seat 6. Seat 9 straddled. Folds to him and he raises to 40. BB and straddle call. Flop comes K87r. BB checks, straddle checks, Vil bets 50. BB folds. Straddle raises to 165. Villain comes over the top making it 450. There is a brief exchange of words and straddle folds. Villain shows AA.

HH3: Vil on CO Seat 6. Pot goes 4 ways limped. Flop 934r w/ one heart. Seat 1 bets out 15. Hero calls w/ A2hh in seat 2. and Vil calls. Turn is 8h. Seat 1 checks, I check and Villain bombs for 75. Seat 1 folds. I call. River is 2o. Goes check/check. Villain rolls over J3dd.

HH4: Vil in BB. Player in field limps, I make a small raise w KJo to 20. Folds to Vil who calls. Field limper calls. Flop J75r. Villain donks out 20. Limper folds. I raise to 40. Villain raises to 70. I call. Turn A. Villain checks. I check. River 9. Villain bets 200. I fold.

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Main Hand
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Hero in seat 2 sitting with 2200. Villain has around 1650 to start the hand. This is directly after HH4. 2 Limpers in field. Hero looks down at KK and raises to 65. Folds to Villain in SB who calls and one of the limper short stack (135 to start the hand) calls. Flop comes Q72. Villain checks Short stack limper moves all in for 70. Hero expects him to have a range of Qx 100% of the time, occasionally pair and FD. Hero raises to 150. Villain re-raises to 250. Hero puts Villain on AQ exactly based on this sizing. Hero pauses and then 4! to 550. Villain shortly thereafter pushes all his chips splashy into the pot stating he is all in. Hero rather quickly calls.

In terms of discussion, I understand that there are several alternative ways to play this hand that would have been optimal instead of GII 350+ BB w/ an OP. I think that calling the 3! on flop is definitely optimal and looking to see what he does on scare cards and Q's. Hero's opinion based on HH's was that Villain did not know how to play optimally and was not capable of folding a TP sort of hand and would overplay similar hands.

As a theoretical question, can we ever confidently fold overpairs to someone whose game we do not respect?

do you really think he's check-3betting with AQ?

When he 5bet jams it, that is not AQ.

I think the question is raising the short stack's all in bet. You are making the pot much bigger than it needs to be with a one pair hand. The main villain is already getting bad drawing odds (which is probably a tiny percentage of his range after cold calling 65 from the small blind, if you were worried about getting out drawn by him). I don't think there are a lot of suited hands, sc's or draws in there it's more PP's imo.

is it really his game you don't respect or him in general? If it was the player in general, you let your ego control your betting and in turn I think the hand was over played.

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I'm confused. If he has AQ, your play is obviously awesome. If he doesn't have AQ, I guess the problem arose when you put him on "AQ exactly" when he didn't have AQ.

Are you asking whether you should call and plan to fold on a heart or A or Q turn? If you're 100% sure that he has AQ and 100% sure that he will call it off on the turn no matter what (including if a K turns) and 100% sure that he will call a shove on the flop, then it's strictly better to flat the flop and shove a non-A/Q turn, but that's something of a pointless issue to worry about because of all the "100%"s that you're counting on.

Is this hand at Rivers?

I'd just flat the $70 with intention of calling most c/r from V.

Also, was there a straddle? $65 seems like a rather large PFR.

I'm asking for guidance on an optimal play vs whatever you would expect his range to be.

Yes this hand is at rivers and the large PFR is intentional. If people will call a larger raise, why not when you have a premium holding?

Against a range of AA, QQ, AQ, you are exactly 50% after that flop. If you throw in all 2-pair combos plus KQ and QJ plus 77 and 22 you are a slight underdog. So as played you almost have to call given the money already in the pot, but it's an undesirable situation.

His brief hand histories do show he is either a fantastic hand reader or is strictly level 0 with zero understanding of relative hand strength. Even if we assume the later, you are in a bad spot unless you are correct and his hand is weighted almost exclusively to AQ. Given how he played the J3 hand, I would call the first bet and if we raise as played call V1s c/r and evaluate turn.

I definitely let my ego go too far. In fact, I neither respected him nor his game because he seemed to be catching well despite being a donk. Based on those HH and the description, how can anyone draw a different conclusion?

Well, the flop 5bet might have been a clue.

Definitely. It was just that nothing had really indicated that in the previous HHs you posted. It also differed from the small iso raise to $20 you made with the KJ.

I play at rivers quite a bit, perhaps we've played together before.

What is your plan on a board pairing turn or a complete brick? I think the only reason to flat the flop 3! is to be able to turn the hand into a bluff when he checks a scare card Q/

Look at how V played the J3 and HH4. He makes a big raise, then checks the next street. On the J3 hand he had bottom pair on a wet board. On HH4, we don't know, but assume Ax with x being a 2nd pair. Or he could just be feeling bullet proof and has squadooch after the previous hands.

Either way, his limited previous play shows a lot of strength with mediocre hands followed by slowing down.

Depends on why hero doesn't respect their game. If they are rock/nit I can fold anything sort of the nuts when they bet big. If they are spazzy and prone to stupid bluffs and raising with top pair then probably not.

In your exact situation I think it's entirely read dependent. Villain seems like the sort who can show up with AA/QQ but also weaker QX and some pure heart draws. Possibly bad enough to be raising here with a weak QX that likely isn't good for the main pot even if you do fold.

I agree this situation is entirely read dependent and based on my estimation from the HH and lack of playing with him ever before I could not see myself not being good here especially when I know the all in player who is a regular has a Q there blocking villain holding QQ, which I felt was the only hand I was worried about pre 5-bet.

I figured this particular person would fold 77 and 22 preflop, but I could be wrong.
If he had AA i would expect him to 3! preflop or make a larger raise similar to the hand he showed AA.

In my estimation the 3! looked like AQ. Which, I figured villain would stack off with on this flop which made the shove look reasonable to me. Older villains who played limit holdem will go to the death with TP and that's what I figured he had.

5! is extremely strong, but I don't know if KK is foldable vs this particular villain, though it appears like the consensus is snap fold.

Let's start with HH review:

HH1: V folds top pair vs. Flop aggression. He shows awareness of the strength others represent with their bets.

HH2: V is pre-flop aggressor attached to AA vs. straddler aggro. He shows very typical entitlement/attachment to AA.

HH3: V attacks weakness on turn, in position. He shows awareness of weakness.

HH4: V attacks PFR, who shows some weakness by checking the turn, so V attacks more on river. This one hardest to figure out, as his range for calling pre in BB can be wide and include 2-pair and straight draws (86 gets there on river).

In the main hand, he's not attacking weakness again. He's attacking strength. Hero's range after 4! To $550 is QQ+, AhKh, AhQh and that is it. Yet he shows no fear, happy to GII a deep stack.

This isn't like HH1 where he donked TP and folded to aggression. Here he is X/R over the short stack limper and hero's continued aggression. That ain't AQ. Ain't attacking weakness.

While you may not be able to "confidently" fold an overpair, this looks like a fold. Instead of asking "what does he have?" this might be a good time to ask "what does he think I have?" and simply consider what the answer necessarily reveals about the strength of his hand.

The 4-bet was a spew unless you know you are going to stack off with KK's here on this flop, vs. villains range, etc...

As soon as we 4-bet villain should put us on a very narrow range mostly value hands like AQ, AA, KK (that he beats) obviously sets as well but maybe we would leave those in our calling range sometimes.

I hate the flop raise for a lot of reasons like do we want to have a raising range on this flop? Prolly not (even if there is already a guy all-in).

If our plan for if we got re-raised by the villain who had 1650 was to just ship it all-in then okay. But i still don't stack off with 1 pair 300bb deep like someone said especially when the SPR on the flop was fairly big. It's not like there was a lot of money in the pot to begin with lets just pick a better spot if we folded the best hand so be it we are only beating AQ out of his entire value range sometimes you have to the fold the best hand once in a while. Yeah he might be going all-in with worse like i mentioned but given this board texture and what he perceives about you maybe call the 3-bet or fold (OTF if you are going to fold the turn if you call the flop 3-bet then just fold OTF).

Also there was still much room to play postflop OTT & OTR but i think villain will frequently barrel OTT & OTR so he's sort of leveraging our stack in a sense i guess?

^Why ask questions that are difficult to answer correctly? The object is to be confident that your solution is prudent. Simply set a limit to the amount you are willing to invest in these situations.

This type of villain feels familiar, one who overvalues TPTK type hands and ones who like to GII OTF. Fishy with a tendency to gamble.

IME he has AQh here a good % of the time, a naked flush draw a smaller % of the time, with 77/22 the remainder % of the time. Based on pf action and the short stack's push, you can discount AA/QQ, even KK, and based on HH4, it looks like he plays his draws aggressively OTF (that hand really looks like a straight filled on 5th st.)

You're good here. Ask yourself if you want to flip for stacks against 13 outs OTF. All you have to do is to sweat the hearts and the 2pr/trip redraw.

What's curious is we're not exactly sure what level he's thinking on, but it's weighted towards level 1. He has to be really confident in his holding and at the same time also disregard your holding when he check-raises and then 5-bet ships against your 4-bet. Against anybody else this is a fold after the c/r to 250, but against this guy...