Villain just joined the 2/5 table at my local casino and buys in for the max, $800 (our card room was spreading one 2/5 and 4 1/3s). 35ish guy, with an outgoing personality. On his second hand, Villain raises under the gun to $40 and everyone folds. (He mucks and says he had middle pair.) Two hands later, the button straddles for $10 and the Villain next raises his small blind to $100. I (a conservative-looking 55-year-old guy) look down at pocket Qs in middle position and raise to $250 (I started with a stack of $1,050, with one remaining stack of $500 in greens and three stacks of $100 in reds). Folds back to Villain. He thinks a bit and announces all-in (a remaining $550). I ask for a count--and then he says he did not see my stack of greens. He genuinely sounded surprised at my stack of greens (which, from his position, could have been hidden by my 3 remaining stacks of reds) I call--and he shows As. I lose. I put him on AK most of the time. Was I wrong? (I probably lay my hand down without his earlier play and without his comment on my green stack.)

Most LLSNL players 4 bet range is KK+ with a smattering of AK. It was a bad call.

1050 in the pot, 550 to call; you're getting a little worse than 2:1 so you need about 34% equity to call. Against a range of {AA,KK} you're about 18%. Given villain's play so far we can maybe expand his range a little bit, but I don't think we know enough to add more than like AKs and the remaining QQ combo, and that additional equity bump isn't enough.

you shouldn't give much stock to the information which your opponents willingly surrender to you. place more value in that which you discern through careful observation of their play over time. a 10x raise in the first position is a serious move. actually it's more a comical move than anything. but he's acting first to talk against 9 other people, and he's making a huge overbet of the pot. I don't actually think there's too much you can do about the hand. I too would probably three bet, and certainly once I am getting 2:1 would call it off. QQ is a monster. Even if he can only have AA, KK or AK you are in fine shape given the $500 extra in the pot.

It's situations like these, where your information is so limited, that I like being short stacked. When you first sit down at a table every player is like this guy to you, unless you have played with them before. You have no idea how they play. So you are more likely to mess up now, before you have had the opportunity to observe them for a while. That's why I like to have just a minimum buy in in front of me until such a time as I have chipped up through good play.