Hand from the other night. Table dynamic at this point was very aggressive. Hero is in 5 seat UTG.

V1 (cut off) - lots of history have played several sessions with him. Plays LAG. borders on maniacal. Will bet large on scare cards with and without hands. Generally opens fairly loosely and 3 bets fairly tight range. Stack ~1.1k

V2 (button) - No prior history. Seems to be competent in the limited amount of time that I have seen him play. Fairly aggressive. Have seen him 3 bet 10s 8s, & KQ os, in position both times. (stack 900)

Hero - Stuck one buy in. Got it in with AK vs. KK on King high flop. Nothing really happening with second buy in.

Hero (240) limps QQ UTG, 2 limps to V1 who makes it 15 from cut off. V2 makes it 52. Folds around to hero.

Question: Does anyone ever flat here? I never would, but I am curious if anyone would and why.

Hero 4 bets to 160, V1 flats, v2 ships, hero calls, v1 calls.

Obviously this was a sick spot. (AA (V2) /KK (V1)/QQ The results aren't so important and they really aren't the point of the post.

I am just curious if anyone would consider flatting and leading any non- A/K flop (or checking dry Q flop) The only reason I thought about this is because I know for a fact I am getting called in at least one spot here and I don't know if it is ever worth while to play this passively to disguise hand strength / get away on horrendous flops.

I am pretty sure just getting it in is right, and I'd probably do it again given the way the game was playing.

PS - no Queen Ball, Aces won sickening 2kish 1/2 pot.

Do you have a specific reason for limping in the first place? I'd just raise initially, especially with a button that likes to 3b for thin value when he's IP.

When the action gets back around to you, I'd coldcall the 3b. You're ahead of both of their ranges at the moment, and while unfortunately anything you do will show a ton of strength, limp/cold4betting screams "Aces!" so loud that I doubt you can get much action from something worse than your QQ. I certainly wouldn't be looking to lead the flop after flatting, though; that only gets value from a very small portion of their ranges (88-TT depending on board) and lets them play perfectly against you for the most part.

Once you decide to 4b to 160 you obviously can't fold to the shove, so good job not doing so.

The reason for limping here was mainly the table dynamic. V1 and V2 were raising limpers almost 100% of the time. V1 is especially sticky, so if it had just been his open without a 3 bet, it makes it very easy for me to make a raise where I can play for stacks by betting flop /turn.

Maybe that doesn't make sense. I guess I didn't want to play a pot out of position against 2 pretty LAGGY players that are tough to put on hands. *shrugs*

Why limp? Why bet $160 instead of shoving? If you are going to 4 bet just shove. You are committed either way so why the 160? Unless there is some sort of leveling going on.

I think given how deep both V are, chances are their range has something you beat so you have the equity and odds to probably call it off.

I would normally just shove. No real reason. Don't really think it changes anything. I am never folding once I put in 160. These guys knew that.

I am pretty sure I have explained (twice) the thought process behind limping. It was with the intention of limp raising. I guess I should have also mentioned that raises 7-12 were getting called (not 3-bet with super high frequency) by 4-6 fairly often and 15-17 often was getting no action. So either raise size seemed worse to me than limp raising.

Just because they're raising limps isn't a good reason to limp QQ imo. When V2 3-bets, his 3-betting range is pretty wide. If we had raised, V1 3-bets, V2 4-bets, now the 4-bet range is really small and we can play well against it.

If you're going to limp, and expect Vs to raise behind you all the time, the best post flop line you can take is c/c the whole way and keep their ranges wide and including bluffs. And I don't think it's a great play when your best line is check the whole way.

Thanks Diesel. How do you size an UTG open with QQ in this spot in a loose aggressive game?

Like any other hand I am going to play. Given the dynamic my opens would obviously be a little larger than a normal 1/2 game. 12 would probably be perfect, but I like to keep the dealers work easy and would just open for either 10 or 15. By the way, I am never playing your hand if I limp and it comes back to me three bet. But I also wouldn't have limped. Say you open for ten,, and it goes 35, 100. Pretty easy fold I would think. That may be a little conservative, but I don't like playing marginal high pairs, against decent opponents, oop for a lot of chips. I get that mindset is exploitable, but is that really a problem against your typical 1/2 mouth breathers?

Ok. As a follow up. Maybe QQ is a bad hand to limp raise in this spot. What do you do with KK? AA?

If you have AA you want to get 3 and 4 bet bigger and bigger right? So start them off with 10-12 and hope you get 3b/4b. Then shove. Ez game.

You open to get value from worse to call. And to start building a pot with a premium in this case. If kj is a 3b, way more than half his calling range is worse.

I guess it is player and image dependent. I play a TON of hands. I open raise with all of them. With AA/KK, AA more so, I want to be the guy making the 4th bet in an ideal world. For that to happen, at these stakes, it is almost mandatory to open raise. My regular game tends to play deep, so I get away with a lot of stuff.

I guess this is my regular game and I was really targeting v1 with the limp.

Like I said his open over limp range is wide while his 3b range is narrow. I see the logic of raising though instead. Thanks for the feedback.

The only hand a plan a l/rr with is AA. It needs to be in a spot where there are guys in late who love raising limpers AND are too bad to realize your l/rr is so strong AND you can't be too deep because after the l/rr you want to gii as quickly as possible. I did it once vs. a guy who raised my limp from the blinds so he was oop and called my pf 3-bet and didn't know what to make of it so he blind shoved the flop lol. Do it against those types of people. I need perfect conditions that don't come together too often.

With QQ+ I'd just raise. At a passive table ~$12. At tables that play more like 2/5 ~$18 with no limps in front.

Just raise to $15. If you had done that, you would have lost $15 instead of $240. Now you have no idea where you stand against the original raiser and the guy who 3b, and $52 is a pretty large 3b with no dead money in between, so he's obviously trying to set it up to get stacks in. What do you expect to get called by when you 4b? JJ is going to fold, AK is going to fold pretty often since 1/2 players hardly ever get it in with AK pre for 100+bb...