A little background:

Hero had been at the table for a few hours, had a tight/solid image. Only player giving our hero trouble was villain two seats to his right. Villain was a solid TAG. Hero also had the largest stack (~500) with villain close behind (~350). Hero has been picking his spots and avoiding tough spots with villain.

On to the hand in question

Hero was UTG, villain in the cutoff. There was a live straddle to $4, 2 callers, villain raises to $19 button folds, hero looks down at QQ. What's the optimal play here?

Raise. $60 seems about right.

Raise/fold $70, barrel any board as he will flat a lot of connector type hands and try to set mine. He will prob 4b/call KK+ only as you're both TAGs. What's the rest of the table like?

The rest of the table was pretty easy, limp/over calling a lot preflop, for the most part playing fit or fold post flop. As I mentioned, villain was definitely the only player I was even slightly concerned with.

Make it your goal to crush villain he seems to have you by the balls

I butchered the setup by misstating my position at the table in this hand. I was in the small blind, not under the gun. I was not the straddler. My apologies.

Caught the position mistake ... thanks for clearing that up. You know you can edit your OP so others dont mis-read the hand as well. If they see you cant explain things they may not post a reply.

Being in the SB (OOP) here is tough. You can flat, but what does that tell your V about your hand? ... and you get no information on his hand either. After a decent session what range would your opponent put you on here if you raise also? Would he play back at you even without a big hand? (Not likely at 1-2, but possible)

Would you expect any of the other players to flat if you flat? If so, and your goal is HU, then you need to raise a bit more being 2.5x min his raise (15x2.5=37+19=56ish). Even this isnt that big with 14 in dead money out there in the straddle, limpers and BB. Another way to raise would be to '2x pot' it (14 dead+19 raise=33x2=66ish).

Your image here is so important whether it be a call or raise. In a lot of cases the larger the raise, the smaller the holding.

You can raise to get HU or you can flat and set mine ... with perhaps a couple more callers along the way to help your set payoff. With his stack 'only' at 350 you can set him up for being all-in going to the River pretty easy here. 60-70 PF, 110-120 on Turn would only leave 180 or less behind for River.

If a flat will look like a small/med pocket pair or AK/AQ then you can flat and donk the Flop to get your information on his holding AFTER you see the Flop. This would keep the pot a bit smaller with you OOP. Only issue here is if others flat then donking becomes a bit more risky since the pot will be larger and any decent sized donk bet would be larger than your raise wouldve been PF.

You wanted to avoid tough spots wth him .. this is a tough spot ... remember that around 30% of Flops will have a A or K in them. That is what is so awesome about QQ ... there is no wrong way to play them. AA/KK are a little more straight forward. GL

Raise pre (agree with 60-65) and don't fold:

- villain is wide in CO raising over limpers

- QQ is a premium

- the pot is large

- you're oop

Also if villain is really a solid TAG/punishing limpers, etc., you should consider 3-betting him light in this type of situation. He's raising from LP over limpers/in a straddled pot. A good TAG can have a wide range here, and he probably folds enough to make a pre-flop bluff effective.

In conjunction with the second quote itp.. This is where we can level ourselves into thinking we're ahead of his 4bet range if he does 4b and running our QQ into KK+, AK and losing a ton of money. This is a more advanced move, don't do this without solid information on his steal frequency in late position when there are (or aren't) limpers in front of him. (sry willy it's LLSNL)



That being said it looks like OP might be a little intimidated by villain's successful TAG approach and this is a very good play to make with a much wider range. Figuring out ways to exploit him such as this one will unclench your nuts from his grasp a bit when playing poker against him.

I don't think villain's 4-bet range has to be as thin and strong as KK+, AK.

But OK, it is low stakes live - let's say it is that wide. In fact, I do agree it's possible it is that wide, especially if villain thinks we're 3-betting a very nutty unbalanced range.

So.... QQ has 40% equity against KK+, AK.

3-bet to around 70 and never folding is still the right line.

When you guys say 3-bet and never fold, are you suggesting I commit to the hand pre, and get the money in no matter what the board?

Not really. I'd commit to the hand pre-flop if he 4-bets.

If he calls your 3-bet and the flop is AK2r, you're in trouble.

Ok, that makes a lot of sense. During the hand I didn't realize that QQ had so much equity even if his range is KK+, AK only. Also, I didn't even consider the possibility of him making a play at the extra money in the hand.

As it played out, I chose to just call and set mine, and ended up getting 3 callers behind. The flop came out 8 high, with 3 hearts. I was holding two black queens. I did not like leading into 4 players in a bloated pot on this board, so I checked. The utg player went all in for his remaining $10, got a call, then villain made it $75 to go. At this point I decided I probably was best to cut my losses and folded. Villain had AKo, with the A of hearts, and won the pot with A high. I think we have agreed that I made a mistake preflop, but what about post flop?

Mistake. Again, since V is opening wide as he should be, he should absolutely be hammering this board with any piece.

Not raising pre is a huge mistake, and no competent V will be raising that much on a 3flush board with a made hand, so you can range him as: draw, pair+draw, 2pr combo depending on how the board came, etc.

Basically all these problems are solved by 3-betting preflop, and his range in this spot is sooooo much larger than just KK+, AK.

Thanks for the input! I will freely admit that I was looking for reasons to avoid playing pots out of position against this player, especially because the rest of the table was so soft. In the future I will adjust the way I analyze hands and not play scared poker.

You have to look at this from both ways you couldve played the hand.

1) You chose to set mine. When you set mine and come up empty you move on, right? Not always (with an overpair) ... Because you didn't raise PF, you still have no information on V's hand. So until you can narrow his range down you can choose to stay in the hand when you have the board dominated like this and assume you are ahead of his full range of holdings. (except the rare flopped flush)

Notice since you limped (and others came along for the ride) you will now pay 'extra' for this information. Calling the $75 is more money than what you wouldve raised with PF to get this info. My guess is that the Turn wouldve checked through and you then couldve safely lead out on the River to win this nice pot.

2) If you had raised PF you wouldve been called (or 4-bet) and then hopefully wouldve lead out on the Flop, even with black cards. You either wouldve been faced with a decision PF or Flop for your stack.

In both of these cases you have to decide what you are going to do 'next' before you act. I am not going to hold it aganst you for folding the Flop although I might take a card just to see what he does with the Turn. He knows you have him covered and any 'move' he makes on the Turn will commit his stack to the hand.

Not opening the betting into a bloated pot is way different than calling into a bloated pot with reasonable expectations. You cant always assume you are against KKh here and have 1 out. GL

Try not to post results until you get full input on a hand. It's hard for most anyone to comment very objectively if they know the results.

As played, yeah, you shouldn't fold. It's a weird spot to hold QQ oop facing 4 villains without initiative in the hand. That's certainly an unusual spot.

I would probably shove over villain's raise. We're relatively shallow (flop is ~80). But I dunno, if you want to manage variance, you can probably just fold to the flop raise. You played it pretty weird, and now 3 other villains are going to play a monotone flop pretty well against you.

Doesn't really matter what you do now, to be honest. It's not really a situation you should be in, and it shouldn't be part of the plan for your hand.

The flop play should have some continuity with pre-flop (like, OK, I'm going to call pre here because villain is really wide, but the other villains are likely to fold given history, so I think I get heads up or maybe 3 way often, then I"ll check/shove literally any flop that doesn't look like AKx because villain c-bets so incredibly wide and his range is so wide to start).

I don't think the above thought process really makes sense - it's not meant to be a real plan - but it's an example of how you might get to the flop with a plan of action. You really didn't have a plan of action. I guess you planned to set mine, right? And you didn't make a set. And now you face a bet, a call, and a raise, and you need to shove or fold now.

It's probably perfectly profitable to shove, and that is what I would do in this situation, but you had a plan, and you can stick to it and fold.

Basically, not sure flop advice helps much because we should never be in this spot.

Fyp bro i said if he 4bets its likely KK+ AK were debating 3bet/folding and 3/bet calling. When we 3bet were likely to see a flop like 90+% of the time because he's gonna flat so much of his range IP.

Yeah, not folding to 4bets. Also if you were in the straddle I'd still treat it as being a blind as opposed to UTG since our range facing the raise is still ATC as opposed to a UTG limp, which is stronger.

quit leveling yourself man