1/2 local room, standard dynamics. Only a few good players (if I can include myself) and mostly average-bad players.

V (200) : V is late middle aged middle eastern guy. He's relatively new to the table (maybe 1-2 orbits) but I have seen him get out of line nearly every hand he's played. Pushing with middle/bottom pair, in 1 case air. Doesn't raise much pre, but will call wide and not afraid to donk.

Hero (220) : Young kid. Hasn't gotten put of line or been too aggressive and my PFR generally get 1 caller at best. But I have the young/hoodie/drinking/very talkative image so not sure what people think of me.

Hand:

Hero in MP picks up KQs and decides to make a standard 12 raise over 1 limper

V in SB calls
BB calls
Limper folds

Flop (38) - KQTr

V donks 35
BB folds
Hero raises to 75
V flats

Turn (185) - 3o

V checks
Hero shoves

Thoughts?

PF I don't always raise this but I try to maintain raising X hands/hour.

Flop I'm feeling pretty sick, but confident he's not donking his made hands based on what I've seen.

Turn no chance it improves his hand so I get the money in as fast as possible

Overall I feel I played it alright, what are your thoughts?

Well played. Given SPR OTT, any bet commits us and checking behind is no bueno. Obv, he will occasionally show up with better, but this line gets the most out of his pair+straight draw that he's unlikely to fold anyways.

Villain's pot-sized bet denies him good odds if he's drawing.

What draws do you think he has, pocket jacks? I think raising the flop is horrible. Villain is betting 90% of pot. You're betting 37% of pot. He's making big bets with a wide range of hands. You're making a very small raise allowing him to fold all his weaker hands.

I think it's fine as played, but I might have raised a bit more on the flop to charge his QJ, TJ, KJ hands and maybe make him feel committed on turn with them. If he shows up with better, so be it.

Hate the raise on the flop, hate the shove on the turn. You're giving him nearly pot odds to call with a draw and if he has a set, he's going to let you either drive to value town or raise over you. Anything weaker is folding. The only thing worse is the shove on the turn. Just tell him that you hate money. The shove folds out everything worse and he'll call all that beats you.

And if he does tell you he stupidly folded a set, re-assure him that you had AJ. You want him to stick around.

I think it was well played, given that he both donk bets and calls wide, I highly doubt he's folding anything otf here which he leads with. Given we've made essentially a min raise, I doubt this v is folding any k, and any pair with a draw, including t9o. It allows him to feel committed to call our sub-pot turn shove.

Venice, I think you're giving the v too much credit for being competent, which he has already shown he isn't, he is calling the flop raise with a tonne of worse hands.

Against a middle-eastern guy who's been getting out of hand, I like your line. There's a ton of worse two pair and pair+SD in his range. I go bigger OTF, but not bad.

On this specific board, I think a raise is definitely best against any player who isnt tight or really good. Too many cards can kill your action or hand (any A, J or 9 for ex) and JT, QJ, QT, KT all can call you. If the board wasnt so connected, a flat is likely best. Raise to $85 on flop and shove turn to charge draws, get max value.

Is he really folding two pairs or even pair+open ender to a small raise? probably not. also if you flat flop and he fires big on turn, are you really getting away from your hand?

Hero's line looks fine to me.

Not sure what Venice is talking about.

Flop raise was a click-back essentially, which is perfect. What is he drawing to? 8 outs? He's not getting the right price calling $40 there with only $113 left in stacks.

I'm never letting this flop check through anyway, I'm never folding top 2p for 100bb at 1/2NL, and with the donk, it just means stacks are going in quicker.

The turn shove is $113 into $185. There's really nothing else to do but shove. I suppose you could bet $75 knowing that you're never folding, but meh, I'd never take a bluff line like that so I'm not taking a value line like that either... but w/e.

Given the title: If this is a trouble spot it's because it made it so.

You see a description of someone who pushes with air.

From that you learn it's a great idea to raise and then shove?

That will definitely prevent him from pushing with air if that's your goal. He checked the turn.

Do you see anything in the OP that leads you to believe that Villain concerns himself with pot odds or pot commitment?

Pre is fine imo.

Flop – I’d flat and give him a chance to donk the turn also. If he continues OTT you’ll have < PSB left so I’d likely shove. There are more 2-pr combos (behind) than sets. If he flopped magic we still have 4 outs.

If raising the flop, I’d go higher since he probably is not folding pr/OESD combos.

As played, turn is fine.

My only question for OP is whether he has been playing for stacks with his middle/bottom pairs or just smaller pots. If we have seen him get felted with weak hands, then I have no problem with the hand. If he has been losing $20 pots with junk but folding to bigger bets, then we might reconsider the line we have taken here.

As played, we are taking ourselves to value town some portion of the time where he has woken up with TT or AJ or he gets there with an ace or nine on the river, but that's life. If the fish didn't sometimes win, they wouldn't keep coming back.

I think the line you took was perfect. If he has anything, I want him to commit before a scare card comes OTR and he folds. It's not like we're folding so taking any other line has no validity given how shallow the stacks. If he doesn't have anything then let's move on to the next hand.

Lol I am lost on venices post. I think hand was played well. Still lots of hands given v description that will call turn shove that we are ahead of. Easy stack off

I'm going to join the confused camp about Venice here.
Normally he's spot on, but i just don't get it.

I agree that the raise sizing on the flop lets a lot of weaker hands draw with correct odds, but we if we raise at any point in the hand, we are going to have to give villain correct odds to draw out on us at some point given the stack sizes. We simply can't force him to make two mistakes.

Also, against a V who has been seen getting out of line our small raise can get him to spaz shove with TP type hands thinking that he has fold equity against us.

I think that are plenty of pair+straight draw hands that will happily call it off here on the turn getting 2.9:1 on their money and we are ahead of almost all of those hands.

This is my last post in this thread, which I'm sure everyone is happy about.

He paid over 90% of pot to see one card. Unless he had 15 outs he wasn't getting correct odds. I don't see any 15 out draws on this flop.

Thanks for the responses. I see there's lots of different views. A few notes:

V has been getting out of line with both small and medium pots. He hasn't had the opportunity to play big pots because either a SS is all-in, or his opponent folds yet he still shows.

My thought on raising the flop PSB is he's shoving if he's got it, calling if he's behind/drawing, folding only complete bluffs. My read at the time was he's drawing/behind and I can safely get stacks in OTT.

I thought the raise was well sized for a few reasons: if he shoves I can puke/fold knowing this was the hand he flopped gin, though I'm probably calling | if he calls I'm shoving 90% of turns and expect to be good 75% of the time at least | and it sets up a trivial turn shove with him committed if it bricks or I improve.

Edit: For those commenting on my raise size, what would you have raised to? I felt given stacks a bigger raise just leaves me an lolsized turn shove that offers even better odds with a now bigger pot.

I like it as I think his most likely hand is a pair with a J. This line allows you to get stacks in good versus his range.

I think the more interesting part of this post is that you are questioning iso-raising a bad limper in MP with KQ. I mean this is the most standard $12-15 pf raise spot in the world. If you are questioning this part of the hand I think you may have some work to do on you pf game. Also think it's a bad idea to try to maintain raising a certain number of hands per hour. Take good spots as they come, no need to force anything or maintain balance at this level.

Once you raise to $75 OTF, IMO, you cannot fold. If V shoves, its $78 more for $400, and you need to win just 20% of the time. With top-2p, you stand to be good, 10% of the time, and with 4 outs and 2 cards, you'll catch up 16% of the time.

Ha... if you assume you're never good and need to catch up, its only a 4% mistake to call V's shove OTF.

Not questioning, just wanted to point out it's not an automatic raise from MP so I can avoid the lolfoldpre comments (and it worked =) )

I agree on the raises/hour thing, it's just one of those things to balance my PF range so I don't go ultranit. In cases like this where I get called it's fit/fold post.

Yeah but what I'm saying is that it is an automatic raise from MP over one bad limper. I mean you have to be some kind of super nit or on some kind of unicorn table where you'd consider not raising KQ in this particular spot. I'm pretty often the tightest player at the table and I wouldn't have thought twice.

I'm with you up until the turn shove. He sounds pretty aggro bad. Unless he's a station too then it's ok. Otherwise Id bet something pretty small and trust his aggressiveness to pay off.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet: villain can have KT/QT here. 12 combos of them. And they are drawing to 2 outs against us. And he's certainly never folding them because we have AK.

And wtf about anyone mentioning a set here. We block two of them which would have reraised preflop anyway. From the villain descrip he's probably overplaying TT as well so I want to discount it to two combos. This is seriously one of the safest, least worrisome boards/situations when it comes to the villain holding a set.

Hand is wp imo. If he shows up with better, we shrug it off and take the cooler or just hit our four-outer.

One last note: I think? we AJ, he shoves this on the flop fairly often, because we obviously have AK, and we would never fold it because he would obviously never fold TPTK. He will slowplay it sometimes, but we need to discount AJ a bit.