Live $250 tournament. Early on I take a 20k stack to about 24k and I'm moved to a new table so have no reads.

Its 2nd level, 50/100. UTG i Have QQ and raise to 300. Get 3 flatters, I wanna say SB raises to 5500. meh I'm terrible and flat. All folds so go to flop headsup.
Flop is 10-5-3 (10 high, not sure about other cards but was a dry flop). Guy is an older gentleman that looks kinda like unsophisticated and probably plays poker once in a while. Meh he shoves, I insta call knowing i'm dead and he flips over AA.

Do I just fold QQ pre here? Meh I'm bad and can't make big lay downs like this. I feel I should probably muck pre as I would put his range at about AK+ JJ+ pre or maybe a little tighter. I feel as played, when I make pre flop call, I have to call almost all shoves on boards like the one that came. I'm pretty laggy and willing to play super risky early to build a stack. Do I just have to fold pre here and find a better spot? I guess I sometimes when someone makes such a big raise pre, I always consider the fact they could have an odd hand like 99 or 10-10 and playing to protect their hand with such a big raise? I look at it as if I had AA in this spot, I'm probably raising to 2500-3500 in order to hopefully get atleast one caller to build a pot. As hand is played, 5500 will make many marginal hands AA has dominated fold pre and only be called in cooler situations.

Basically should I feel bad for not folding pre as I can easily find a better spot with a lot of chips (will have 200 bbs and a lot of time with 30 min levels and still pre ante stage). Or can I just say hey it was a standard cooler bad luck situation I didn't play well but just unlucky.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be told i should just fold pre here but I'm not good enough to fold QQ here in stated situation against an unknown player.

He raised to 5500? As in 55bb? If I think the guy is spewy and does this with 99-JJ, AK then I ship it, if its a classic old nit then I probably muck. When he raises so huge here I don't think we can have a flatting range.

All said and done I don't really know what I'd do - because its just such a weird situation and we have such a strong hand. Cant really fault you for not folding QQ to a 3bet though.

Yea it was 55 bbs pre. I feel 4betting here is bad because we fold only part of his range we beat. I feel only KK and AA call a 4bet or shove here pre.

I guess I just wonder if solid live mtt players find a fold here that early?

I can find a fold if I know for sure this guy only has KK/AA. There is an OMC subset that I've seen play like this just because they don't want to lose with AA. If I have any knowledge of him having hands other than this with any frequency, i'm 4b AI to try and scoop it without a flop or get all in good.

Early on this deep unless I'm confident the guy is wacky I just let it go pf. If I did somehow flat I would have to call any board that didn't than an A or K in it.

I think in a $250 tournament you played it fine. A lot of people do dumb things in these tournaments. Like other people have said, unless you can be sure that this guy has AA or KK then you can fold it. But against a random player, I have a tough time folding this.

Somebody would have to be massively over raising consistently for me to call this bet.

If the bet had been like 2,000 I would think it was specifically JJ or maybe AK. But 5,500? Thats a crazy I want to get it all in on the flop, preflop raise.

I have only seen this type of raise twice in this size tournament. Once I called with JJ and it was KK (guy had been massively raising and in this case massively 3-bet over my raise) and the other time was recently, not OMC, flat out pre-flop shove for 100 BB's on a 3-bet with AA. I had just lost 20% of my stack with AA to this guy and he just didn't want to play AA for a big pot deep stacked. No flop was seen - he just sheepishly flipped the AA.

I've seen people 3bet jam 100 BBs with 88 and AJ. Some people are literally clicking buttons or straight gambling. I don't think you can narrow villain's range to KK+ here at all.

i think it's easier to call all in here than a 'structure' raise to 5500. All in is AK or JJ often enough to make QQ a call. However a raise to 5500 is skewed to KK+ and I'd let it go.

I'd also say that player tendencies in live low stakes MTTs definitely vary from room to room, country to country. What might be a fold at Venetian LV could be a call at Crown Melbourne.

I'm going to be spending the next few months in Vegas to play, and planned on going to the Venetian a bunch - what specific read/stereotype do you have about that casino in particular?

spot the tourists at the table
they can be loose calling stations early on
but once they get chips they become scared money - just trying to cash and go home with a cool story about running deep in a 'big' poker tournament in Vegas, so adjust accordingly

unless of course those tourists are from Australia, in which case they're probably more highly skilled, and way better looking than the local regs.

I would just rip pre. i actually think shrug folding pre might be the best spot.

In these tournaments, you're going to have so many spots, taking such a high variance route so early (esp taking it to a flop) is just unnecessary. It's obv annoying, but some time you just gotta roll your eyes.

I'll keep that in mind .

But in the context of this particular hand, you're saying recs are more often scared money because they're in vegas and dont want to bust?

not applicable to this hand because if tourists nit up, they do so close to the money not in early stages. in other words, abuse the bubble and ft bubble.

By not 4 betting you are essentially set mining. We should only commit 5% of our stack with speculative hands. With that said his bet is just stupid. Even a 4 bet with his sizing commits you to the pot or fold. I'd opt to preserve my stack and pick a better spot.