$250 Tournament at the Lodge in ATX.

35 players left, 15 pay. Hero stack ~75k (30bb), villain stack ~60k (24bb)

Hero is utg with AKcc, raise to 2bb
Folds to villain in bb, limps.

Pot is 5.5bb, effective stack is 21bb.
Flop is Q55, 2h 1c.
x, hero 1.5 bb, villain xr to 6bb.
Pot is 28.5bb, villain has 15 bb behind.

What do you do?

Here is how I thought about it: Villain was a mid 50s white dude that I had only played a couple of levels with and seemed to be playing pretty snugly. In the moment, I thought that his bb limp range versus an utg open would consist of a lot suited cards (T8s, Q9s) some pocket pairs (22-88), and maybe occasionally some decent non-suited, non-paired hands (ATo, QJo, etc), but never top of range (AQ-AA, 99+). In terms of fast playing, I didn't think fast playing a 5 made much sense, especially for a 4x size. In game, I concluded this was either a protection bet or some sort of flush draw + over hand. Hands like Qx-QJ, 66-88, K9hh, A2-A4hh, etc made a lot of sense to me.

Side note: Two other population exploits I have noticed playing in the ATX tournament scene for the past few months (not sure how reliable these are, just my experiences): the first being that downsize flop bets induce spews (I typically just use a 1/3 and 2/3 size in heads-up post-flop spots... with the bb ante, the 1/3 c-bet size often rounds down to a smaller amount than the preflop size). Players not calculating pot size seem to view this as a "down bet" and perceive weakness. Kind of just standard but seems to get some weird spews. The second being that flop three bets are overfolded. In live cash games, I rarely associate flop three bets with top of range value. In the tournament scene, it seems as though it is almost always perceived as nutted value and seems to draw a lot of overfolding.

Here is what I did: I decided to rip for the remaining 15bb leaving me with 6bb. I was thinking this older dude would be folding a lot of the low pocket pair hands and weak Qx hands that were protection betting and should be folding non-nutted, non-over flush draws (89hh, 67hh, etc). Calls would be any 5x he played this way and probably QT+ for Qx hands. I think a lot of Ax hh or Kx hh hands would be calls here as well.

The result: Villain snap calls and flips over KQo, no heart. Felt like a huge donkey in the moment. Still kind of feel that way lol, but pretty sure villain found himself at top of range, so in that way it feels somewhat unlucky. I think the play makes more sense against younger more aggressive players. against old white dudes, he is probably just always playing his hand face up here.

Yeah, seems like a punt. AK isn't that good when you miss.

Ripping with AK in particular allows villain to play perfectly-- he's going to call with hands that beat you and fold hands that don't. (He shouldn't really be check-raising pairs under Qx here, although I suppose if he did you might get folds from them, but that should be a small part of the range.) Especially against a villain you say is playing snugly-- snug villains don't bluff often enough and they're unlikely to start building pots with medium-strength hands where they don't know what to do after check-raising.

(Also, villain is defending his big blind, not "limping.")

Against a solver, your hand is a call on the flop. The solver will have enough bluffs to justify a call on the flop. It then expects Villain to continue with a balanced range on the turn.

My experience playing against mid 50s white dudes is that they under bluff the flop, and over continue the turn. Part of the equity of your flop call is when Villain shuts down on the turn and you get to win. That just won't happen often enough. He'll keep firing regardless of his hand, and you will be left with a poor bluff catcher, unless you hit your overcard. A club will get you to the river, and that 4% chance of hitting a flush is nothing to sneeze at. That's why one could (barely) justify a flop call.

One thing to think about...your opponent in theory has taken a polarizing action, ie he has strong hands, and bluffs. Here those bluffs will all have very good equity against your range and won't be folding to a jam. You don't want to aggress into a polarized range. His good hands have you beat, and his bad hands you want to keep bluffing. Here, though, most Villains don't have bad hands. He won't show up with 67cc for example.

One other thing...you didn't run into the top of his range; in fact you ran into something close to the bottom of his range for value (he has a ton of 5x)

For you to continue in this hand you need him bluff raising at a very high frequency to make up for the times he has 5x,Qx,hearts,etc. Even vs hearts we're probably flipping - at these stakes I could see someone having Qx and just "going with it". If he is bluff raising say 80%+ of the time then maybe this is a rip in theory, but realistically this isn't close to true and it's a fold.

I liked what everyone has already said.

This is a fold on the flop to the raise. Especially against this OMC guy.

This particular flop has very few draws/semi bluffs. It is a flush draw, a Qx or a 5x type hand.

If the guy was a younger GTO/solver kind of guy or an older wild aggro player then maybe you could consider calling. But I still doubt its really a bluff that you can handle. It could be a hand like 66-TT that wants you to fold a pair less than a Q but bigger than his. When I have done a "bluff" like this it never works. They either have Qx or and overpair and don't fold. But the bigger problem is that I should be calling with those type of hands in case they bluff again on the turn

The other thing to consider is that Villain's raise is facing a flop that hits your range pretty hard. You can have AQ/KQ/AA/KK. So I doubt villain bluffs with many hands (basically only flush draws). Yes it hits his range hard as well with hands like 5x and QXs/QJo/QTo/Q9o. You have to realize that given the hands you can have his raise with 5x hands is going to win a lot because you will call a lot.

Two other things to consider: You have no fold equity against a flush draw. Especially a AXs/KXs one. The other thing is that the sizing is strong. I will typically raise to 3.5x to 4x HU against a pre-flop raiser if I am OOP in a blind. So unless you think this guy will overbluff a lot (like he is a maniac on every hand he plays) it is a fairly easy fold.

I remember reading that AK hits a pair ~30% of the time and nut flush draw ~10% of the time. I don't think it's exactly 40% since both occasionally happen at the same time, but the point is that AK flops equity often enough that we don't have to do stuff like this when we totally miss.