Hi all,
First post in the MTT section. Go easy on me.
MTT about 60 entrants, 40 left. Blinds are 600-1200. Pay out is 1st-5th with the current average chip stack at ~$20,000

Hero sits at about $22,000 after doubling up a few hands ago on a boat over set. Playing very tight but trying to hammer weaker players when limping in late position by opening 5x or so when holding suited connectors and 55+. Table is 7 handed and very passive pre-flop so this strategy in late position has helped me steal several blinds. Hero covers the whole table and second highest chip stack is about $17,000.

OTTH

Three players limp around and Villain in question limps from the CO. V is a good reg who played LAG and lost his first buy in and now seems happy to limp around and play very passive. Pot at $6,600. Hero is in SB with KK and elects to raise it up to $5,000. My thought process here is that out of position I want to isolate or even just collect the blinds. Looking back maybe I bump this up to $6-6,500? Any thoughts on pre-flop are super helpful. Folds around to V in cutoff and we see the flop, V has around $13,000 left. Pot at $11,500

Flop comes: JJ6
So I tank for a solid 15-20 seconds. V has a lot of suited J in his range along with suited connectors. He has folded pre-flop to aggression recently after he lost his first buy in so I just check. He takes a few seconds and checks it back.

Turn: 7
My thoughts are he holds suited connectors. He has gotten aggressive with sets/3 of a kind before and the check back makes me think he is on a flush draw. I elect to check. V tanks for 10 seconds of so. Bets $3,000. Hero?

You shouldn't be afraid to play KK postflop. You shouldn't be content to just steal the blinds with the 2nd best hand in poker. You want to increase the size of the pot as much as possible while still hoping to play it heads-up, basically. I think 5,000 might have been too much but it's acceptable. DEFINITELY do not go higher than that! Besides, you only have 16.7 bigs left. You're playing this hand for your stack almost 100% of the time.

As played, I'd just jam the flop and hope he comes along with his flush draws or smaller pairs. If he has Jx and you got coolered by a bad flop, so be it. You don't have enough chips left to get fancy here and if he folds on the flop, you still increased your stack by almost 60%.

Also, this isn't a very wet board. A very wet board on this turn is something like:

JT95

Damn man you played this too weak. Don't be scared of the best hands your opponents could hold. You have to think about his entire range there, which is way wider than Jx.

So you have to bet the flop for value. Since there is only a pot sized bet effective, just shove the flop. You might get called by spade draws as well as pairs like 77-TT.

Hate the preflop raise. 5000 is too small vs 4 limpers as you letting them call for 3800 into a pot of 11600. If you had been UTG you could have raised to around 3200-3600 and add 1200 to that for each limper so now you are around raising to 8200. At 8200 you leave yourself 13800 behind which is 11 BBs, not good, so you either shove 22000 or fold. Clearly we are never folding KK here. You could just complete and try to trap but not in a 6 way pot, terrible idea in this spot. So raise to 8200 or shove.

Oops, I didn't see 3 limpers before V. Disregard my previous post as far as saying the raise was too big. Sorry! 5500-6k should be plenty, though. This isn't cash, you don't have to add each limp'd amount to the raise size.

With that many limpers though, a shove is probably OK too. It makes your range look wider when you're squeezing. I think with a hand as big as KK in a spot where players aren't good enough to exploit you, I'd just make the raise to 5500-6k and shove any flop, though, regardless of how many people came along for the ride.

Some preflop raising guidelines that I use for raising over limpers:

Whenever your standard preflop raise is less than 25% of your stack (or the effective stack) you should almost never shove.

Whenever your raise size represents more than 30% of your stack (or the effective stack) you should almost always shove.

Whenever your preflop raise represents 25% - 30% of your stack (or the effective stack) it is your option to shove or to raise to a smaller amount.

Here the effective stack (if the second big stack is in) is 17k. A raise to 5k represents 29% of the effective stack, so shoving is an option here. If the 17k stack is not in the hand, I think I would prefer to shove here.

Anyway, don't be afraid of the monster part of your opponents range with no evidence yet. Yeah, he "might" have a J or 66 and that may suck, but how many other hands can he have that would suck for him. What if he has 99/88? A6 on this board is probably calling. Just because he could have you beat by a couple possible hands in his range, doe snot necessarily mean he has those hands.

You are overthinking things too much here. Stacks are insanely shallow with a ton of limpers and you have a monster hand. Just shoving and increasing your stack by 30% is incredibly valuable, and it's likely you'll get at least one caller which is awesome. If you decide to get cute and raise to 5k, you cannot ever fold a flop with no A.

Playing KK in this spot passively will get you in more trouble. If he has a J so be it, but you want to charge him and not allow him to see a free card with his Ax and medium pairs. Both of those hands may still be calling your flop bet and you will be extracting value! Don’t be afraid - if it’s a cooler, it’s a cooler.

Spr just over 1 otf jam or bet small and committ to sticking it in ott.

As played you squeezed an extra 3k out of him just jam. We're way above the top of our range somehow.

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