.25/.50, ignition, six-max, effective stack $28. , no reads on villain.

Folds to hero in CO who opens to $2 with KsJs and only villain in BB calls.

Flop ($4.50): Kd Qs Td.

Villain leads out for $.50, hero raises to $3.50 and villain raises to $6.50. Hero?

Double ended straight draw, back-door flushdraw, TP third best kicker, I would just peel one and see what the turn brings.

He would most likely 3bet AA, KK, AK preflop, QQ and JJ too. He would mostly flat AJ, especially AJ of clubs and AJ of diamonds.

I could also imagine some suited two pair combos. But not too many, maybe KQs or AQs.

I am really curious what he had, could you post the results once the pro's here have given their opinion on the hand? I'd put him on AcJc.

I wouldn't 4x pre.

Post is good. Just call otf.

Open sizing should be 1.2-1.5 unless you’re a nit. Think I’d prefer to call the donk bet otf. We’ve got vulnerable showdown value, we’re against a short stack, and worse hands aren’t folding, so we don’t want to bloat the pot now. We can consider raising turn if he bets on a brick.

Why is 4xing so bad? Admittedly I've only played ~10,000 hands at 50NL, but normal open sizes appear to be 2x-4x and I prefer to go on the bigger side to build bigger pots. I see almost unanimous agreement that this is bad and there is no excuse to open more than 3x online.

When I play 100NL, I always go 3x, never above, but mainly because 3x is as large as it gets for normal opens. It seems like the higher in stakes you go the smaller opens get, but smaller games have bigger opens as the norm. Is there any truth to this, or is this bad strategy?

You made a lot of good points. Yes, I'll post results 24 hours after the post was made.

While playing against recreational players, it isn't awful, however, considering your entire CO opening range and what you hope to accomplish with the open, opening 4x over the long term will likely prove to be unprofitable unless you open ~20% from that position. Usually most people tend to open wider than that with the hopes everyone folds, and on occasion, we have a real good hand and hope someone 3bs. My 28-30% open in the CO just doesn't want to build a big pot most of the time.

Think about this, if someone 3bs your large open, how good does most of your range look to you if you consider what they may be 3b you with? Again, against weaker players who might defend by calling absurdly wide, it's probably fine. When you play against regs who will likely 3b or fold against such a large open, you will probably want to think about adjusting pretty quickly. With KJs in particular, you won't realize your equity most of the time and when you do, and the pot grows to > 50BB you're likely to be no good without 2 pair +.

I open 22.8% of hands from the cutoff, is that close enough to the 20% figure?

That is a good point about the 3 bet pots with KJs. I would very seldom still be in the pot when it's greater than 50BB unless I have 2p+ or a monster draw.

22.8% = {22+, A3s+, 65s+, T8s, T9s+, JTs+, JTo+} or similar. That what you open?

I mis-spoke, my range from the CO is 26.4% and I only open 2.5x from the CO. If I wanted to 4x I would probably drop 22-44 and suited gappers, QTo & KTo.

22+, ATo+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo, A2s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T8s+, 98s, 87s, and 76s

That's ~ a standard CO opening range. You definitely *don't* want larger than average pots with it. Everybody "should" play 3bet or fold only nearly universally vs such a large open size with a relatively weak range for the sizing. It would be virtually impossible to effectively defend that range vs properly sized 3bets caused by your "whale" sizing.

A 4x sizing works well with hands like QQ+/AQ+. It's not great for small pairs and suited connectors. A smaller open-size leads to a higher SPR which gives you more room to maneuver with the more "speculative" hands. It also means you can call 3-bets with them too. If you open to 4x and villain 3-bets to 12.5x or something, the SPR doesn't favour low rank cards at all, as you usually need to see all 5 community cards to make your hand, but once villain has c-bet the flop, you're soon making a commitment decision, which isn't great when you have something like an 8-high gutshot.
For "standard" ranges, 2.5x to 3x tends to work best.

Thanks for all of the input!! Hero goes all in, villain calls with AA and it holds.