I thought this was a tricky spot. I have kings and an A hits the flop. I'm first to act and I lead out. Opponent takes a long time and shoves.

The tricky part is c-betting leaves me close to pot committed (based on my opponents smaller stack size), and checking does me no good. So should I shove instead? I find myself in this spot often given my opponents stack sizes.

Opponent is 21/15/2.5 after 30 hands (don't know if this was accurate during the hand, as PT only shows final known stats).

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: $8.95
MP: $9.65
CO: $21.20
BTN: $20
SB: $33.10
Hero (BB): $37.90

Pre-Flop: K K dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG calls $0.25, MP folds, CO raises to $1.25, 2 folds, Hero raises to $4, UTG folds, CO calls $2.75

Flop: ($8.35) 5 4 A (2 Players)
Hero bets $6.50, CO raises to $17.20 and is All-In, Hero ?

This is AK like 1200% of the time. Easy fold IMO.

Also in 3bet pots you can make your cbets smaller. I'd bet $5.50 here.

Yeah I see no reason to think he's bluffing you here. Fold to his shove.

Without a read this is a b/f most of the time.

Preflop is good -- you have the best hand and you want the money in the middle as quickly as possible.

The flop is a shriveler -- you have to cringe every time you see an ace on the flop when you hold them cowboys. Still, the pot is hefty and you simply MUST take a stab at it. I agree with previous posters -- a smaller bet is perfectly acceptable. I usually drop 2/3rds-pot as my c-bet size in these situations, though I know many SSNLers who make it half-pot. Pick your poison; I think at uNL you need a slightly bigger bet to have the folding equity you want. I'd say somewhere in the $5-$6 range would be perfect.

Villain pushes. That's quite curious, don't you think? Possibilities are a bluff, a semibluff, or a monster.

A bluff is way too scary for a TAG to attempt here -- you three-bet preflop, after all, and there's an ace on the board, and you came out swinging. Villain has to know that he's quite shallow relative to the pot, so he has little folding equity. He knows this but he pushes anyways -- he's not looking for a fold, so he's not bluffing.

What about a semibluff? The board has a flush draw and a straight draw, after all. But how realistic are those hands in this situation? Your opponent is aggressive enough that raising suited connectors is certainly possible for him from late position; however, he then called a sizeable three-bet. He's no maniac -- he's not calling with suited connectors weak enough to be . After all, you see the A on the board and the K in your hand; I can't imagine villain frequently calls with QJs or lower in this situation, and if he does you should DEFINITELY note it and adjust your three-betting range.

So what does that leave us? Monsters. AA slowplayed is always possible, though villain seems aggressive enough to fight harder with that preflop. AK is always a possibility, and 55/44 are VERY possible.

Villain just seems to TAGish to make a move in this situation, and his range is EXTREMELY skewed towards hands that blow you out of the water. While it's true that your pot odds are good, you have extremely little pot equity, since I think you've got about an 8% chance of winning this hand (two outs twice).

Swear and fold.

Instafold, c-bet size is fine.

its a 3bet pot so c-bet less as said, around 5$ but you gotta fold to his raise.

can anyone explain why cbetting can be less in a 3bet flop? i thought in a larger pot you want to win it faster. (nlhtp - sklansky)

You are correct -- winning the pot is your highest priority. However, there's a "sticker shock" effect that gives you more folding equity.

In an otherwise identical situation, a player with a good-not-great hand will VERY often call a 4 BB bet in an 8 BB pot but fold to a 40 BB bet in an 80 BB pot. Even though our poker training tells us that the size of the bet is irrelevant and that ratios and odds are all that matter, when faced with calling a half-stack bet we will often seize up and run away because we're afraid of variance. Our opponents, who are markedly LESS trained in the ways of poker, respond even more so to this stimulus.

Oh, and there's one more thing: just as our opponents are less likely to call a 4 BB bet in an 8 BB pot than a 40 BB bet in an 80 BB pot, so too are they less likely to MAKE a 40 BB bet in an 80 BB pot than a 4 BB bet in an 8 BB pot. Faced with a tiny pot our opponents will often throw in a few BBs to try to steal, but faced with a ginormous pot it's a rare enemy who has the huevos to chip up a half-pot steal attempt. As a result, we -- the trained opponents -- should be less likely to call average bets in big pots than in small pots, and we should be more likely to make average bets in big pots than in small pots.

Think of this as an extremely common leak in our opponents, and one that requires a minor adjustment to exploit. It means that we've got more folding equity when pots get bigger, so we need to make smaller bets relative to the pot in order to get paid and we can get away with making smaller bets relative to the pot when we're bluffing.