Villain is playing every ****in hand. Literally, he hasn't folded preflop once. Doing a lot of minraising and min3betting pre and minbetting post until he catches a hand where he smashes the pot button. This is the first time in about a hour I've seen him make a raise that wasn't a minraise and it was this:

Global $100NL, so no HH, stats, or HUD
Hero - $150.02
Villain - $222.40

Preflop - Hero dealt K K
3 folds, BTN raises to $12, SB folds, Hero raises to ???

How conventional/thoughtful do I get with this 3bet knowing he isn't folding? Is the answer that obvious? Do I have a flatting range?

If he's never folding to your 3bet.

Shove.

w/e, even with a smaller 3b the pot is huge

Make it $48 and hope there's no A on the flop. I like to make my raises a bit bigger in general when they don't like folding or I'm oop.

fold pre

shove AA

note down what he shows down vs others when you are not in the hand

some idiots size opens as per their hand strength (5x=TT, 8x=QQ, 10x=AK etc)
some idiots do the reverse (10x=22, 8x=A5s, 2x=AA etc)

I would just make it like 30-40 pre, conventional 3b sizings you can just toss out the window vs this raise size

I never know if shoving is not actually better in these spots. Very often these whales timebank call something like 77 or AJo which they would fold very often OTF.

$100

Was this serious? Amazed if you can be certain enough about a AA read from an idiot to lay down KK.

Oh, he's serious.

I like shoving
I like min-raising
I like everything in between

Just don't flat or even worse fold.
If you min-raise to 23 and he calls the pot is 46 and you have 127 left, seems like a decent SPR for KK.

edit: even morons get hands

i am folding because i am NOT certain about the read from a maniac - they usually have a method to their madness
- until then i am happy to minimize variance, sacrifice EV, preserve my 150bb stack
- Covid time - plenty of fish, all the RNGs are tuned up accordingly - there will be plenty of other spots

I have played a lot vs these types
pending reads i am tight as a richard branson brand's pet cat
I throw GTO crap out of the window vs these types

I avoid taking a hand like KK postflop vs this guy - if at all i gambol i end it preflop - his open /3bet/4bet range will be Ax heavy

I was gonna ask you if you're feeling this way, why not just shove?

Shove is fine -
but "I" personally dont shove KK here pending reads
- i wrote what "I" would do in this spot based on my experience

I am not in YOLO camp and my game is built on patience - I dont "shove KK" because it is "ldo KK, GTO, you have to shove KK whatever"

plenty of fish, plenty of time - no hurries - there is no obligation for me to play out this KK hand, here and now urgently vs this villain

I dont play deep stacks - i am always leery of putting 100bb+ with just KK

hope my reply was clear

Oh, it was clear. Thanks for the response. I wasn't dismissing you. I respect you and your takes very much. I'm not intimidated by our differences.

I guess my logic is KK is +EV to get in preflop in general - therefore I need a strong read not to do that.

dubakkur2:

I don't mean this as an insult or something, more like a friendly advice, but I do have the feeling that many of your plays are a result of avoiding losing a big pot / getting a bad beat / running into the top of villains range at the expense of giving up EV. Which is something that might severely limit you in the long run if you don't work on it. I mean paying around 10BB/100 rake means it's basically never a good idea to give up a lot of EV for "reducing variance".

i dont disagree - i can see where u r coming from

be it poker, finance or real life - in the return (ev)/risk (var) equation my philosophy is to get the same return with minimal risk - it is the ratio that matters not the numerator or the denominator

high risk does not imply high reward

1. I dont like to payoff fishes esp during this time
2. I embrace good variance - I avoid taking bad risks esp with 100bb+ stacks
3. I play for fun - I dont aspire to become pro - I will never be nor i need the $ from poker
4. I dont grind huge volumes or hours playing poker or crunching solvers

3-bet to something. As oinutd said, the pot's already huge so it's not a big deal.

You people taking dubak serioiusly . Trolls every post in and out of this thread.

Horrible thinking process. Correct thought process is "huge aggro whale just made an idiotically huge raise from LP while I'm holding essentially the best starting hand possible-- Yes!!!!! Fistpump raise or shove!!!!!!!!!!!! FREE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yeah, YOLO would be shoving, like, 4s.

Playing KK for stacks is a high risk? You're a smart guy. I may need an educated range from you.

1.) Isn't folding paying him off?

2.) I respect your takes, but you're kind of acting like I have eights here with your language. I have to ask: are you just afraid of whales? Because that's a different conversation from one of embracing variance with Kings.

3.) I'm in the same boat. But I'm not gonna understand evading whales and having fun in the process. Whales are the fun. I see really nitty players sit at these tables with whales and never move from their max buy-in every night. They're just paying rake.

4.) Same here. I play 2-3 tables at a price I can afford to piss away if it came to that for 3-4 hours a night. I bought a solver I don't touch, lol. That said, I can't grapple how the maniacs aren't a part of the fun of the game. Like WorldzMine said, it's easy money. The whales are our profit, as recreational players.

Thanks for all of the responses:



Any argument for a $35-$50 3b over shoving? 12x is pretty extreme, but these things are happening a lot with quarantine and new blood and bored blood (and presumably drunk blood) opening out of nowhere to 6-8x and I'm freezing no matter what I have.

3betting to $35-$50 is fine. The benefit of shoving is that you get him to call it off with hands that might fold when they miss the flop.

The only bad thing you can ever do preflop is fold.

I've seen similar fish limp/shoving JJ (vs cold4bet!!).
I've seen similar fish openshove AKo for 90 bb from UTG.
Sometimes it will be AA, but KK is good here. I'd probably 3betshove, or raise to $39, dont know which is better.

.