$200 NLHE Full Ring: $300 NL Live - hero call, or insanity?

$200 NL HE Full Ring: $300 NL Live - hero call, or insanity?

While home on leave I played this hand, and I ended up playing from my gut, and thought the path to enlightenment might involve in-depth discussion of this hand.

Effective stacks, $500. Blinds 2/3.

Hero is UTG+1 with 44.
Villain is BB.
Hero raises to $7 (I have no clue what I was doing at this point, maybe a little pot builder.
3 calls,
Villain raises to $21. Hero calls, 3 folds.

Flop:Tc7s5c.
Villain bets $35. Hero raises to $100. Villain insta-calls.

Turn: 3d.
Villain checks. Hero checks. Villain reveals that he is a primarily online player when he displays a genuine look of shock at my check behind.

River: 9h.
Villain stacks $125 chips into a tall tower, and slides them into the pot.
Hero: ???

I know this site is predominately online players who multi-table, me being a LAG live player certainly gives me a different point of view. Anyway, I'd like to discuss the hand and get some more insight.

I don't overly mind calling 3-bet pre-flop considering live bad players will often call behind you. I c/f the flop, and even though the raise is'nt bad (i'd perfer to float if anything), as soon as your called then its time to give up.

When he calls a raise OOP in a 3-bet pot, his range is usually pretty strong.

I'm voting insanity. How many people were at this table?

I'd have to go with c9 on this one. He has to have a solid pocket pair to be doing this. When he looks shocked that you didn't bet the turn it probably meant he wanted to trap you. On the river I have to assume you're beat.

Obviously villain in this hand is going to turn up KJ...

Interesting.

I think given the board texture we can expect either a bet a 3-bet on the flop or a bet on the turn from an overpair when a straight or flush card doesn't hit.

I'm bored so I'll post the hand results. After the insta-call, I knew he hadn't thought about raising - or he thought about it before I announced my action, and decided it wasn't worth it given effective stack sizes. The lack of 3bet on the flop or bet on the turn (which makes no straight other than 64, and doesn't complete a flush) was a hint he didn't have a made hand. hands like QQ and AT would bet here to protect against draws. Or 3-bet the flop in hopes of getting their money in with a slight edge against a combo draw, etc. Since the pot was 3-bet (however the original raise was a whopping 2.3 BBs), we can kind of take him off AT preflop, but that still leaves four pairs of overs, which I think are ruled out by the turn.

I believe the reason the villain was surprised was because he had expected to check/fold the turn, then when I checked behind he decided to try and buy the pot on the river. Ussually in these cash games when people bet, they put out stacks of $25 in $5 chips, and have them side by side, or toss them, or whatever. Very rarely do you see the 25 chip vertical tower he slid into the pot, and I read it as him trying to intimidate me.

After reviewing the hand for about half a minute, I decided most likely villain's range was AcQc, AcKc, maybe as weak as a AcJc, and therefore the river was very unlikely to have helped him (Jc9c 3-bet pre? Hrm...) So I figured my hand was best, and all the indications said call.

Had I folded, I'd have only lost $121, had I called and lost, I'd have lost $246, had I called and won, I'd rake in ~$500. I called, he mucked his hand, I showed the fours, and nobody at the table tried to bluff me for a few hours. (Big flush draw that didn't come to fruition is what I think... The world may never know.)

Need more info on the villain.

The style you play is... um... unconventional? I'm making the assumption that you're doing this based on reads (even guys who've just sat down at the table shouldn't be completely unknown. Are they a reg? Did they stack their chips like they've done it a million times before? Are they talkative or quiet? How did they handle their money? etc).

The only answers I can give without that are as follows:
44 open raise pre-flop is standard, raise size is too small. That you stuffed it up implies that your sizes vary a lot, be very careful and discretely methodical about this.
Call of the 3bet, I don't like it readless. But it is 2/3 and you're deep, ok, I can live with it. Especially since I'm guessing you get a LAGy table image that will get you paid a lot.

Flop, his bet is probably standard but we don't know if he cbets without a hand very often, still, I'll treat his range as weak. Standard spot to call, raising is either insanely thin value (which I think actually gets less value than calling to be honest) or turning your 44 into a bluff. Flush draws simply make up a tiny portion of any range, most of your range is almost always unsuited before post-flop action, divide the remaining portion of a range by 1/4 (plus card removal) and you have the likelihood that he has a flush draw. Call is standard, it induces a turn bluff against hands that your raise will fold out.
When you raise and he insta-calls, his range is mostly draws and medium strength hands (assuming he thinks you raise him loosely here). He shouldn't be playing most of it that way, but most low stakes players will.
He could also be value towning you with a big hand if he's weak-tight, but it's less common.

Turn, I don't put too much stock in genuinely surprised reactions, simply because I don't know that it's genuine and if it was all it means is that he was expecting you to bet, not if he wanted you to or not. The only piece of information I'm taking from it is that he probably views your range as weaker now.
His check doesn't tell us anything, your check just simplifies the hand by ending this street. I like a bet, but I don't mind a check either (if you check, you have to call anything but an overbet if the river blanks).

River, call. 3:1 on your money, you checked the turn, you're calling now unless you have some kind of read that he wont bluff.

@PokerKid
Generally when I play deep stack poker at the 2-3 live games, I play a very wide range of hands, just about any pocket pair, non-suited connectors, and the occaisonal non-suited semi-conductors. Of course, if villains don't have deep stacks, I tend to leave them alone and play a narrower range. Generally if I open a pot it will be with a smallish raise of 4-5 BBs (that's small at these tables ussually, where 7-8 BBs would be the opposite end of the spectrum). I do vary my raise sizes to 'whatever I feel like that falls in the spectrum' unless I need my raise to do something other than make the pot bigger (make players fold slightly better hands, for instance). Now, I've digressed long enough.

I've been at the table for about eight rotations and the villain in the hand hasn't struck me as an exceptional player. He's accross the table from me and doesn't play a lot of hands. So I think a tighter range here is appropriate, or he's card dead.

Pretty much his check on the turn narrows his hand down. If he had an over pair and figured me for a draw, a correct line for the turn would be for him to bet. If he figures me for an over pair and he's on a draw, possibly with two overs, he figures me for a bet. Perhaps betting the turn would have been wise, however I'm in a tough situation if he raises, and I've only narrowed his hand down to a few things - top pair, over pair, or possible draw with overs to my hole cards. Against two of these I'm behind, and one of them I'm barely ahead, so I'm happy to check behind. I think he looked shocked because he figured me for a hand that was ahead, (JJ?) and was surprised because I wasn't trying to protect my hand.

The harmless card on the river is enough for me to call, realising his range doesn't have a lot of hands with 9 in them, and if I were behind on the flop he would have 3-bet the flop or bet the turn. Also the way he stacked up his chips. The story of the hand told me he didn't want me to call. So I did.

He mucked his hand before I showed my fours, and he commented on my good call.

I figured with the size of the bet, the size of the pot, and the number of draws that missed, it was safe to do so.