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While driving to the casino last night I gave myself the goal of finding one hand from the session and posting it. There wasn't a ton of interesting hands during my session, but thought this one might be ok to discuss.

The table was 1/3 NL 9 handed. 4-5 players on average seeing a flop in limped pots and 2-3 in raised flop. Virtually no 3 betting preflop. With the exception on villain everyone was playing straight forward postflop.

Villain ($500): He's drinking about a beer every 45 minutes or so. White guy in his 40s in town for work. Pretty annoying and complaining the shortstacks because he can't push them off hands. After one recent hand complained he couldn't bluff at a river 3 flush board with his busted straight draw because his opponent only had a few more chips left then pointed at me saying he could if I were in the hand because I had chips. Villain is actually a pretty good player in position, raising preflop and taking down the pot often with cbets. Does not usually double barrel. His weaknesses seem to be playing too many hands out of position and possibly his ego/drinking. I am also getting a strong vibe villain is getting annoyed with me because I am raising frequently when in position as he'd either be in blind or straddle.

Hero (covers): Winning image. Mostly raising when entering pots, especially in position. One relevant hand played with villain was I raised in position preflop and folded to villains flop x/r on a JTx - type of flop.

Hero is dealt 55 in MP

Preflop: EP limper, few folds, Hero raises to $15, folds to villain on button who calls, EP calls.

Flop ($45): Ks 6s 6h
EP checks, Hero Bets $25, Villain raised to $60, EP folds, Hero...?

How would you plan the rest of the hand out?

edit: I messed up positions in my original.

Ech - I'm honestly a bit uncomfortable getting into a situation like this with a guy like this. He's getting drunk, has an ego, is openly complaining about being unable to bully people around, and calling you out as someone who he can bully.

The guy is basically ready to ship his stack to you when you hit a hand and he refuses to believe you.

So, why are you putting yourself in a position where you've got a very weak bluff catcher and are basically going to have to guess if villain is trying to bully you or has you beat? Heck, he could have two over cards here and he's still got really good equity.

I guess to answer your question, I'd fold the flop and wait for a better spot. It will come. You will stack him when he grossly overplays a hand against you. He will rage, you will chuckle.

Don't really think you can do anything here other than fold, your equity is just not very good.

Given your description of the situation -- lots of shortstackers, villain having the button this hand, raised pots being relatively shorthanded (for live poker), no 3betting without premiums -- I'd prefer a smaller raise size preflop, maybe to $8 or $10. Of course, what you are doing is transparent to any of us in the forum, but it generally goes through fine at the table. And the point is that small pairs are awesome for setmining because of how much action pots generally get live, while they generally don't play great in 3-way pots especially if you are out of position. The preflop raise is just to increase the pot size so that you can bet your entire stack over three streets on favorable boards (i.e. when you bangarang your setaroo). Since the table isn't very deep, you need to raise 5x to accomplish that. And of course, a 3 way pot for 5x and a 5 way pot for 3x has the same pot size, but you actually invest less the times the flop misses you (not so important) and you now have twice as many people who might flop top pair or a draw and give you action (valuable).

It's definitely good to be on the lookout for dynamics where you want to change up and perhaps play a small pair in an isolation situation, but I think the default in live poker should be to try to sweeten the pot a little bit with your baby pairs (preempting anyone else from putting in a bigger raise preflop unless they have a premium hand) and try to encourage a multiway pot.

@sweetjazz3 - A smaller preflop raise size might have been better. I know I didn't put it in OP, but the EP limper had about $300 in front of him and played very fit or fold postflop. I think I was focusing more on trying to get it heads up and didn't put enough consideration that the button would call with a widish range to try and outplay me postflop. Thinking about it I think I like your plan better.

Here's what I did:

I decided that he was going to be FOS more often than not. I think he'd 3bet me preflop with AK some percentage of the time and wouldn't make a smallish flop raise with a 6. It's also hard for me to put into words, but while I know he can make a play at the pot I didn't think he had it in him to double/triple barrel especially when my hand is going to look a lot like AK if I call his raise. I decided to call with the intention of folding to a turn bet. Turn was an offsuit baby card and it went check - check. The river was an offsuit 9 and I decided to turn my hand into a bluff by betting $80 into $165 pot in hopes of getting off a middling pair.

Results don't matter, but is there any merit to my thought process and how I played the hand?

If you think he won't double/triple barrel then calling his flop raise is fine.

I'm not sure you're going to get a guy like this to fold to a 1/2 pot river bet, though. Your hand definitely looks like Kx but that doesn't usually matter to this type of villain. You're at the river, it's one last small bet, and 'by god, he's not going to bluff me!' mentality sets in on dudes with egos. I think you'll get looked up here by this type of villain a lot, and pretty frequently by many others. People just don't like to fold, want to see 'if their hand is good', and don't like to feel like they're being bullied.

Given the price you are getting and your read that he won't keep barreling, I think calling the flop becomes okay. But I'm not really a fan of the river bluff because we're targeting a pretty narrow range (random 9x hands and maybe 77 or 88). I think I'd rather check/decide the river, and given your reads, consider making a hero call.

I'd prefer the bluff on the river more if the board ran out two random overs instead of one, i.e. if the board ran out K66-J-8 then you're getting more value out of your bluff.