[mastr]

Hey Justin, I had a hand extremely extremely similar happen to me at same event...

Thoughts on the matter, in kind of list form because its easier for me to sum up all my thoughts that way.

1. Given that he's competent/you're considered scary player/ he's BB/the UTG limper, I don't see his raise size as being necessarily an indicator of anything other then the ordinary. However, I feel given all previous hand setup situations, that he wouldn't raise without a fairly strong hand because there are tons of hands he's not going to want to play in-between you and an armenian 300 bb's deep. I would expect JJ+ AJs+ AQ+ and most broadway suiteds as the range although you probably have a much better feel for the range being at the table.

2. his check on the flop is terrifyingly strong, in the I have the deck crippled and its a rainbow board sort of way (HOWEVER, with lots of players that will not exclude AK here, not to mention the concept of how hard it is putting in 300 bb's if he checks this flop esp with an aggressive guy in UTG) Therefore, the better of a player you view him to be, the less likely I feel him to have our set beat on the flop, and the worse he is the more likely that is.

#3 Granted that I'm paranoid about these things, this has allllll the makings of an angle shoot in his turn raise. Its his way of being tricky, and perhaps he's thinking enoguh to know that UTG is crazy and maybe can be tricked into bluff cold-3betting here.

Everything about this hand makes me want to fold, and I'm thinking back at the chip colors at borg, and there's no real way to pretend the 5k is a 500... especially with the long pause. I'm somewhat baffled by his claiming the intention to call. If we call this bet, the river is so bad for us to play, as he doesn't shut down AK if he had played it this way for value UNLESS he truly did mean to just call because he's passive enough to feel he put enough chips in with that hand, which I doubt is the case.

In the end, even though I feel I've said nothing, I honestly think I throw it away because I think we're beat a ton here, we have miserable reverse implied odds, our table seems soft from the description given..

As I read this over I hate everything, and feel the key issue has to be his mindset for checking the flop, which is much easier to divine with you actually being there. I'd base the rest of the entire hand on how you perceived his body language as he checked the flop and your opinion of his general skill level.

Lastly though, if you believed him to be genuine in wanting to have just called, an argument could be made for calling this turn raise and c/f any river bet he makes. this mindset comes from the thought that your call should lock him out a good % of time, and he shouldn't be in a spot here the requires a bluff now on the river when we check, and more importantly it seems unliekly if he somehow does have a KQss hand that he turns it into a bluff on a blank river and just lets it go check check