Villain insta-shoved after my small 4bet

Standard fold?

Who stacks off vs an unknown? Who calls oop? who folds to the 3bet?

I would fold but I wouldnt 4 bet him to that amount either.

If you 4-bet, it should be to call a shove, not fold to one.

I stack off with QQ AIPF in a 4 handed game against an unknown pretty much every time. If he's a known nit then you can take other lines (ie not 4-betting) but without reads calling here is the standard play imo.

4-betting small is good because it allows your opponent to make a mistake by shoving over your 4bet with a range that you crush, and also allows you to make your 4-bet bluffs cheaper.

I would much prefer just calling his 3bet than 4betting and folding to a shove (as a general rule as well as in this hand specifically).

I think a 'standard' approach to 4bets could be something like this (assuming 100-125bb stacks)

4bet our monsters {QQ+, AK} x% of the time (and never fold to a 5bet)
Call with our monsters y% of the time (where x > y)

4bet our junk hands {78o, Q7s} z% of the time
Fold our junk hands w% of the time (where w > z)

Call with our medium-strength hands {TT, KQs, etc} t% of the time, where t is very high when we're in position.

Call with speculative hands {JTs, 44} p% of the time where p is very low out of position and still pretty low in position. p should go up as the stacks get deeper.

Depending on whether we're in or out of position all these numbers will vary a bit. As a general rule I would say we should 4bet more when we're oop and call more when we're in position, for obvious reasons.

When playing against a good regular who is thinking on similar levels, we need to start mixing our game up a lot more. But against an unknown who isn't an obvious nit or maniac, I think the above guidelines are pretty good.

This is just one approach to 4-betting. I'm not saying it's the 'best' or the only way, but I think it works pretty well for the most part. Other successful strategies may include 4bet shoving with certain ranges preflop or rarely 4betting at all.

All that being said, I'm not sure 4-bet/folding QQ makes up a successful part of any strategy.

If you 4 bet, the only reason you're folding is that you did it with trash as a bluff...4bet/folding QQ here turns a VERY strong hand into a bluff! Don't do it!

WOWOWOWOW. Excellent post GLR.

That basically sums up what I would say (plus a lot more that I wouldn't have said) and in a much better way than I would have. I don't think there is word in there that can be disagreed with.

I will just add that 4-betting small causes a lot of confusion in people that don't know how to react correctly (ie push or fold). I had a guy I thought was reasonable call my 4-bet OOP with QTs the other day. It also got me to shove my JJ against QQ