Have 550 hands on him, his 4b range is 15%
As a preliminary aside, 4bet range takes several thousand hands to converge. I'd ignore this stat as you have only 550 hands on villain.
Villain sounds like he is pretty competent preflop, able to adjust to your play and also to your adjustments. Perhaps a bit spewy, but there are worse faults to have in aggressive short-handed online games. Plus there is a fine line between spew and well-planned aggression. If you want to battle this reg I would advise you to seek your edges postflop rather than preflop. Start flatting him a lot more in position rather than 3betting him. Don't let him play the 3bet-4bet-5bet game with you; force him to play postflop.
So construct a much tighter and highly polarised 3bet range preflop, rather than the depolarised extended value range that you have right now. You will get short-term fringe benefits from this sudden and significant preflop gear change, because villain will assume you are constructing your 3betting range much differently, and will thus make mistakes against you until he re-adjusts. But the main purpose is not to temporarily trick him, it is to force postflop play on your opponent because he has proved himself competent preflop.
This is an alternative way to combat a highly aggressive opponent than to continually extend and re-extend your preflop value ranges to the point where eventually you are both fist-pump getting it in pre with A4o or whatever. That way lies thin edges
at best. And likely madness too.
None of the above is relevant to the hand in question of course so a few quick words on that. First, 4bet/calling 88 here can never be
terrible, given the reads and dynamics that you have given. The key here is that villain will be jamming all his small pairs (according to your read), and if this was not the case then 4bet/calling 88 is much less appealing. Like Pleno said though, I would consider 4betting to a larger size to prevent villain having the option of flatting IP. Since you have decided not to have a 4bet/fold range (and villain
may have picked up on this) there is nothing wrong with making a larger 4bet, even though this appears donkish at first glance. Remember, the point of the very small 4bet is to be able to have a 4bet/folding range. Do keep in mind however that there is a
huge difference in perceived ranges between a 'normal' 4bet and a
cold 4bet, and this might effect his 5betting range substantially... but I am not going to argue with your in-game feel/instinct of how you feel he is likely to respond.
Postflop... it's a really uncomfortable spot because we have no idea of his range for getting to the turn. I actually like jamming the turn, since we have equity against most of his calling range and might fold out hands that have equity against us (even
occasionally including some that currently beat us). It is sort of a semi-bluff, and sort of a merge. Which is fine given the bloated pot and the woolly nature of the ranges. The small SPR covers a multitude of sins, and the maths rewards aggression and is quite forgiving provided you have
some fold equity combined with
some equity when called. 88 is pretty much the top of your range for check-folding the turn, so it makes at least some sense to turn it into a bluff - especially as it has equity and some blocker effect. Obviously this is potentially highly spewy, but you've sort of set up that dynamic haven't you?
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