This may be basic enough where you can move it to low stakes, but it's the right stakes, so figured I'd post it here.

Villain #1 in this hand is a 50 something year old amateur. He's a loud talker, and makes many fundamental errors, but doesn't play overly loose. Just making incorrect call downs in spots where he is obviously beat, and his bet sizings are often times erratic. He has about 950 to start. I recently stacked him when I tried to iso the worst player at the table who limped CO, I raised button with A8, villain called out of BB, so did the other player. Flop came with a flush draw for me, I bet, villain c/r, I called, he pushed the turn when my flush card came and MHIG for about a 2000 dollar pot. This happened about 1.5 hours ago. He hasn't played many hands since that time.

Hero is crushing the table. Every hand I play turns into gold. Every big pot played at this table seems to get pushed my way. I haven't turned over much crap, but I've played a lot of hands, mainly because I've been dealt really good hands and flop even better. My hero must be laggy, but it's honestly because I've been dealt the goods. I cover

Onto the hand which is 8 handed for this particular hand

Villain limps UTG+1, one more limper (has about 1500 to start, standard ABC player), BB completes (he's the fish at the table who pretty much never folds if he has a piece, hero makes it 150 with AJo, and now villain limp raises to 320, folded back to me.

If I call, we have a SPR of about 1.

I feel like I'm really bad in these spots, help me out. What's our range for folding, calling, or pushing here?

Sorry if it's unclear. I'm the straddle this hand

UTG1 limp reraise ... the old 1-2 i have aces move. Id fold and not even think twice about it.

You're getting slightly more than 2:1 on a call and will have a PSB behind if you call. Your only going to flop a pair or better 1/3 of the time and your likely facing a tight limp/rerasing range of QQ+AKo.

FOLD

Do you get the impression he's seen you open mega trash hands and is on the level of rebluffing you here because of his recent nitty image
Only continuing here if he's doing this limp-min-3 with hands AJo dominates, or if you think you have any FE pre or post/he will pay you off with worse

I hate folding anything getting these odds but I'd fold here. What did he have in the hand where you made the nut flush?

He didn't show. Even though he was first to show, when I have the absolute nuts, I hate waiting to see their hand, it always rubs me a bit wrong for some reason.

^^^^Fast rolling the nuts is good etiquette, IMO. As for the hand, you gotta fold. V's range has you crushed.

Is this at GVC as well? Second HH I've seen in this forum from that game... Interesting.

Villain stack size is the crux of the entire HH but you are making us calculate it ourselves with the SPR... A little help please So I guess Villain had $1k to start

I think it is interesting to think about the decision of whether to raise pre and the sizing, but to avoid over-analyzing I think we can say it is fine.

In game I find it irresistible to call here and think along the lines of "Well, if he has QQ+/AK we are getting great odds to spike a pair and still be good some % of the time." It is hard to work out the math in your head on the fly.

But a simple Flopzilla calc of our hand vs QQ+/AK says that we are best 15% of the time on the flop. We are getting 25% on our call, and on top of that we have to include the remainder of his stack in our odds calculation because he is often shoving flop regardless and we cant fold when we flop a pair.

With all that in mind, it is a fistpump fold as others have said. It is super exploitable but I am learning that a big part of live poker is being exploitable It's easy to say that but more complicated than you might think in practice.

Btw given our thoughts above, if you take some time to think about it, you can find some pretty cool counterstrategies against thinking regs in this very spot.

As far as our ranges vs this guy, I think we can think of calling as the same as shoving due to reasons above. I think we just shove entire range here because of the X% of time that AK does not shove flop and gives up when he doesn't pair. Or when he has QQ and gives up on the A high flop. (I feel like I'm not describing this dynamic eloquently... would appreciate some help)

So against a range of QQ+/AK we have to shove AK and then all the pocket pairs to make our range's equity equal to the odds we are getting on our shove. I think that ends up with a range of JJ+/AK.

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Edit: I just did the work on our shoving range above and apparently given the money in the pot etc we can shove down to 88. In theory this is probably right but it seems fishy in practice. I think the problem is that live population doesn't really limp/raise with AK. Nor does it really make a ton of sense at 50bb if you really think about it... Better to just shove with AK.

I think we have to narrow our opponents range to QQ+, which makes our continuing range AK/QQ+

Just saw you wrote Villain started with $950. I thought that was related to the background HH but makes sense now. Sorry!

if Hero had AK i think that changes everything, and wouldnt mind putting in 95bbs preflop. AJ against the perceived range, and V seems like a basic bitch so id take his 2004 limp-RR from EP as super strong.

Thank you guys for the responses. I ended up folding, he didn't show. I just hate folding getting 3 to 1 on my money preflop with a decent hand.

It's pretty simple math. Your bottom 70% of flops will be practically worthless, so thats 0.7*(-170) = -119 dollars invested. You'll need to earn back your investment on the 30% of flops that give you top pair or better, or X = 119/0.3 = $396 on the flops you hit. The pot will be about $650 so if you think he's punting often enough that Jxx/Axx flops are good for 2/3 of the pot, then call away.

It should be an easy fold vs most.

You're right, an earlier poster miscalculated the pot odds.

I'd fold here for psychological reasons relating to MYSELF. Meaning that going on a heater and then making loose calls with marginal hands is a usual path to beating myself out of all the money I've just won.

If you do fold, think about the effect on the rest of the table of representing that you've just been bluffing all this time.

just check pre

Dont let the fact that hes a loud talker etc mess with your strategy and emotions.

This is probably the worst forum to as this question considering how well most of you guys play, but I am going to fire away anyway because I think the DGAF thread has me thinking more about the "hustle" aspect of live poker.

Do any of you guys ever consider just pushing here against a fishy rec just to give him a gamble, especially when you are crushing the session? Either you get lucky and win the pot against a better hand (TT or lower pocket pair or some sort of 3 out suckout), or you get the fish some chips and keep him in the game and chilled out. If I were up 4 or 5 dimes and he was a really fishy regular I would probably do this for ecosystem reasons once in a while.

Tommy Angelo has written a lot about trading mistakes. For instance, you may call J9o to a tight EP raise in a situation where that is slightly -ev in a vacuum, and in return, he will stack off to you when you flop the motherload because he can't get away from his overpair. In other words, you are looking to make small mistakes in order to have them make big mistakes. He will mumble to himself "how could you call with J9o when you know I only raise the premiums," as you rake in his chips.

What you are proposing is the opposite. You are making a big mistake on purpose for the sake of image. In this case I believe it costs too much.

Fair enough, I am a degenerate and always try to find a reasonable excuse for my stupid gambly decisions.

I think you're wrong.

Getting AJ ai in a marginal spot is way different than flatting j9 pre and stacking a fish.

Frankly if you know what you're doing then the fish is drawing dead regardless. I wouldn't get the money in here vs a limp rr utg but you def shouldn't be afraid of getting it in ai marginal spots vs fish. It's good for your image, the game and the fish.

That said you should do a little bit of both its not one or the other

better check that math again boss