Villain (BTN): early 20s Asian, seems to be TAG ($2200)
Hero (EP): mid 20s Asian, TAG image ($950)

Hero opens $15 with TT. Villain calls on BTN, BB calls.

Flop: K55 ($42)

Checked around.

Turn: 7 ($42)

Checked to hero who bets $25. Villain raises to $60. BB folds, hero calls.

River: 8 ($161)

Checked to villain who bets $75.

Villain's line doesn't make too much sense unless he was taking a weird pot control/get tricky on turn with Kx type of hand. Could also have slowplayed 5x but he's got so few combos of those and I expect him to 3 bet some of those. So I think he should have 77, slowplayed 5x and weirdly played Kx or a BDFD. Problem is with T I block a lot of those BDFDs. Without T I call. Fold with the T?

Bet the flop

The real inflection point is on the turn raise. You're paying $120 to win $187 as it turned out. Since you only have 2 outs to improve if you're behind, essentially he needed to be bluffing 40% of the time with the raise. Against someone where your only read is "seems to be TAG," you should have folded at that point.

Man, you play in some deep games!

I suck at deepstack. How difficult is the Button to play against? The more difficult he is, the more I open limp this. Building a big pot OOP against a difficult player doesn't seem profitable to me.

I probably lean to betting the flop (no more than 1/2 PSB). Our hand is likely best, but it is vulnerable. I don't hate a check (the idea being to attempt to keep the pot smaller and get us to showdown), but we're going to hate a bunch of turn cards and things won't get any easier (especially OOP).

The turn/rive is why I'm not in love with preflop. Only a difficult player would raise the turn / sometimes not autocheck back the river here with TP; most ABC guys would just call turn / as played check back river with TP. So he's either being extremely ABC and just raising his 5x/77, or he's being very difficult and raising TP or complete air and putting us to the test. You know better than us what he's capable of; if you're fine building a big pot OOP to him, then you'll know the answer of how to continue. I would mostly fold here (but perhaps that is why I don't build a big pot to begin with OOP).

I'm not sure of the max BI in your game, but any time I see someone sitting $2200 deep in my $300 max BI I know I'm up against a difficult player (as most ABC guys can't build a stack this big without simply sunrunning). Not necessarily a winning player, mind you, but likely a difficult one.

Gopponentdependent,imoG

Flop can go either way imo so I'm good with a check. Ott, I like the bet but ya I'm probably folding to a raise. We should have some better hands in our range to call with, like KT suited or KJ. Also, like you said, we block flush draws so it's not a great hand to continue with. It's better than say 88 with a heart because that blocks straight draws too, but TT just isn't strong enough imo

Max is $500. Not too many reads on BTN. Seems to play like one of those TAG Asian kids. I see that you're a huge advocate of position and open limping in EP. I'm an Ed Miller fan and am an advocate of limping as little as possible other than in the SB, and never open limping. But you've proven yourself to be a winning player over a significant sample so it works for you. IMO if any half-decent player notices us limping hands like TT, when we do raise from EP our hand might as well be face up. They can flat IP and make our life HELL on any T high flop or lower that's somewhat coordinated.

When villain checks back flop, makes me think he has some weak SDV or air he doesn't want to bluff. When he raises turn, he's polarizing himself. I think I might have to call down on non-heart rivers.

So long as you're comfortable with the spot you're in, go for it. This result (flopping a very mediocre hand and being put to the test OOP on later streets by a difficult player) should have been seen a mile away. If you have a plan how to deal with it, you'll most likely be fine. If you don't have a plan, or are extremely uncomfortable with it / doubt it's profitability, you might want to consider something different preflop. Ed Miller can tell you all you want about not limping, but if he's not there to hold your hand thru the rest of the hand then you'd better be comfortable handling it yourself.

As for being face up when we raise in EP: we have to have raising range in EP? As I say, deep is not my forte at all; but the deeper we get, and the more important position becomes, the more we can move towards 0% raising range in EP, imo. Others will likely disagree, and that's fine... so long as you are very comfortable with your postflop plan. Course, a lot of this also has to do with your overall style, especially when shortstacked; I mean, I think at most shortstacked tables you should actually play extremely nit tight, but one of the drawbacks to this is your opens will unfortunately be face up (which is fine short, but not so much when you end up against the deepstack)... but you don't *have* to open.

GcluelessNLnoobG