Hey everyone,

I'd love to hear some feedback about this hand. We're deep into the money (probably about 3 or 4 tables left in a Merge $5.5). The villain has been showing down some really weird holdings where he limped from MP and ended up showing down. He's also 3bet shoved a few times out of the BB already and not been called. Honestly, he's kinda lucked into his stack a little bit so he seems to be a relatively weak player compared to the rest of the table.

Hero (BTN): 134,890
SB: 50,265 (VPIP: 13.04, PFR: 12.12, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 69)
VILLAIN: 150,400 (VPIP: 29.11, PFR: 9.33, 3Bet Preflop: 13.79, Hands: 79)
UTG: 249,746 (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 31)
UTG+1: 52,216 (VPIP: 19.61, PFR: 12.50, 3Bet Preflop: 6.67, Hands: 51)
MP: 122,366 (VPIP: 28.57, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 8)
CO: 130,303 (VPIP: 15.32, PFR: 14.13, 3Bet Preflop: 12.06, Hands: 388)

7 players post ante of 600, SB posts SB 3,000, VILLAIN posts BB 6,000

Pre Flop: (pot: 13,200) Hero has 8 A

fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 19,000, fold, VILLAIN raises to 149,800 and is all-in

I can obviously fold here and get on the next hand, but I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts as to why folding or calling would be the optimal play against this player.

Thanks for your insight!

With that table dynamic and read on the villain would be hard for me to fold this

Is this your normal sizing? And if it is, you better change it to a smaller one.

You have to call 116K to win 167K. 116 / (116+167) = 0.41, so we'd need >41% equity to call. Even against a top 13% range, we're getting the right price. And we can very likely take the very top of his range out, since it would be weird for a random fish to just shove hands like AA-QQ, and we can very likely also put all PPs and most Ax hands into his range (since he's shoving for 22x effective and has done it several times previously). So if we say a range of most broadway combos, most Ax hands and all PPs (except AA-QQ), we're a slight favorite, which obv makes it a very easy call getting almost 1.5 to 1.

Also, you should raise less pre. Especially on a 22x stack in late position. And even more so if you're considering raise/folding suited aces OTB... Just make it around the size of the pot preflop (so around 13K).

Thanks for the insights here -- I normally mix up my sizing from 2 - 3.5x at this point in the tournament but I generally like to raise to the larger part of that range from the button and the small blind people are more likely to defend against a button raise than an MP or EP raise. I'll definitely keep this in mind though.

From the looks of it, it seems I'd be raise/calling just about my whole range against this type of opponent in this spot. Is that about right?