I'm struggling in general in the blinds but I've started tightening up in there rather than being tempted in too often with pot odds.
This hand confused me though as my hand is fairly strong but the action behind me is heavy.
I very rarely call a raise, and with a player acting behind me I'm not keen on doing it here so is it raise or fold?
Initial raiser is 31/23/0 and steal of 50 but only over 13 hands
3 better is 24/7/8and no info for steal over 29 hands.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 Limit Hold'em - 10 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.4 SB) Hero is BB with J A
6 folds, CO raises, BTN 3-bets, 1 fold, Hero ????

I think that this is probably a Cap! or fold situation. AJs is a pretty strong hand and the opening ranges from the CO & BTN could be pretty wide. The BTN looks to be on an ISO play, so I'd be a bit cautious post flop. This could be a spot where you're caught either WA or WB.

If it were me, I'd be capping here. I like the hand enough to play it and like I stated earlier, I'd dislike just calling 2, so I'd cap!

*g*

1. dont tighen up in the blinds. any hand that loses less that 0.5BB is a call(or raise). this is counterintuitive to most people. when they tighten up they dont realise how exploitable they are, as they still feel like they are defending enough when calling 50% or so. its a common leak in bad tags.

2. i dont think you need to trreat this as a raise or fold spot. nobody is folding, balance isnt an issue, it has a small edge pre and post, and this hand plays well without initiative oop. by that i mean, not capping a hand like AA can result in the flop checking through, a disaster. AJs otoh likes to see free turns, wont have big edges when jamming, and will like to be able to c/r KO the CO.

I don't mind a call here. Arguing for a cap is the fact that this is a CO steal followed by a button 3! meaning ranges are wide.

I could go either way...reads would help me make the decision but sample sizes are small.

Why u want to raise or fold ?

I prefer a cap here as the CO raise and Btn 3! ranges are very wide. I would need a very good read on the villains to ever fold ie btn only 3 bets JJ+ or AK and we don't have enough hands on either one cap>call>fold

I thought calling in LHE was a sin.
When i posted some stats a while ago i was advised to pretty much always raise/fold and I've read the same in books.
Obviously multiway calling has some value but here I've got a chance of getting the hand HU. Isn't that best for AJs?

I'd say cc'ing 1) first in after the raise and 2) not closing the action pf is rarely the best move, particularly if you 3) had a hand that would prefer to be HU (ATo, AJo, KJo, etc), and 4) had a good chance of getting HU by re-raising.

Notice only one of those four conditions applies here. Therefore (imo) cc'ing is definitely a valid option.

Trex - well put. That will help a lot in future decisions.
Realised after posting that the CO prob won't ever fold given he pot odds he'll get.

For me, personally, if I don't feel comfortable enough to raise in a situation like this, what hands AM I comfortable raising with? Preflop decisions always start with the 2 cards in front of you, obviously, but if you're only capping with QQ, KK & AA, it's very polarizing. In my eyes, this it what it looks like. Co steal, BTN re-steal, then our decision. We have a pure hand. Cap! for value. If both come along, that's ok because our hand can play well 3-way. If CO folds and only BTN calls, that's ok, because our hand has enough SD value to play HU. You have no real reads ATM, and I think some addition value you may gain with this hand is some tendencies or reads of your opponents.

This is what is going through my mind. Unsure if it's correct, but isn't that why we're here?

I'm capping this pretty much always against a steal & re-steal. If there's a non-zero chance that CO folds here it's a no-brainer, imo.

Been thinking about this one, and not only do I think calling is a valid option, I kinda think it's the best option. I'll expound....

I already stated in prior post why we mustn't only be re-raise or fold. Now I'll state why I think maybe it's the best option, and it primarily has to do with what we can say about the villains involved.

lolsamplesize of 13 hands on CO, so we've only a very fuzzy picture of him. But already we can probably assume he's not a maniac, that he usually comes in with a raise, and appears to be positionally aware. He's shaping out to be either lagtag, bad lag, or a tag who has run a touch warm over first 13 hands. So I'd generally want to put him on a typical tag range for a CO open (maybe around 32-35% range).

Now what can we say about the BTN? Another tiny sample, but the thing that's jumping out at me so far is the giant gap between his vpip and pfr: apparently he's vpip 7 of 29 hands, but only raised 2 of 29. Indicates perhaps he'll often cc as apposed to iso-raising, especially with this being 10-max and not 6-max: seems unlikely that the gap is due simply to him defending his bb against steals, while not finding hands in other positions (he'll only have been in bb max of 3 times so far).
This would have me worried he's one of those guys that never re-raises without a monster. Now I'm not saying we should assume he's only ever got approx JJ/QQ+ and AK (though it must be entertained as a possibility), but nor do I think we should assume he's gonna have a wide iso 3bet range.

Against a ~34% CO range, even if we assume the BTN has a (imo unlikely) semi-wide range of 55+, A8s+, ATo+, KTs+, KJo+, QJs, we have <36% equity. And if BTN does indeed have only QQ+ and AK, our equity is <24%.

Our actual equity is probably somewhere in between (I think usually in the 25-30% range, personally). For this reason, I don't like capping: I think we're juicing a pot where we've got less than our fair share. Also it ties us to vpwning ourselves on the flop when we whiff.

otoh, even if our equity is only 24%, we get ~3.1:1 even if CO caps (3.7:1 if he just calls). So we're getting too good a price for this hand; so I don't think fold is a good option.

Nemesis made some other accurate statements regarding our specific hand and relative position to the 3bettor:

I hope between the two of us, we've given sufficient argument that cc'ing is not only a valid move, but perhaps the best one we have.

I like calling here. (I also like calling here with hands like AA or KK). Our cap takes away the chance for CO to narrow their range further by capping. By not capping we keep our range at least a bit wider and are thus at least a bit harder to play against.

Not sure how much this is an issue, because it seems tough to exploit, but if we're calling 100% of our continuing range here then aren't we making it easy for BTN to 3bet in this spot wide?

Which do you suppose is easier for BTN, to know that if we call our range is {88-TT, ATs-AQs, KQs, AQo} if we call, or for them to have to add JJ+, AKs, and AKo to our range?