How can it be fifth level with ToS seeing Ansky as a taggish satellite qualified player?

I always like your posts.

This isn't close to Ansky's range and if this is your range its awful I would much rather call 22 than KTo. I would also rather have 78s than both of those.

mmm i think 22 plays significantly better than 78s here, which plays significantly better than KTo.

If you are ever entertaining folding here opening is all kinds of terrible.
His three bet pretty small and with position he will make it hell for us if we 4bet. Especially since I have no idea what to do to a 5bet.
I call.
Lol @ Anskys range betting AT+ 88+, broawdway
Also saying broadway and AT+ is redundant.

Ansky, given your bowels and your previous play, appearance and table demeanour, what range do you image ToS puts you on opening UTG?

Betgo, you say you understand the read, but then you go and say something like this :

This is not a "general situation." Villain is described as "mega euro LAGtard. He is reraising or raising almost every single hand, NEVER folding to reraises once he has entered the pot, and his vpip is prob over 90%. He is completely fearless, and prob doesn't care if he loses in the first hour."

We obviously aren't dealing with a typical lag, so any "general" tendencies are worthless in this situation.

You might be right... its close... either way i prob instacall 22 and 78s and I never raise KTo UTG FR and if I did i would def fold now.

ok all you guys what the hell, if we raise here why aren't we 4-betting and calling the 5-bet all in if he's really 3-balling 90+% of hands. I don't like this as much as limp-calling but once we've gotten to this spot, you absolutely HAVE to punish his insanely wide 3-betting

I think I agree.

As played, calling the 3bet seems best by far. AJs is ahead of his 3bet range, the alternative of 4betting and having to choose between stacking off pre (lol!) or getting into an ugly flop spot oop versus someone who is not entirely pyscho but rather aware-psycho (he knows his image and his read on a random who 4bets from utg will not be favorable to playing AJs in a 4bet pot) kinda sucks.

LFTV, check out the post I made at exact same time as yours... we're ahead of all his ranges given his #ers therefore we stack it in pre if we open up to this aggression, but again, read my above post for response to all this

TOS thinks Ansky is a satellite qualifier, there is no real metagame involved.

Put yourself in TOS's shoes. An UTG satellite qualifier who you think is TAG raises UTG. Why would you repop him here light? Even if he is a maniac, if he is a thinking player, I don't see any reason for him to raise light in this spot.

I would fold AJs here OOP because I don't think he shows up with a super wide range here, and playing TOS out of position doesn't sound very good.

but his 3 betting and 5 betting ranges aren't necessarily the same. Unless he's on a whole different planet of lagginess, then they are probably drastically different.

but as i said in my first post, if we strongly feel he will pull a light 5 bet often enough, i have no problem with 4 betting

man i dont think folding is that bad here. calling is gonna lead to a ridiculously high variance spot being oop with a marginal hand against a maniac. we're often going to end up putting in a fair bit of our stack here postflop just crossing our fingers that his range when 3betting an unknown utg raiser from ep is very wide. i mean i know that i personally would fold here, because i don't think my postflop skill edge is that huge that i can make up for being oop against a good lag with a pretty marginal hand. ansky's situation may be different.

edit: i just read this

and now elect to call. i should have read the op more carefully. i thought the whole premise was just like "he's a laggy european! HE COULD HAVE ANYTHING!", and i thought that was a bit dubious.

anyway, move along, nothing to see here.

I see your point. We do have to punish his loose 3betting and depending on assumptions, 4betting for value might be the best way. Here's my counterargument.

Whether we can 4bet and call a shove has to do with what he does versus 4bets. If he's really threebetting 90% and then following through, then we should be able to 4bet AJs and call a shove profitably, unless he has a big exploitable gap in his approach to unknowns 4bets, but I think it's very reasonable to believe he has this gap.

If unknown raises UTG, and he threebets 90%, unknown should 4bet a significant % of the time - he should have raised expecting the 3 bet for one thing, plus the ranges involved are basically analogous to an uberLAG BN open (TOS's 3bet) and a SB 3bet (UTG's 4bet). So clearly he (Ansky) should 4bet wide. But. If TOS is used to being 4bet way less than he should be, he'll essentially be acting like a dumb lag from like two years ago, before people had gotten used to 3betting as a standard response to opening loose in late position; he'll threebet lots and tighten up considerably versus a 4bet.

If this is how he reacts to being 4bet by a random (an UTG random who seems nervous, no less), we should 4 bet bluff lots, but stuff like AJs/99 will play better if we let him keep his initiative and his 90% range.