Was at a great game today where a spot came up that made me ponder.

First the game... very loose passive but with frequent outbursts of big betting. I'd been at it for a couple of hours and I was eager to participate in some of the hands I saw but the spots hadn't really appeared.

Old man joins our table from another and proceeds to run his $300 stack up to close to $1000 with the weirdest play. He basically played 60 - 70% of hands. It didn't bother him a bit to call raises up to $20. At first I thought he was playing post fairly well... He'd call along and then suddenly pop out a big (pot+ bet) on the turn or river on innocous cards. He felted another biggish stack with a K64r flop on the river with 64o. Another time he C/RAI with overs and FD and hit the turn.

But after watching him a bit more - i noticed him calling smallish AIs OTT with gutshots and so forth. Very very hard to put on a hand.

OTTH.

V1 ($950) in BB
V2 ($55) UTG +1
Hero ($165) OTB

Limps to hero with 5 limpers (10 handed). I have AQss and raise to $25.
V1 (loose old man) in BB calls (as expected - see note above)
V2 raises AI to $55. All fold to Hero.

A word about v2... he's been very uneven... makes stabbing bets - often donks and gives up to resistance. Recently took a big loss. I think he just wants the pain to stop.

So the pot is about $90, it's $30 back to me and I have $140 back. My thinking is really focused on V1... obv. I'm not folding. Should I call or reraise, and if the latter how much. Very interested in thoughts here as I an still uncertain about right move.

Not all that interesting, easy shove to iso V2. V1 will be getting correct odds to call with any two cards if you flat, so you want to deny him his equity.

Given your stack it's an easy shove. If you flat call your going to be in a terrible place on the flop a lot. V1 will know that A/K/Q are bad cards for him and be able to play the flop nearly perfectly, folding most of the time when beat and calling when he beats you.

If you had $300 or so the shove is too much and this becomes a more interesting question. A raise to $100 to isolate or setup a good size if you do hit is probably best then. Around $500 you might want to flat and hope to hit the flop harder then V1 because what you can win from his stack dwarfs V2 at that point.

Go AI, there is a thread for low stress strat questions.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply... I think that the stack sizes and the dynamic of the villain were the interesting aspects. I did end up pushing after a little thought. My thinking was that V2 felt like he was just pressing with ATC and that V1 would have raised himself with a premium - so why not really make him pay to play - or just leave is dead money in.

As it turned out V1 called. He turned over AK and V2 turned over T7o.

As I was driving home - i was wondering about the spot... I hate getting into high variance spots intentionally (even if I have a little +EV) - but as you pointed out... just calling kinda sucks with that player.

That Results Orientated type of thinking is pretty dangerous...

You should be thinking more about making good/profitable decisions vs. villain's ranges instead of their exact holdings...

It's not a high variance spot, it's standard play and is going to be profitable.

shove shove shove

No clue about your point here. Maybe you were thinking of a different thread?

Grunch: all in.

What he's trying to say here is don't get caught up with thinking about only the results of the hand. If you were to put both villains on a range of hands, AQs is going to do fairly well against them. You can't let the fact that V1 showed up with AK deter you from making the same play again. It was a profitable decision given the action. V2 was clearly spewing and V1 certainly could have had a bunch of other hands that you had dominated.

OP, please change your hole cards to AA instead of AQ. It would be more interesting then as I was in a similar spot with AA last week and just called to tag along the fish with less than a PSB left between us on the flop.

AQ is a clear shove as it's not as good as AA and you could easily whiff so many flops.

Super easy hand. Shove.

Alsor eload with such a V to as big as poissble.