Hero: Taking my second shot at 2/5. I'm a consistent winner at 1/2 and recently had a big tournament score so I have decided to take some shots at 2/5 when the game seems reasonably soft. I have been playing pretty tight, at this point I'm still mostly watching and learning tendencies. I haven't shown any bluffs. I start with $320.

Villain: White guy, I would guess about 30. Never played with him before. Has been raising most pots he enters, and has been active post-flop. Seems like a solid player. He has me covered.

Hand: Everyone folds to me in MP, I raise to $20 with AJhh. Villain calls in the button, BB also calls.

Flop: AT8r with the Ten of hearts. BB checks, I bet $30. Villain raises to 85.

What to do here? This feels like a WAWB situation. I don't think I can just call. Even if I pick up a flush draw or gutshot broadway draw on the turn, I would have no fold equity so I couldn't semibluff. I suppose I could fold having only invested $50 in the hand with a not-so-great kicker. On the other hand, maybe he's just trying to steal here with middle pair or he's on some kind of straight draw. And maybe he has AQ or AK but would have to fold if I shove. (Would he?)

Now that I'm home I'm playing around with Pokerstove. The first question: How much equity do I have against his calling range? Let's give him all sets, two pairs, AK, AQ, J9s and 97s. Turns out I have exactly 30% equity against that range. I would be shoving $270 to win $620, which I would need 43% equity to be break even. So I lose $84 of equity every time he calls me.

Which means by my calculations, he needs to fold about 32% of the time for a shove to be correct. Which leads to my final question: Does he fold anywhere near 32% of the time? What hands are in his flat-reraise-fold range?

If he's raising most pots and is active post, call and evaluate. Raising only folds worse and gets better to continue. However, if he's that active, I'm not ready to give up.

Villain is exploiting the power of position to make your life miserable. I think you have to rely on your reads about whether you should continue in this hand. Does villain seem like he would flat with AK/AQ preflop? Which worse hands could he be raising on the flop (any weaker aces)?
It's highly doubtful that villain will fold a better hand, even AQ could resignedly call - you're 64BB's deep. IMO, the big top pair hands weigh heavily in his range and the speculative stuff you mention is a much smaller portion. That said, you're near the top of your bluff-catching range (I'd say AK is a call or rr, and KK is a fold) so you may choose to call the flop.

Fold

Evaluate what? I'm OOP. What turns can possibly improve my position? Best case is I hit a J but I'm still crushed by sets. Is my plan to hit a fourth heart and shove? Or am I supposed to read his soul when I call and figure out whether or not he will fold to a turn shove?

If I call, what's my plan on the turn?

Against described Villain, I'm not folding here.

We are either going to commit to this hand, which means calling/re-raising flop, or fold. If we call, that means we are likely calling down future streets of action and prepared to stack off with this hand if necessary.

I'll call with the plan to check the turn and call down (or check-shove) just about any turn or river bet. The odds that this type of Villain flatted AK on the button are slim. He could have AQ or two pair. Given his makeup, he has more bluffs/semi-bluffs in his range then made hands. We also have lots of backdoor opportunities if any heart or 9 peels, plus obviously any Ace or Jack will dramatically improve our hand.

How we play this hand is very Villain dependent. Against a nit I find a fold. Against an aggro who has been consistently raising flops, happy to call and prepared to get stubborn against his wide range. Never folding in this situation.

I evaluate how he responds to the turn and what the turn is. If it's a heart or a J or an A, I'm committed against this guy.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more committed I am. You started the hand with 65bb. He almost never has AK or AQ here. Maybe he got lucky with AT or a set, but that's poker. Flat (I don't want to let him off the hook on the flop) and see what you can do on turn to gii.

grunch. I'm asking myself these questions facing this raise:

1. Are we ahead of any potential value raises from V? No, raising with any worse pair doesn't make sense.
2. Could V have air? Definitely. V opened from LP indicating a wide range, including (but not limited to) all the broadway gutshot draws, especially suited broadways with backdoor FDs
3. Will villain call worse if we shove? Doubt it - villain is only raising for value with better, and will fold draws if we shove.
4. How vulnerable is our hand? Our showdown value is stable - if we have the best hand here, we'll usually have the best hand by the river.
5. Will villain continue barrelling with air? I'd expect this villain to do this often, either on turn or river.

Pot is 60 (flop pot) + 30 (your bet) + 85 = 175. We're calling 55 so we need 20% equity in a vacuum, but our stack is small enough that we'll usually end up getting our stack in over two streets of betting.

Given villain's likely wide range + chance of further barrels, I think we should just call the flop bet, keep villain's range wide, and continue calling on most turn + river cards.

If you choose to fold here, that's fine, but top off your stack and get a seat change to the other side of this guy!

Grunch:
Have we seen any flop raises from this villain? Have we been raising much pre? And have we been cbetting much?

villains range pre: 22-JJ (60), A2-9s (32), ne2suited broadway (40), AQo, KQo (24), 78s, 89s, 9Ts, J9s, T8s (20) total 176, 13% of hands
Flop value range: 88, TT, ATs, A8s, 8Ts (12)
Potential bluffs: KJs, KQ, 78s, 89s, J9s (30)

If villain is raising 100% of this range, we're 6 combos above the point where he's playing pretty GTO and we're indifferent to folding. Not that that means we should fold, as folding this hand with TP, BDFD, and BDSD equates to folding a very large % of our range on this board, and the raise is fairly small relative to the pot. So we should probably continue on this board versus aggressive opponents who raise the preflop raiser a lot, and we should think about making an exploitable folding versus more passive opponents.

+1

If you fold to every flop raise, when you dont have a monster or correct odds to draw, you will come out ahead in the long run. That may sound weak but its true.

Obviously you have to use some common sense and call some raises against some people, but overall without really good reads this is a good rule.

If you run into a specific person who keeps raising your flop bets, check TP to them and go from there.

Or you could bet/call top pair since he keeps raising and thats the best way to get more money

Sucks that your J blocks some of his draws (QJs,J9s) but you can't bet/fold TP on this board where I assume you cb a lot (prolly too much). Call most blank/heart turns, fold the ones where many draws hit (except the J where you beat AT,T8s,A8s). Probably exploit fold on A turn given V is unlikely to bluff when he knows you have trips.

Result:

God dammit, live poker you did it again. Every time you think somebody is decent he does something dumb.

Glad it worked out for you this time, but rarely will someone raise AQ and then fold it. They also aren't raising that flop with AT or worse very often. Just fold it next time.

Really? You would have called my shove with AQo? Sure, this time I happened to show up with AJ. But that has to be the absolute bottom of my shoving range. It was actually probably wrong for me to shove there. Realistically, how many hands can I shove there that lose to AQ? I think I got lucky that he had one of the few hands he should fold.

We aren't deep enough to peel for any backdoor equity. Fold. He's got AT, AQ, A8 suited and TT/88 in his range. If he's clicking buttons, he'll give up his $$$ soon enough.

Buy in for more or reload.

Did you plan on turning your hand into a bluff at the time?

My thinking was there were enough worse aces, middle pairs, and semibluffs in his range, that in addition to my backdoor draws I had almost enough fold equity to make shoving an only slightly -EV proposition and it would be good for my table imagine that I defended my C-bet.

Maybe I leveled myself, but I convinced myself that he disregarded my C-bet and concluded there was a decent chance the ace didn't help me at all and I was just C-betting because that's what you're supposed to do and therefore had a pretty wide range.

This is a good point. However, this was only my second time playing 2/5 and so I think playing with less than 100BB is a way I can minimize my losses while I get acclimated to the differences from 1/2. I'm surely going to find myself in lots more questionable spots where I get spewy before I start to figure out when to bluff and when to raise for value.

Buying in shorter to get a feel for dynamics as you move up is a very smart choice IMO.

Not sure I agree with your assessment. Is he really raising A9 on this board? We block some of his semi-bluff combos.

I agree our line looks ridiculously strong but at 60 bigs effective I'm surprised you didn't get an "ahhhh **** it" call.

Stack size sucks. Your only option is fold. Peel if deeper.

Haha just read spoiler. No way i would raise a short stack with AQ and then fold. Ppl really suck. Correct play is fold for sure