Hero ($600): Late 20s, glasses, playing TAG. 2 rotations into a new table

V ($450): 50s, goofy/sloppy looking. Haven't played with him but would be shocked if he's a winning player just by his overall look. Haven't noticed anything in particular about his game other than he's limped in multiple times.

Table is extremely limp-happy and stationy. People are raising $30 and getting 5 callers.

Hand: 2 limps to me on BTN with AT and I make it $40. Really bad station in the BB calls (has seen every flop), and V limp/calls UTG+1.

Flop ($125): AQ7

BB checks and I notice V look down at his chips and he fires out $100 (3 greens and 5 reds).

Hero?

I'm torn here.

If we were HU against V I'd commit and call. I think he has more weak ace combos than 2P and set combos. If a spade comes, I'm really not going to enjoy a turn call (but still feel it's right to make it).

BB behind us makes calling flop less attractive. He'll be getting more than 3:1 on a call and so will have a fairly wide calling range. If he does come along, we've got two hands to beat.

I think I fold this. Am I too nitty?

BB is almost irrelevant as his range is like 80%+ air on any board.

I think you have to call the flop. Don't love it, but he can certainly have worse Ax among other hands.

Can't read too much in terms of chip selection, imo. Sure, maybe he tossed out 8 chips to seem strong when he's weak. Maybe he is strong with AK/AQ/AJ but feels weak because he's afraid of draws/wants you to fold. Most likely it means nothing super actionable.

Hmm, that board smacks your raising range so imo if he is strong, he should be check raising there

Donk leads are so often draws and weak made hands. If we flat, there's a ton of turn cards we can talk ourselves into disliking. Never folding. I'm raising to $260

Won't raising here give him the chance to fold out his weak aces (which I think are candidates for donks), while letting him profitably draw?

This is a raise/fold spot imo.

Yes you normally have the best hand but it's next to impossible, or at least miserable to call down three streets. Villains like this usually have a big draw or medium strength hand w/ backdoor or gutter equity.

Most of the time villains trying to set his price, normally the bet is smaller than what your facing here and looks more like a blocking bet.

I don't mind winning the pot right here, which is usually the case. If he does call he's always checking the turn, and if he doesn't improve he's checking to fold, so him calling oop in a pot that's rapidly building isn't terrible either.

Your sort of merging, while betting for value, and taking the ball out of his hands, making him react oop, instead of blindly calling 3 streets w/ Ax. (obviously if the board gets gross you can fold but in a spot like this what turn/river cards do you really like? I'm not stoked to hit a T even, so what is and isn't gross?)

sizing is important as I want to raise small in case I do run into 77,QQ,A7,AQ. as is evidence from his donk bet and his description, he's not raising draws here. he may flat but he isn't stuffing another ~$300+ in otf. If he bet/ 3bet gii, it's a fold. I'd raise to $225/fold. and if he flats and checks turn I'd essentially put him all in on any non spade.

this defines his range instantly, potentially sets us up to win half his stack while eliminating the chance of us making a $450 total mistake later. Either calling or folding bad when he keeps betting and the board gets ugly/seems safe. I like this more than calling multiple streets w/ a weaker A. Mixes up our play while making the hand easier to play as well, lot of positives imo.

Sorry but raise/folding 60% of your stack against a possible button clicker can't be OK.

Not buying a raise in general. If we don't want to ever fold, well OK - I can get on board with that - but I far prefer to hold on tight and call down (generally always getting all-in on the turn) to keep his range as wide as possible than to raise and possibly manipulate his range badly for our hand.

Stacks are somewhat short, but there is still value in being last to act and possibly letting him continue with more worse hands.

Very happy calling flop and playing another street in position. And we won't be playing three streets - there really are only enough chips for one more. And yes, I'm very disinclined to raise/fold the flop vs. this guy and with these sacks. You could raise/stack off or just call, but don't raise/fold.

Since a large part of his range is flush draws, wouldn't he "just go with it" and jam over top my raise since he's already put in 1/4th of his stack at this point? He didn't drive to the casino in his dumb hat to flop a flush draw, donk 1/4th of his stack and then wise up and decide to fold, right?

I thought it was unlikely he was donking with a set. I did consider he might've limped AK and played it this way on a scary flop. Anyone else see this?

Yes. It's non-zero possibility, but discounted quite a bit. Like with 8 possible combos, maybe we could give him 2. I think his range is mostly flush draws, maybe a few spaz gut shots/gut shots + backdoors, combo draws, lots of worse Ax that fear draws, and a few better Ax.

Thinking about the range more... OK, I can dig raise/stacking off vs. calling.

this is my thought too.

I mean, we're happy for the raise to take the pot right here but if we raise we're doing it to get it in

If we flat the flop bet, I think we have to be prepared to fold to a barrell if the spade is a turn because the range of hands we beat folds significantly

but as before I like to raise to $250/260, calling a shove

Could v be over playing a made hand? Doubtful. This range smacks us, so IMO it is unlikely he is donking some BS like A9 or even something like AJ. This could be AK some of the time, but I think a portion of the time AK opens pre. Could he be getting aggro with a weak draw like small suited spades? Again, doubtful. Unless V is totally clueless, this board smacks our opening range.

That leaves us with made hands that beat us (AK/AQ/AJ/A7/77- I left out AA/QQ due to the limp/call pre and we block AA), and big spade draws like KJ/JT/KT). Versus this range we have 17% equity.

If we add all the Broadway draws, we have 47% equity. However, I think that's overly optimistic. This is a pretty clear cut fold.

Raise/fold is awful less than 100BB effective. If we raise, we are intending to GII because we'll be getting something like 2-1 if the villain ships after we raise to, say $250 or so. Even if we make it $200 and villain ships for $320 more, we're getting 2.2-1 and we can't fold IMO.

Edit; I even forgot hero raised to $40 instead of $30 pre. Raise-fold is even worse now.

Grunch:

BB has tons of air here and will prob be folding.

Just call and evaluate on turn. Without any discernible info on V, we can't give any useful feedback. Raising his donk theoretically lets him play perfectly, and folding es no bueno. He likely won't barrel you on turn without a 2pair+ kind of hand, so fold when he bets turn and jam if he checks.

After donking $100, V only has ~$300 left. It looks like he is trying to get his stack in. I'm leaning towards a fold.

If you call you have less than a pot-sized bet remaining. You shouldn't call planning on folding later in the hand.

Whether to call is completely dependent on the Villain's range in this spot. Knowing the Villain's range is completely dependent on paying attention and getting good reads.

I don't see how anyone who wasn't at the table can tell you that stacking off in this spot is profitable when all you have is a bluff-catcher.

just call pre. caro says sloppy looking people are here to gamble so u might as well raise it up

But yet you want to call in the button with AT?

The way to beat bad loose players is ABC and value town them with monsters. You have a mediocre TP hand on a wet board. Just fold, no need to have an ego when the whole table is fishy.

Also he's been passive so far according to your read, and now he's betting into you.

He's usually never limping with AK or AQ as he is going to be raising those and with AJ he could limp. But with so many possible weak aces here and flush draws I like a call here.

In response to the raise/fold idea...

Isn't there a pretty good chance that we can obtain the same kind of information from just calling? What I'm saying is, I think he could check the turn with missed draws or weak aces regardless of whether or not we flat call him or min raise him otf. If so, raise/folding is very very risky - it only works if we are confident that v has a lot of draws in his range and if we are confident that he won't jam weaker hands on us - which is pretty ambitious with so little reads.

Imo v's most likely holding is AJ. Most villains in this spot will have the ace, from what I've seen. Flop marginal top pair and panic-take-the-betting-lead on a draw heavy board. He "probably" raises AK pre, c/r AQ+, folds really weak aces pre?, and check/calls draws. Who knows what his actual tendencies are but I think these are the most realistic assumptions.

This is such an annoying spot for us. Honestly, I'm kind of feeling like we can find so many better spots to get our money in on this table. I don't like playing the hero w/ AT here unless he's been really active and has shown to be capable of having a lot of weak aces/draws in his range. I *sigh* fold.

I folded. He didn't show.

However I'm playing with him today and saw a similar thing happen. He called a $25 btn raise from sb. 4-ways flop: Q45r. He led $125. Got it in vs btn and goofball actually had QQ which surprised me.