V1 (330): 30s or so black guy.. seen him play a few hands but nothing out of line.. raised pre with AK once cbet flop when 3 way on Q77r then shut down after called.. just lost a fairly large pot earlier with TP vs someone else's rivered 2 pairs.. might be on tilt.. not sure if he can make moves or not

V2 (500): weak TAG.. Maybe just tight passive nit.. but seems to be loosening up preflop due to frustration since he's straddling now and calling a few more hands.. very ABC post

Hero (350): 30s Asian guy..been really card dead..only played maybe 3-4 hands.. One hand I 3 bet a guy pre then cbet flop and took it down.. another hand was where I called a raise multi-way with A6dd and flopped a flush draw and called V1s cbet and folded missed turn.. other hands I either limp folded or called a raise then folded post.. probably seen as nitty

Preflop V1 BB and V2 straddled 10: folds to hero in HJ who raised to 30 with A9o.. preflop is debatable but I'm sure I would get some respect here since this is my second raise on about an hour+.. V1 and V2 both call

Flop (92) 3 way: 554r
Both villains check. Hero bets 50. V1 immediately goes allin for ~300. V2 folds.

Am I EVER good here? Would he really go this crazy with a 5? Why would he do this with just a random pair when I could easily have an OP? What should I do?

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Fold pre. Pre is horrible.

Fold flop. Jeez. You're losing to a lot of his bluffs.

That A6dd hand sounds bad and so does this hand. Just fold pre. Not a good hand.
Flop.... You're not really considering a hero call with A9, are you? AT-AK, and any kind of pair beat you. Just take the small loss (in comparison to losing your stack) and pick a better battle.

Fold pre. There's not much reason to raise A9o pre, especially in a straddled pot.

Not that great of c-betting flop and you don't have much equity. Nobody ever believes me when it's all low cards and I usually get called unless I have a really good image. So just check/fold flop.

And yeah, you definitely can't call his shove with A9o. You don't even have a good kicker to go with your A high.

first off raise a lot bigger PF unless its your motive to create a big ass multiway pot with A9o.

As played fold and its not really close.

Also you should be planning ahead for things like this. Lets say for arguments sake you thought to yourself Im gonna bet and ig this guy shove im calling cause he has nothing and i know it, its probably better to just shove yourself, save the guessing game and win the dead money in the middle.

You wrote few short sentences descriptions of villains and expect us to tell you whether A-high is good on 554r board?

Come on...

I don't think A9o is that bad to open from the HJ. It's a little LAGgy, but if the BU and CO are tight it can work. By "tight" I mean nits who fold too much or TAGs who correctly fold dominating hands like AJ/AT. I guess the straddle means we have more people to act behind us but the extra guy is OOP so I'm not really that bothered.

The thing is, with A9o, having an okay hand postflop is the plan B. We really want to take down the blinds/straddle. And a 3x raise just isn't going to do that most of the time. A 4-5x raise here will be much more profitable over the long term, for two reasons:

1) we take down the blind money more often

2) we build a bigger pot, which makes our cbet scarier, and people play more straightforwardly because our strong preflop raise represents strength.

As for postflop, LOL are you serious? 67 -- the bluff he can have -- is practically flipping with us. Better aces (bluffs) have us crushed. Any overplayed overpair is beating us. And if he's putting us on an overpair (makes sense with our nitty image) and shoving a full house (rare), quads (rare), or trips (common), we are crushed. I'm not even going to bother stoving that, but go ahead if you want. Throw in some KQ and a worse ace if you want to be generous with yourself.

If he thinks we are weak and does this to us again, we can call him off...when we have a hand that isn't beaten by bluffs.

+1, well said.

I just feel, given our description of hands played, hero won't get much respect pre.

No matter how it has been since you played a hand, you will get no respect for your raises. They'll put you on AK and call looking to out flop you. Don't raise because you think they'll fold because you're tight.

Terrible board texture to cbet into multiple people. All over pairs are calling and if the villain is loose, over cards. You won't take it down. Finally as said above, many of the villain's bluffs beat you. Fold. Sorry he showed you something dumb like J2o, but you aren't going to be good often enough to make it +EV.

As played, fold. There are many over pairs that will not fold for effectively 33 bbs starting. Perhaps 76 < A9, albeit with good equity.

Pre - fold. If you want to play this hand, top-off and raise higher. For short-stack play, folding is by far the best option. No matter how solid your image may be, pps and AJ+ are not folding. Obviously those hands dominate yours.

I dont dislike opening from the pre with A9o although i dont like the amount. The straddles never like to fold so giving him a chance to defend with only another $20 is putting yourself in a tough position. I wouldve went to ~$45. AP fold flop, you have $30 committed and you arent that far ahead of other non made hands. Dont just give your money away. You were better off shoving pre.

Lol this is why I love 2p2.. the candid no sugar coating type of responses that make you play better.

It's true at the time when I made the raise I was on slight "tilt" from not having hands. I would normally fold this hand if I'm new to the table or if people behind me were difficult to play with OOP.. but that wasn't the case here and I thought I could take it down since I've been playing REALLY tight.

I definitely should have raised it bigger coming in. I guess sometimes I forget about that and I go with smaller raises with a wider range when in position.. but that's not the situation here so boo me.. should've 4-5x as someone said earlier.

Post flop I thought it was an okay board to bet since it doesn't hit anyone's range much. Plus these guys weren't only playing pp/big Ax to raises. As I mentioned earlier, straddle was looking to get into pots and BB just lost a hand and I was in position vs them both. I thought I could profitably barrel 2 streets here if called, easy fold if raised.. but the allin threw me off since that polarized his range to either bluff/5+.. doesn't make sense to do it with a pair

Anyway I did fold after some thought and villain said I thought you had AA and was gonna call.. Oh well nice hand.

Thanks for the replies all.

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