NWI NL 1/2
Hero is at $300 or so (in for 200) 2 hours into a session.
Villain is a 60 yo white lady who hero has not seen play a hand in 2 hours. She only played BBs so far. She has about $120. I don't know her. She's mentally alert. That's all hero knows.
Hero is in BB with AJ
UTG+1 "makes it 5."
Villain on button calls 5.
SB folds
Hero calls 5.
You like raising here with AJ off? is that what you'd normally do in the BB?
FLOP $16
J98
Hero leads out for $10.
UTG+1 folds.
Button villain reraises to $30.
What is this? I have TPTK but I feel like I'm beat. She hasn't bet or raised once since I've been there.
I put her on 8s, 9s, or Q/10.
Is this Monsters Under the Bed Thinking?
I have a good hand but feel like I'm in huge trouble.
Hero??????????

Flat pre is good. The problem with leading flop is that it generally won't help in terms of getting value (for instance if button has KJ, he's just going to bet himself when checked to anyway) and it has a big downside, which you ran into in the actual hand, i.e. getting raised. You now have to fold your hand because your equity against his range sucks, but it also sucks having to fold a strong top pair with the nut BDFD. In general, be reluctant to donk out into a raised multiway pot when your hand cannot stand a raise.

How much did UTG+1 have?

If he had around the same stack size as us then 3-bet to 20 and fold to a 4-bet from either player. With no other reads, AJo is ahead of UTG+1's 2.5x raise. If we reraise, we can knock button out of the pot and win a lot of pots with a c-bet into UTG+1.

If UTG+1 had 160 or less then just flat-call preflop because we don't want to risk one of them jamming on us.

As played, I guess its probably a fold but to be honest I think I just insta-ship it every time. It can't be that much of a losing play and I think there are good metagame reasons for not folding TPTK in a raised pot when they're this short.

If the plan is mostly to c-bet and win, whether AJ is ahead or not is irrelevant and I'd rather use my threebets on hands with less playing strength, like bad suited aces. There's also button to worry about, given she hasn't played a hand for 2 hours we might walk into QQ or something.

It can super easily be a massive losing play. You have less than 25% equity against { 99-88,QTs,JTs,T9s,98s,QTo,JTo }, for example. Note that I have given villain T9s, JTs and JTo as hands that you are beating. Your equity is a disaster because villain probably doesn't raise anything that doesn't have at least like 40% equity against you.

I don't recall. All night he was between 50 and 200. He played 75% of the hands. Played loose preflop and flop and was tighter on rivers. It would never occur to me to 3! with AJ. I'm trying to get better and will consider it though.

We also have high cards that can win us the hand on the flop or on later streets and that act as blockers to our opponents also having good hands. We also create an SPR that works better for our hand. It's the same concept as raising or reraising with AK/AQ.

Even if she hasn't played a hand for 2 hours, we can't interpret a 2.5x flat call by the button as strength. We should be mainly planning the hand around the larger stack and expecting the button to usually fold to our raise. If she calls or jams then that does represent real strength and we can respond accordingly.

So for the price of 10bb, in addition to giving us the initiative postflop and creating a favourable SPR for our hand, the 3bet preflop helps define our opponents' hands .

These are basically all fair points though if you're going to assign the tight player QT, I think you also need to include some combos of KJ and TT. I would also note that she wouldn't have all thses hands in her range had we 3bet UTG+1's weak 2.5x open preflop.

In any case, typically I like to play deep and focus on making money off the 200bb+ stacks. I'm willing to make a slightly -ev play for 50bb, if I think it will help convince the other deepstacks that I'll snap shove allin with TPTK. A lot of 2nd level thinkers will overadjust when they regard as 'bad play'.

Doesn't really make sense because her chance to flop raise with QT is 100% and with KJ something a lot less than 100%. I should note that I'm not even convinced that this type of player will raise with anything less than 2 pair+.

If I limit her to the suited stuff and throw KJs and TT in there, so { TT-88,KJs,QTs,JTs,T9s,98s }, our equity is still a pretty awful 36.4%. I think this basically represents a best case scenario. Worst case is just that she has a set like every time.

She probably has AJ in her range and she might fold JT, TT, T9 to a jam but going with the above:

36.4% of the time we add $141 to stack = +51.3
63.6% of the time we lose $105 from stack =-66.8
+51.3 + -66.8 = on average we lose $15.50 every time we make this play

Yeah, like I said, I consider that the best case scenario. Maybe your games are different, but in my experience 60 year old women who haven't played a hand in 2 hours raise the flop with top pair hands somewhere approximating 0% of the time.

Yeah you're right Chris, that's what i noticed. I ended up folding here and feeling like a wimp. I asked her later and she told me she had the straight...i believed her!

Note: her range on the button for flat-calling 2.5bb raises from EP is wider than just premium hands.

Yes, you're right. Something to remember quite right.

But here only her flop raising range matters. Based on hero's description of villain said range is probably nutted. I'd instafold here and not think twice about it.

folding this all day long to the villain.
I am not really a fan of the donk bet, we are OOP and if we get raised we are usually well behind.
On such a wet board i would be happy to get to SD as cheap as possible.



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If UTG+1 has 170 or more, I prefer squeezing pre-flop for reasons mentioned in my earlier post. The point I was making is that just because the button hasn't played a hand in 2 hours we shouldn't interpret her call of a 2.5bb raise as a hand strong enough to call or even jam over the top of a 10x reraise from the BB.

Ah okay, then I misunderstood you. I agree with that. I think I prefer a squeeze as well, but I don't particularly mind a call.

You know what weak regs do to telegraph their hands to me OTF? They donk out when they hit top pair. Please continue to do this, it saves me a lot of money.

Digression aside, fold now, because as described villain never raises with worse than two pair.