Playing 1/3. Up about 400 (700 total) on session have good winning image.

New kid sits down and announces we all look 'very tough', with a smirk. The first two hands he raises to 15 and fires flop and turn and takes it down. Looks like he wants to take control of the table right away.

The next hand I am in SB with AQ. Playing 315 effective (V), I have table covered. There is one limp to V who is in HJ. He again raises to 15. Button calls, I call (argument for re-raise here, but since not sure if V is just trying to bulldoze people, would like to hit and have him fire into me) and limper calls. 4 to flop:

flop: Q44 pot: ~65

I check, limper checks, V obediently bets out 33. Button calls and I re-raise to 105. I have V on not much here, perhaps a Q or a lower PP, but mostly just C-betting here. I'm sure old man on button has a Q (slight chance flush draw) since he has raised all his good hands this night, so he would have raised with a 4. limper calls all in for the rest of his 92, and V pushes all in!! Button agonizingly folds and its back to me.

pot is about ~ 440 with 162 to call V, so almost 4:1 to call here. With how he has played his first 3 hands, I am confused here. We could be chopping here sometimes, or perhaps a nut flush draw. There is a small chance he has a 4 here since he has raised every hand since sitting down, so could be raising with a wide range and hit a 4.

Was my initial raise warranted here, or was a check a better play against this perceived crazy man? Do we call this shove here?

3bet pre is way better.

What were you hoping to accomplish with the c/r? Gotta call it off given odds against this guy now.

Just wondering why C/R if you are putting V on nothing? Also raise pre.

The reason I deviated from check call and let V hang himself was the old man call on the button. This is almost always a weaker Q from this player (small chance flush draw), so I raised because of that call. Seeing his crying fold later let me know that was exactly what he had and he would have most likely called my lone raise.

Obviously call the shove here. You have the A for a backdoor flush draw and the paired board reduces combos that hit. If he has QQ, KK or AA then GG and he gets rewarded for either getting 3 good hands in a row or playing LAG style.

Check raising one pair hands tends to fold out better and have us continue against worse. I don't like it generally.

Against this maniac I would want to call and let him hang himself with another bluff on the turn. The end result is the same (we get stacks in), but getting it in on the turn let's us play against a wider range. Our check raise makes it much more likely that we get it in when we are beat. Oof.

Ill get to why this is bad in a bit. First the hand itself.

Preflop: this is either a 3bet or fold. You'll be playing OOP against an apparently aggro preflop raiser and multiway. Not a recipe for success. Your reasoning is what really troubles me however. You called in order to hit and let him hang himself. That's exactly how fish play. You wanna know how you really beat a lag tard? Play pots in position ( you're not) and grab your balls and throw some of that aggression back at them with a better range ( you didn't).

Flop: now ill go back to the quoted post. In a more words you basically said you raised because the kid had nothing and the old man had a worse Q. The insinuation was that they'd fold if you raised. Why would you want that? Whatever piece of the pot they have is very likely much lower than what you gain from turn action in such a dry board. Raising just keeps in the few hands you'd rather not be up against.

Now that you've gone ahead and raised I'm not sure you can fold since the kid could just be a total idiot. But that's why raising was a bad idea in the first place. You're pot stuck in a spot where you're likely not good very often.

Thanks for the replies, especially dunderstron and spikeraw.

If I was on the button instead, do you still advocate a raise here? Or since we will have position, just flat and head to the flop? (in a vacuum, obviously re-raise if 3 people call the raise in front of me or some other odd scenario)

And yes, I guess the raise only does fold out worse and any 4 or over pair still continue here. I will keep that in mind in a dry-ish paired board.

Calling OOP to hit vs a LAG is generally spew. If you're not comfortable calling down A hi often, then 3bet imo.

Why raise if you think he's that weak? Board is super dry and you want him to keep firing his garbage hands imo.

Why the confusion? If you're assuming he is overly LAG, then his his play is very consistent with that read. Furthermore, you only need 20% equity to snap call.

Again from earlier, it was because I thought in my head this:

Otherwise I don't raise him.

Don't lag tards often just fold when players play back at them? Why would we want that when they can do the betting for us? In this specific hand I agree with 3-betting before the flop but there are a lot of situations when I think calling and letting him hang himself works well.

I don't think it's true that fish will call and let him hang himself in the same way the OP wanted to do that. The OP did that with AQ. Fish do that with hands that are far less likely to hit the flop and win showdowns. In other words, they do that with a much weaker range.

IMHO, 3! is better OOP with a strong hand vs LAG IP pre-flop.
On the flop if it was heads up vs LAG and in above scenario, it is a good board for a check-raise after you 3! pre, however in this case with other V's (multi-way) pot I'd just lead and see who calls and who raises.
The main thing from this hand to consider is that it is not Heads Up. (Which 3! might have accomplished)

AP: Call and catch some runners.

Maybe I'm not correctly understanding pot odds, but this:

doesn't look right.
First, 440:160 is more like 2.7:1. If I did something wrong here, let me know.

Second, I don't think the pot has been calculated correctly. $65 (pre-flop) + $92 (all-in limper) + $33 (BTN's call) + $105 (hero's bet) + $300 (villain's stack) = $595
What's left for Hero to call is $300 - $105 = $195, giving us 595:195 odds, or just at 3:1.

If anyone can correct my calculations, please let me know what I'm missing. I'm probably not qualified to answer whether or not we can still call getting only 3:1. I probably wouldn't call with the pot being protected by the all-in limper.

Basically, all has been said above to what I think. You don't know enough about the villain to justify the c/r, but against typical opponents a c/r with your hand keeps in hands that have you crushed. Obv also, 3 bet pre.

As played, with 3:1 here I make a crying call. Villain may think you're c/r with a flush draw and have Qx here. Or he may have a heart draw himself.

I'm not talking about becoming a blindly aggressive idiot. You still pick your spots. Theres still plenty of spots where you can let him hang himself, but you're adding to your profits when you can intelligently reaggress. A couple things happen when you attack a bad lag.

1. They don't know what to do. They're not used to anyone turning the tables except for the occasional nit with a monster. You can get into parts of their game which are horribly underdeveloped. And since you're in position, they're going to be making massive mistakes.

2. You give yourself more options than the "hit and call down" method. This is everyone's favorite line but it's really not as profitable as you think since you don't hit as often as you'd like and not many of us are good enough to call off barrels lightly and correctly.

3. You piss him off. This is often the biggest change. Aggro idiots like to be the man. They'd rather see you fold than call because it makes them feel like a pro. But you're not folding. You're not even calling. You're raising. Now it's a hallenge to his ego, and the only appropriate response to an ego challenge is to monkey shove after his preflop raise got 3 bet by this jerk 3 times already tonight.

I'll add another vote to 3! PF and c/c the flop. If you are going to raise, you have to raise A LOT MORE. $105 may seem like a lot, a "standard 3x raise," but by the time it gets back to V (assuming limper folds), the pot is $235 and he only has to call $72 more. If he is in fact on a FD, he is getting 3.3:1 which is almost enough expressed odds, ignoring implied odds if he hits, and if he calls the Button is most likely calling with a FD.

As played, I'm snap calling the shove. The SPR on the flop is 4.8 which is good enough to stack off with TPTK on this board vs. a LAG bulldozer that raised to $15 his first 3 hands. You're actually not really worried about the limper that shoved, he probably has you beat but you can still win the larger side pot. Also, the V only bet $33 into $65. If he had AA/KK he would want to bet more, like $55-60 to prevent drawing hands from playing along (unless he is a moron). There's exactly one combo of QQ that has you crushed right now. If he has a 4 that is pretty ****ty luck.

I don't know where you got your numbers, I also calculated the total pot as $595 (~$490 sidepot). So you are getting (595/195) 3:1 odds to call the main pot and 2.5:1 odds on the sidepot. Looks to me like V is now scared and is being overly aggressive to scare you out of the pot. Higher variance play but you can't fold here. If this isn't why you called PF than what was the point of calling PF?