£1/1 game in the UK.

Hero is winning on the day, hasn't gotten out of line so far but shown down few hands. Stack £280

Villain 1: Haven't played with before, friend told me he was a nit, not been to showdown on the night but was winning. Stack £450

Villain 2: Loose cannon, had done some crazy stuff in the night and just lost big pot to leave him short. Stack £40

OTTH:

£1/1 blind with £2 straddle on.

Villain 1 raises to £16 UTG+2
Villain 2: Raises all in to £40 from the small blind
Hero: In the BB with JJ

Whats the best way to proceed here vs the nit? Small Iso or try to get to a flop?

FWIW: Im not sure if Villain is aware I've been told he's a nit, we hadn't really spoken much at this point and the game had been pretty wild.

If he's really a nit then you should fold since his PFR range should beat JJ.

I would hate to just call here because the nit could 4bet. Against a loose player I would make it $80 and try to isolate.

If you've been playing with the nit all night then you should have some reads on him. How often does he raise? Have you seen his hands? How does he play post? Is he capable of making moves? Or does he fold easily after the flop? In the absence of reads, I would release JJ facing a nit raise and a 3bet shove.

Against a real nit I'm folding this OOP. At a wild table a nit's EP raising range is something like TT+/AQ+ and more likely to be narrower.

At the same time if he has been winning without getting to showdowns at a wild table he probably isn't a real nit. I like a raise to $80 and fold if the nit shoves over top.

Like i said in the hand, i hadn't played with him before this session, i was told by a friend that he was a nit, but that was in a game with higher stakes. He was one of those players that said he folded top set to a jam on a 3 straight board or he folded a flush etc etc. Not sure if he was just trying to build and image or if he was a nit/annyoing

I just call. If nit has a better hand, he will re-open and you can fold. I don't mind a fold, either. Raising is OK, but we'd have to make it pretty big here (I don't like the min-raise), and we'd have to fold to a raise. We have only $280 behind, which is less than 150bb with straddle, and the pot is already at $40. Kind of sick to raise/fold. Never mind, I don't like a raise.

He's shown down hands -- what have they been?

He hadn't Been to showdown yet. He won a big pot 3 way, he C/R flop and got two callers, jammed the turn and got 2 folds. Had been relatively quiet apart from that

Make it 80 to go and fold if the nit 5 bets

Minimum legal raise is 64. if the nit will fold when you make it 80, he'll fold when you make it 64. No reason to risk more than you have to if you're folding to a 5-bet.

+1. The nit probably only continues with KK+. I bet he folds AK here. Good to iso the loose cannon.

Why do we raise to get him to re-raise? Isn't it better (and cheaper) to just let him raise if he has it? If he's raising your $64 or $80, wouldn't he raise the original $40 if you call? Why min-raise and let him in with a possible marginal hand where the pot is more bloated and you have less info?

I think the point is that the nit will likely call 24 into a pot of 100 with his entire raising range. Now hero is OOP with JJ. if the nit's range is TT+, AQs+, AK, and he folds everything but KK+ to the 4-bet, the isolation 4-bet is +EV.

Who said we are raising him to get him to re-raise? We're raising him because he's a nit and likely to fold hands like AQ/AKo and we can iso against a player whose range is much worse than ours.

The NIT is unlikely to call a 4th bet pre. Pretty much his entire range will have to 5b or fold, and since he's a nit, he probably folds TT, JJ, AQ+, maybe even QQ. We aren't raising to induce a 5b, we are raising to force the nit to define his hand. He'll pile KK+ and we can fold, losing at or near the minimum when we are behind. Also, the 3bettor is described as a loose cannon, so JJ will do much better against him heads up since we can expect JJ to be the best hand very often.

The problem with flatting is that we are allowing the nit to close the action with the bottom of his range by calling and taking a flop, not having a clue what flop textures are good for us versus two players. Oh, and we will be OOP.

I'll add that, if we decide to click, we should click/fold against nit 5b and click/gii against V2.

I raise to iso here, fold if the nit comes back over and proceed with caution if he calls.

Iso looks best to me, nit can reasonably put us on a big hand and fold all but his best.

Is 16 a standard raise size in this game? That may have some relevance.

Good point.

I see what you guys are saying. I guess the nits I play against are true nits, because they aren't calling pre for $40 without a huge hand. Even for $24 here, they are either raising premiums or folding. If they do call, post-flop is a no-brainer. I can see the merits of clicking it back if he will fold for that but not for $24.

Of course, the nits I play with won't raise to $16 (even with $2 straddle) from UTG+2 without a premium

I routinely get labelled as the table rock but anything I raise UTG+2, I'm definitely calling the shove from a steaming short stack. However, a 4 bet from hero would then fold most of those hands out.

That said, I'm also not open raising 16bb with 99 or AJss from UTG in anything resembling normal table conditions so that needs examination too.

If 16bb is normal, fine let's 4bet, if we think it means exclusively premiums, we should just fold.

It is 8bb -- there is a straddle.

The game was extremely loose, i think the nit is aware that the whales were calling a raise to 10 as quick as a raise to 20 pre flop. The games in this casino are always deep, most players buying in for at least 200 bigs (excluding straddles).

A hand from earlier in the night involving V2 and a whale who limped in the JJ hand:

Unstraddled pot, Whale limps, nit limps, random limps, V2 limps, big blind makes it 16, whale calls, nit calls, random calls, V2 makes it 42. Whale calls, nit calls, random calls.

Flop is Q72. Whale jams ~200, nit folds, random calls covering both, V2 calls with A9x, board bricks out and random scoops with flush.

This was the sort of game all night, probably why the nit made it such a large amount pre flop. The nits raises were always between 5 and 10x depending on the amount of limpers, with him getting to so few showdowns couldn't get a correlation between raise size and starting hand strength

Wait, how much of a nit is he if he kept calling in that hand? He went from a $1 limp to a $42 call out of position (I think -- at least out of position in regards to random who covers)? With this information, clicking it back might not get him to fold whatever he's raising with UTG+2. I go back to my assessment of calling the $40 and playing poker, which shouldn't be too difficult with JJ. If he's better than JJ, he'll 4bet pre.

This was one of my problems, he hadn't show down hands and i was only going off what one of my friends told me.

I've played with him twice since this hand and he seems to be a competent player, wouldn't class him as a nit pre flop, loves calling when priced in, but post flop he does seem to be on the tighter side. He continued to make large raises whenever a whale had either limped in or was in the blinds, and this seemed to be working for him.

Update on the hand:

Obviously my initial perception of him altered how i played against him that hand, i ended up calling the 40 hoping to keep the whale in the hand and felt that the nit wouldn't go OTT without QQ+. whale called and then the nit raised to 135 with KK and held

It is ridiculous to try to play for a flop in this situation. Which is why you have the r/f advocates. Me, I'm lazy and like the easy path, fold AP.

JJ worked for Duhamel; I don't expect it to work for me.