Weekday afternoon at MGM National Harbor. Playing the 1/3 game.

Villain 1 is an Asian man in his 40s wearing a USAF Retired cap. He has been pretty active in this game, seeing 60% of flops and donking rather frequently. In a previous hand, he straddled UTG, one limper, hero raises to $25, folds to him, he thinks and calls, limper calls. Flop K62r. He throws out a red chip. Limper calls, hero calls. Turn 4hh. He bets $40, limper (weak tight guy) raises to $100, hero folds (kind of annoying spot with KJo that of course I don't show), villain turns JJ face up and folds. In another hand hero raises UTG, villain calls, a tight player calls behind. Flop AK3ssc. Hero bets $30 into $45, villain puts together raising chips, then eventually folds. Other guy calls and hero then x/f to a small bet on an Acc turn. $500.

Villain 2 is an Asian man in his 60s. Has been pretty active, but hasn't been very aggressive. In only hand with hero he limp/called, called my bet into two people on 967r, then x/f on a Qx turn. $500.

Hero just played a hand less than an orbit ago in which I called an EP raise, raised a $50 c-bet to $125 on T42sss, shoved on a 2h turn for $80 effective, then told the raiser "Pair is good," on the Td river (his red 88 held against my overs and NFD). V2 had commented that the guy was crazy to call down in that spot since I had been playing pretty tight. So not entirely sure about how these guys view me. As you'll see, I'm also not sure whether V2's action in this hand has much to do with me or if he's more concerned with V1. I start this hand with $350.

OTTH

V1 straddles UTG. V2 limps, I raise to $25 with AK from CO, folds to V1 who calls. V2 calls.

$71 in pot after drop.

Flop A J 3.

V1 donk leads for $26. V2 quickly makes it $75. Hero ???

If I ever opened a poker room, I'd build a bar and grill next door and call it the Donk & Raise.

As for the hand, it really depends on how much aware V2 is. Is he trying to iso V1 b/c he knows V1 is donking light all the time? Or is he typical level 1 1/3 player and playing his hand.

Most likely fold. The only worse hand I really see V2 often doing this with is AQ, but he surely has some better hands A3, AJ, 33, maybe JJ. And even though V1 is making weird donk leads with weak hands, he'll show up with hands some of the time.

A call is perfectly reasonable though. In this situation it's possible V2 is doing this with weaker aces because of V1 history... I just tend not to love it when there's still V1 behind to close the action. The other problem is that V2, even if he has hands like AT or AQ, is going to feel committed to keep betting on the turn to price out flush draws. So you may find yourself in spots where you're questioning if you want to call off stacks with one pair.

The other thing you could do is raise to like $125, and just commit to not putting (calling off) another dollar in the pot after that. It's a way to define your hand and slow down V2 in a pot-controllish way. You may even be able to get stacks in good if it comes like 5 and it goes check/check, and then another brick - say a 3 - and V2 checks again; in this case, I'd want to bet a lot because it looks like a I missed a flush draw to some villains.

Yuck! I hate folding, but that just looks so strong. I fold and never tell.

so the guy likes to donk out with under pairs, he donks out here for 1/3rd psb and the other guy is probably aware of this and maybe has an ace.

I think I call and see what he does ott.

Call and evaluate turn based on sizing.

How EP are we and how active is the table, especially with straddles out? The more EP we are / the more active the table, I probably lean towards limp/reraise preflop. With this stack, if we're opening, I'd probably go $35 to setup a trivial SPR spot postflop with TP (noting that $35, while large, is by no means zero-action large at my typical table with a straddle, not sure if yours is the same).

I'd probably sigh fold the flop. V2 seems to be fairly passive / not out-of-line. Is he really going crazy with AQ enough? He's facing a donk on a drawy board with the "tight" original raiser still to act behind him, I'm just not convinced this is AQ enough.

GcluelessNLnoobG

My initial thought was that just calling would be a more efficient way to define things. If V2 has AQ/AT, a cold call from me kind of screams "I have AK," and he may think I'm just never folding. He may therefore slow down in response to my cold call.

Unfortunate part about a cold call is that it gives V1 5:1 odds to continue with the flush draws in his range and may even cause him to shove if he has a combo draw.

Don't really love any of my options, but I guess this is a matter of trying to find the least bad course of action.

Sorry, I should have included this in the OP. I am in the cutoff for this hand.

Just 4 people to act behind us, but if any of them are active, I still wouldn't hate a LP limp/reraise. Although with these stacks where I can get in 10% preflop, I'd probably lean towards the raise at this point.

GcluelessNLnoobG