2/3 NL. I have ATo in MP. It's folded to me and I raise to 15. The cutoff, button, small blind and big blind all call. Pot is about 75ish as we go to the flop.

T67, all hearts. I don't have the Ah.

SB is a young aggro guy. He takes a lot of shots and 3-bets light preflop, but seems to be good and hasn't appeared to get caught doing anything stupid postflop. BB is an old guy calling station. I think he's seen every flop for an hour.

SB bets $25. BB calls. It's to me. I have about $175 in my stack. Pot is $125.

What to do?

What was your reason for raising pre? If it was to play 5-way pots in mediocre position with marginal cards than mission accomplished. You're playing ~60 BB's pre. Your objective is to play strong TPTK hands, flop well and stackoff. ATo doesn't fit anywhere into that paradigm.

As for what to do in this specific hand - it doesn't really matter. You could be a slight favorite or you could be drawing dead, which means shoving or folding could be correct. Your thought process should be fixing your preflop leaks rather than what to do once you get yourself in a self-inflicted awkward spot.

Fold without thinking twice. 1-pair on a monotone board that hits late position ranges pretty hard (all the 4x5x, 8x9x combos) and there's action in front of you and behind you. Chances that 1 of the draws will get there by the river (or already got there)...

You also have no fold equity unless you shove flop.

And we're not drawing to the nuts either.

I would fold this pre also and only open AJo+

It was a pretty loose table and everyone was playing all sorts of garbage, while I was just folding a lot. I figured this was a better than average hand and not horrible position and I hoped that the guys behind me would notice that I had been pretty tight and fold and I'd have position on the flop. Obviously, none of that worked.

Fold. SB is unlikely to be leading into 5 people on a mono board with less than TP no heart. And even if he is, how much would you like to spend to find out whether you happen to be best OTR?

I don't necessarily hate preflop, but if you're going to do this, you have to be able to toss it without a second thought when it doesn't work.

This is what not working looks like.

What gave me trouble was the specific styles of the two players who had acted in front of me. SB is easily capable of making this bet with just a single big heart and BB would probably call with just about any two cards, since there are a lot of pieces he could have had of this flop.

Had they been more average players (as far as aggression), I would have viewed their moves differently.

I get it. But you're against four opponents. You have to beat all of them, not just the aggro guy that bet... into four opponents. Or the calling station that you're going to have difficulty moving off the hand that accidentally beats you.

In the unlikely event that TPTK with no heart ends up being best OTR against the four other opponents OTF, you'll win a little something. In the more likely event that you're beat, you're going to face choices for all your chips.

Playing LAG preflop can be very effective. But only if you're ruthless about realizing when it didn't work and you need to bail out. It's fine to put pressure on the opponents for small bets as long as you can push them off their hands, or extract max value when you hit, *and cut your losses when the situation is unfavorable*.

If you get married to superficially positive situations, if you figure "maybe they're playing back", you're going to lose too much when it doesn't work.

TPTK is pretty unlikely to be best by the river. With 150 in the pot already (175 with your call) and only 150 back, you're not going to be able to push all four other players out often enough to make a profit.

IMO, it really is a trivial fold, even against one player of the four that you think might be making a move.

The more I think about it, the more I agree that you're right.

I think my main problem here was feeling that I was, at that second, ahead. I think the way to think of it is ... if all the players had showed me their cards and I actually was ahead at that point, I probably would have seen so many outs against me and the inability to prevent people from chasing them that I should have just kept my powder dry to fight another day.

I think the other thing I need to remind myself is, at these type of games, there are going to be so many opportunities to win huge pots with no hard decisions, just from other player's stupidity, that it's probably ok to err on the side of caution in the close spots.

I would see a turn for this sizing. Not putting in much further action on bricks.