Hero($160)MP: 20s African American/Asian female. New to poker but plays it regularly now. Still learning. At this table she has been seen as a TAG.

Villian($53) #1UTG: MAWG who purpose ly plays short stack. Loses his money alot but keeps rebuying at $50

Villain #2 ($300) btn: MAWG who is only in the hand if he's the initial agressor with the intention s of going all in. Based on his play I've seen, he only plays pairs and will go to showdown no matter if his pair is the underdog.

Hero has AQ

Villian #1 makes it $7

Two callers

Hero thinks of doing a squeeze play but decides to call $7

Villian #2 makes it $62 on the BTN.

Villain #1 calls for his total of $53

Folded to Hero....

While hero was thinking, Villian thought it was heads-up and exposed his Q8 hand. Which meant hero's AQ would be relying more on her A to hit than a Q.

Hero knows that this is a fold or shove situation but was kinda timid as she saw that she lost a Q that she could possibly hit on the board.

What's y'all's verdict??

3 bet pf is preferred for sure to iso the bad short stack. As played just fold.

"Don't go broke with a Queen in your hand."

AQ can be dominated.

AQ needs to improve to win, most likely.

The $53 possibly dead money from Villain 1 helps, but this is at best a high variance flip and at worst we are an underdog.

Unless our read is that we are under-represented to Villain 2 with our $7 flat, and maybe THEY are the one that is dominated...

But then our read is that he has a pair most likely, thus we are around a 55-45 dog to Villain 2 at best...

Surely there will be better spots to shove.

Do I play in some games where I wouldn't mind the variance? Yes.

With villains like Villain 2 for $160? No.

OP, did you play in Las Vegas about 5-6 weeks ago?

no I played at a casino in Michigan today while I was traveling back to new York city. This was one of the hands I played tonight

The reason you fold to the raise preflop is that you have to call a large chunk of your stack to see the flop, thus reducing your implied odds. Not to mention you'll be OOP.

If V only does this with 99-JJ, you have 46% equity. Add AKs/o & you have 39%. However, that's besides the point. The real problem is: not enough implied odds & OOP.

You're probably being overly specific with that read on V2, just because all he has shown down so far is pairs doesn't mean he can't have like AQ/AK here.

V1 showing Q8o is good for you, not bad. If I give V2 {77+,AJs+,AQo+}, removing a Q and 8 from the deck means your heads-up winning chances only decline by 3%. The fact that you now dominate the third opponent is worth slightly more to you than that. It's good enough for you that it's almost - but not quite - worth flatting the reraise and playing fit or fold. But on balance you still need to fold.

Which Villain did this? If it was V2, then a shove is clear...if V1 then it is a fold.

Ok, so V2 has nothing but 22-AA vs. AQ & you have 45% equity & would be getting the wrong price HU. But V1 called with his last $53, so put him on a range & compute your equity vs. 22-AA & whatever V1's range is vs. your money odds.

It's really that simple.

V2 betting this high lets me believe he has a JJ-66 range in his hand

I played with him for about 2-3 hrs and he slowed played his KKs and QQ as well as his AK which cost him $$$ at the showdown


At this point I believe he has JJ -99

He wouldn't have done this with AQ or AK at all. Or at least based on how he's been playing them all night