Hero is YWG in an afternoon 1/2 game. I have ~700 after having just won a big pot against the villain in this hand that I'll explain below. My image to the table is probably LAGgy, but this is only villain's third hand.

Villain is older and middle eastern. When he walked up, the guy to my left (who I'm reasonably friendly with) said, "game just got good" under his breath. He posted a $5 straddle UTG his first hand. OMC in MP raised to 10, got one caller, I made it 40 OTB with AA. Villain called the 40 cold. We went heads up to an AK3 flop, he called a cbet, and he called a shove on an 8 turn with K6dd. "I have a king, how can I fold?" On his second hand, middle aged Asian gambooler opened huge from MP, Villain shoved another 200 from the BB, got snapped off by the Asian dude with KK and had TT. So he's down two buyins in five minutes.

On his third hand, it folds to me in the HJ with AcJd. I raise to 10, and it folds to Villain in the SB who grabs a chunk of chips without counting and flings them forward. Turns out to be 55.

I...

This is one of those spots I find hard to play optimally. I think folding to a guy who is clearly very spewy is bad, OTOH I think shoving is optimistic (I lean to shoving AQ). I probably end up stationing it and trying to GII on any A or J high board.

Ship city

I rarely get anything playable against those maniac guys.

I would knock over my chips trying to get them in there.

+1

If you want to gambol then sure ship it, but me persinally AJo is the very low endol of your range. Against this guy would rather wait for a better spot and just value bet the guy to town.

$10? This guy is laughing at you.

I understand why you raised AJo to $10 in late position, and before villain sat down that was a good idea. But that was then, and now you have to face the reality that about 90% of your hands between now and when this guy gets tired of playing are going to be against him specifically. Time to adjust.

If you're in for a raise, understand you are playing short-stacked. Bring game. And don't be equivocal about it. Open to 10% of villain's stack. Make him decide if he wants to stack off, and accommodate him when he does. Open for $30 if you have to. Don't let him set the tempo.

Anything that's not in your short-stack range, if you're going to play it at all, limp in and let him do the betting at first. Be selective about which flops you continue on. Don't try to pull your TAG moves on him, you aren't taking it down OTF so don't even try.

Look if you're like honey badger and don't really care all that much, you can play TAGs all night long by raising pre, calling the flop, and bombing the everlasting bejeesus out of the turn or river. Doesn't matter what either one of you guys have. Look, when you raise pre and cbet the flop, it doesn't matter what anybody has, right? Usually nobody has anything OTF and if you're the aggressor, you win basically. Here's your problem. You wind up on the turn with dick most of the time, and you're like those fit-or-fold fish you've been cbetting. You don't have anything to call with most of the time and you're tight, your instinct is to fold OTT or OTR if you don't have the goods. Somewhere in his tiny LAG brain he figured that out.

AJo is going to have nothing about 70% of the time OTF, and it's gonna be worse than nothing on some board runouts. Man. Don't make it so easy for this guy.

Wanna shove? Fine. AJ looks like AK, there's a world of difference between the two but maybe it's close enough for your purposes. Fine. He doesn't care.

All-in.

It sounds like this guy is on full blown monkey tilt. I'm happily shipping it here.

Yeah you know AK is so solid, you're 45% to make TPTK by the river, and depending on villain's hand he's usually somewhere between 2-15% to draw out on you. There's an argument for playing passively, playing aggressively or even shoving pre, depending on the villain.

AJ is 45% to make a hand that's *probably* a winner, and that's good, but there's still a world of difference between AJ and AK. When I'm trying to decide whether to call a raise pre, whether or not AJ is in villain's range is a key consideration, that's the point where I flip from only wanting to continue with a narrow range of super-premiums to wanting to continue with a broad range of equity hands. By opening with AJ, hero is by definition opening a not-strong range. OTF hero is drawing to a dominated pair, which gives villain more ways to win. Analysis of flop texture, in light of what's still in villain's range after pre-flop action becomes a key concern.

So I generally like the check/eval line, and I wonder if, by the same token, there's an argument for limp/calling AJo here.

FWIW, I really dislike opening to more than normal because there are two OMCs between me and villain. If I open to 25 or 30 and one of them flats, when V spazzes I'm going to REALLY hate life. By opening standard I prevent myself getting crushed by an interloper with a super premium range.