Playing 1/2 live today and a hand came up where I was a little befuddled on a dead money situation.

Hero- 20's white male. Quiet, perceived most likely as a TAG ish player. The table was bad as it had a lot of fit or fold players so I was opening/barreling a little more than usual.

Villain- 20's white male. LAG-gy. Very competent for the 1/2 level. We have a little history but nothing other than me calling a standard spot with a made straight/flush redraw, and him having a bigger flush draw/straight draw a while back. I respect his game and I think he respects mine as we don't spar too much. That said, I've seen multiple occasions where he pushes fold equity with draws a TON.

Table is 7 handed.

Hero (185) raises UTG to 11 with AJo
Two calls from FF droolers in MP
Villain (160) calls from the BB.

Ak9hh flop. Pot (45)

Hero elects to fire 28 with the intention of folding to resistance from the MP guys and re-evaluating if the villains action is anything other than fold. Droolers both fold and it the villain makes it 75.

I have him ranged at mostly huge draws as I don't hold the Ace of hearts. I don't think he flats AK so his value range here is k9s, 99, A9, and then he can do this a larger amount of the time with draws that have just a ton of equity against TP type hands. So the question is, at what point is the BE threshold if I believe I'm essentially flipping against his TP flush redraw range? I have 39 invested and I'm looking at committing 121 more.

Aren't you looking at committing $146 more? $185 - $39?

$160 effective

Assuming no FE, you're committing $121 to win $194 -> you need 38.5% equity.

If you typically get 3 callers with this open UTG either open bigger or just fold. I hate playing AJo from EP in multi-way pots.

As played, are there any strong Aces in his BB flat range? (AQ, AJ?).

Vs. the range you provided you have roughly 40%

www.pokerstrategy.com
Board: AdKh9h
Equity Win Tie
UTG 38.97% 36.36% 2.61% { AJo }
BB 61.03% 58.42% 2.61% { 99, A9s, K9s, KhQh, AhJh, KhJh, QhJh, AhTh, KhTh, QhTh, JhTh, Qh9h, Jh9h, Th9h, Ah8h, Th8h, 9h8h, Ah7h, 8h7h, Ah6h, 7h6h, Ah5h, 6h5h, Ah4h, Ah3h, Ah2h, A9o }


Not the best of situations to get your money in. Even if you call and a blank comes on the turn your equity doesn't improve much. You have to give him a LOT more flush draws in his range to get yourself in a position where you are a 55-45 favorite on the flop. You say he's decent so that's unlikely. I would fold and find a better spot.

My first instinct is to fold. He isn't raising with a worse hand for value, and seemingly any draw he has has around 50% equity against you (QJ, JT,AT).

After Pokerstoving the value range you gave him with the above drawing hands you are a 26% dog against him, needing roughly 3-to-1 to get the money all-in breaking even, and you are not getting that price.

If you shove you have no fold equity against him, so even if you are against the drawing part of his range he's going to call, and he could have you beat already.

Two assumptions: one, the A on the flop was not a heart as you made it a point to say you didn't have the A; two, he was the bb so he check-raised you for less than 3x even though he's out of position? That makes it seem like he can't wait to get the money in the middle and more likely he's at the value/higher end of his range.

This is the crux of my question I suppose. I know he knows I'm not doing this too light. He should assume that I'm raising a range of ajs+ pairs and occasionally suited connectors. When I do make the c-bet in a lot of ways I'm saying... Hey, I've got the A end of my range here how do you want to proceed. So, with that assumption I don't expect him to raise his AQ, AJ hands because he can C/C and allow my occasional bluffs to continue on the turn. In a lot of ways his raise is polarizing to 2pair+ and monster draws. I don't expect him to do this with run of the mill flush draws but with history I expect him to table the A high flush draw a large percentage of the time. Intuitively, I knew it was close but I wasn't sure exactly if I was on the positive or negative side.

Also, I added the part about the table being dead because I was getting into situations where I would raise any amount and get one caller. I was essentially just picking random numbers from 8-15. I agree, there are probably better spots but if I fold here too often then I allow myself to be exploited in the long run, I think.

Based on the range and read you provided this is a mraginal spot and even if folding is a mistake it isn't a big one.

As for being exploited, if you think villain is pulling this with air often enough this of course changes your equity, but you didn't provide such info. I wouldn't worry about being exploited just yet, too often we level ourselves into bad situations by this feeling when in reality the guy is just running hot. Wait for more concrete info before worrying about it. Besides, with a bunch of other fish at the table you don't have to best this guy to show a profit, and it's less likely this guy will be "pulling moves" assuming he's good with a bunch of LP players at the table.

One instance of someone fighting back, and you're already worried about being exploited : ) ? By your own thinking he has big hands or big draws and that makes a fold IMO.

Also, for the ranges of hands he could have, please let us know which cards were which suits on the flop.

I'm not assuming that's he's pulling a move because he's in the hand with me and I want to call. I wanted to stress that I've seen him on multiple occasions use FE to aggressively leverage a pot. The original question was just an equity calculation in a vacuum. Assuming, the hero doesn't have a limited bankroll and if he played this hand 100 times would he show a profit? If so, is that profit enough to warrant a shove? What I'm starting to discern though is that this spot is way too marginal to worry about losing that 39 dollars. However, if we fold here at what point do we make a stand in the future? I guess we just re-adjust if it happens with frequency?

Sorry, the flop was Axkh9h.

Also, can you please confirm if you were check-raised from $28 to $75? If that was the case then in my mind that screams he has a monster.

Anyway, with the flop of AK9 (I used A for the equity calculations even though we don't know which suit it was) I give you 30% equity against him using what I would consider a GENEROUS range.

IMO he's not making this move with a pure flush draw given his raise sizing. For his range I included 99, A9, K9 (both suited and not), QJ, JT (for the straight and flush combo draw), and then all of the Ax hands.

I don't think all of the Ax hands are equally likely or as likely as the other hands in his range.

35%, you forgot our $28 flop bet I think.

Just stove it, you should have enough history to guess his range better than us but your logic about a narrow value range sounds solid to me.

Is he defending K9o (shouldn´t be if he is good)
Is he C/R bare draws like 67hh
Could it ever be AQ etc

This. I routinely fold AJo/KQo in EP, they're just not worth the postflop headaches.

Took me a loooooooooong time to get to this "epiphany". Felt like I was growing the day I leanred you can open fold AJo UTG