Underground game in NYC

V: MAWG (looks European, but speaks perfect American), bought in for max (700), no real reads as this hand happened 1/2 hr into the session, he's limped a few hands but no showdown

H: Late 20s Asian guy, bought in max, V and H have never played before, but V probably views H as TAG, won a couple of small pots without showdown

OTTH - Effective stacks $700

Button Mississippi's to $12, folds to V in MP who calls, folds around to H in the CO with AKo who raises to $50 (slightly bigger raise to iso V), button folds, V calls

Flop ($116) AT5
V checks, H bets $75 (in retrospect this is a slightly bigger raise than I would've liked, I think 60ish would've been good to get value from worst aces and draws), V raises to $225, H?

In general, I think it is a bad idea to get into tricky deep situations against guys we don't have a handle on yet.

One solution to this would be to limp preflop and keep the pot a lot smaller / manageable and just play a pot in position and see what happens. This might also induce a raise behind us which puts even more dead money into the pot and we could then reraise or even shove (setting up a fairly trivial situation).

However, with some dead money in the pot and position and such a strong hand, raising is fine too. But then I would approach postflop a lot more carefully. Against ABC guys we have a book on, we can feel pretty comfortable bet/folding the flop or even building a big pot where we can exit on later streets against face up aggression. However, against unknown guys, we might feel a lot more uncomfortable foldings to a check/raise. Of course, we're going to have to fold to a check/raise because I'm guessing we're going to feel a whole lot more uncomfortable putting in a huge chunk of a big stack and possibly facing a bet for stacks on the turn. So, with this in mind, I'd simply check back the flop. The SPR is admittedly a fairly small 6.5, and so it might be a little difficult to pot control and not play for stacks (which is probably something we don't want to do deep against an unknown), but we can at least try, and checking back the flop accomplishes that. Keep in mind the chances he happens to be on a draw that has hit this board AND hits that draw on the turn is very small, so the risk of this is far better than the risk of playing for stacks, imo.

Also, I know due to the big straddle that technically we're not all that deep (only ~60bbs). But we have no idea how this guy treats $700 at the table; does he treat it as just ~60bbs, or does he more treat it like $700 / 233bbs? We don't know.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Well, it's not my $ but it sure looks like a shove to me.

We are concerned about TT and 55. So 6 combos. We're ahead or tied with AK (6), AQ (8), Axcc (9?)... discount some of those combos if you like - but then include in some other like KQcc QJcc. We might also expect V to check back sets some of the time.

I can't see folding. Calling is possible I suppose, if we could ever see ourselves folding to a turned and a big bet.

Fold