Hey all. Interesting hand from the other night playing 2/5 at the V.

Villain: middle aged asian guy who has been playing fairly aggro, lots of hands IP. From what I've noticed he has a tendency to overplay made hands and I saw him call with weak holdings incorrectly in some very deep pots.

Hero: mid 20s white. Standard internet kid image

Eff stacks $1200
Villain straddles on the button.
Hero opens to $45 from UTG+1 with AA (this may be too small?)
Villain calls, BB calls.

Flop 38K
BB checks, Hero bets $85
Villain raises to $500
BB folds. Hero?

So my initial thoughts were that his raise size was horrible. At this sizing I think I'm forced to shove or fold. But I don't have the A so I think his range is going to be something like
AX / KT-Q / 33,88

Anyone else have thoughts on his range here?

Just fold. You played it perfectly.

Against a relative random always assign wider calling range, narrower raising range until knowing better.

In many higher stakes lineups this is an easy call/call, but here just fold.

OOP against an unpredictable straddler who is pretty likely to play with me and be hard to read postflop, I would raise more with a narrower range preflop. $55.

On the flop, I agree with your range. Depending on the player, a discounted AhKh might be in there. I discount Ahxh somewhat. I also heavily discount the sets because of the raise size. Why would V try to blow us off a guaranteed one pair hand with a monster? Without a lot more data, I am not giving him a big chance of trying to induce a light call in this spot by making a funny raise. That said, all the pair + heart draw hands are flips, so we can more or less ignore them given how little money is in the pot. The big question is whether he is more likely to play a bare heart draw like this than a set, noting that he has more combos of Ahxh in his range than 88/33.

If the answer is yes, I think calling and shoving a non-heart turn is better than shoving the flop. He will correctly call a flop shove with Ahxh, but will be forced to fold a blank turn with it. He might (incorrectly) fold Khxh on a blank turn as well. And I think you have an easy fold if a heart turns.

With AhAx, this is a fold. Same with AxKh or even AhKh.

One thing I didn't really account for in that post above is that sets beat us way harder than we beat naked flush draws, so he has to be significantly more likely to have the flush draw than the set to continue.

I think villain has some K8, K3, and maybe even 83s hands in his range given straddle and villain description. But I also think shoving is probably very slightly higher EV than folding - based on V description, I see this done occasionally/rarely with hands like KJ (which also makes me disagree with above poster who says to call and shove non heart turn). In fact, against an unknown with your description of aggro Asian guy getting too attached to hands, i'm inclined to believe that single pair Kx hands show up more often than sets (they don't do it for value, it's more just spazzing out when they think they're ahead but as soon as you call/raise, they know they're crushed). Of course, he could be completely owning you if you call - it might be that he just never does this with anything but sets. I'd probably take the lower variance route and just fold and wait til you have a better feel for villain's tendencies. But if you ship, I don't think it's horrible.

I think of it this way... If you're always shoving here, then people who are set-mining are completely owning you - they're gettinng over 30 to 1 implied odds when their odds of flopping a set are 1 to 7. So you should fold... BUT if you always fold here, then you could be bluffed relentlessly and you need to show up with KK at least like 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 times in this spot just to break even for all the times you raise pre and cbet this flop with weaker. So if you raised pre and bet only with AA, AK, and KK, you would only break even on this board when obviously you should be making a lot on those hands. So you should not fold.

In reality, if you don't go with hands like these at least some percentage of the time, chances are you're playing too weak, but if you can never let go of this, you're getting too attached/stationy. For LLSNL, definitely fold more often than not to significant aggression - as a whole, they tend to have it.

easy ship with your read

Your read is that he overplays made hands and calls with weaker holdings? Just fold and wait for your spot.

I agree with reading your own post!!

Your opening bet is predicated on how the table is playing both with and without the straddle ... You bet $35 into $27 from MP. That should be fine unless the 'normal' table open is $30 anyway. The BB put in some dead money so to me it's not a big deal that you had 3 to the Flop. I don't think V range is that much more defined with an extra 5-10 in chips.

I don't really like your c-bet .. only $85 into $140. If V calls from B (very likely) then BB gets 3.5 to 1 to continue. At this point I want to get rid of one of them. I think with $110ish you can more easily get away from the hand in a spot like this even though it cost you a larger bet 'to get the message'. The board is perfect for AK to try and charge the flush draws as there is really nothing else out there to charge. I think the more likely flush draw is from the BB, but really either V could have the draw. Find it!! Some may think you get too many folds here, but I want you to be able to do this with AQ/TT also and still get the same result/information.

Anther way to look at this may be to 'expect' a bet from B? Then you don't get into a spot like this when he over-plays a hand. Obviously with a 2nd V you may not want to risk this getting checked through. But when OOP against this type of player I can go into c/c mode for Flop and Turn and then lead River as you 'know' you get a call OTR.

You have 'one pair' .. and a dream .. wake up and fold I think as you already know there will be more spots like this one coming soon. GL

I'd ship because I don't like folding hands against bad lags.

Why are people shoving the flop rather than non-heart turns?

You are coin flipping against a Khxh, crushing AK, getting crushed by all the sets.

I'm never shoving here. Calling is possible with your read, you can get away from a Heart or K turn.

Overall I am folding, I don't think he has a hand that we are crushing often enough

I would do this against some other player types. I think this play gains some EV against his big made hands (sets/two pairs) and big combo draws (Kxhh). But it loses EV against naked flush draws, Kx hands, and random bluffs (if any are in his range). I think you have to be very certain that his range is almost completely composed with hands from the first group. But then we should fold -unless we're also very certain that by far, most of his range is big combo draws and not big made hands.

I've been curious about these spots though. I'll work out some EV calculations later.

My gut tells me that you gain more value against NFDs by blowing them off the turn and protecting your equity in the pot than you do by charging them on the flop to get two cards, but I could be wrong.

Back of the envelope calculations:

-There is a little more than $1k in the pot after you call. If he has a NFD, seeing the river after a non-heart turn is worth about $200 to him.
-On the flop, you have about 63.6% equity against the NFD. That means that your overlay on putting an additional $700 in on the flop is about $190 (=63.6%*$1400 - 700).

Maybe nitpicking here but you are not 225 BB deep in a straddled pot. Take that with a grain of salt as most live low stakes players think in dollars rather than blinds. I think this spot depends a lot on your stomach for variance and also anything you can pick up in the moment on how comfortable villain looks. I'm probably jamming relatively often here against described opponent.

PF: IMO, 9x if fine UTG+1. Depends on the table dynamic.
F: (3) handed. Pot $137. SPR is 9. Bet is fine. So we get raised 6x. Damn! It's pretty big raise. Would he raise that much with a set? Probably 3! KK PF. He likely doesn't have K3, K8, or 83. It really seems he is representing AhXh and he's betting large so if you shove, he'll just go with it. Yeah, I think you are ranging him pretty well here; he's got 33, 88, Ahxh, Khxh and that's about it.

Yeah, it looks like a shove or fold here. Damn....tough decision.

It's close.

I shove