1/3 blinds. Friendly heads up homegame versus a pokerpal I've known for 5-6+ years. He plays relatively solid in the full ring but tends to loosen up when heads up quite significantly because that's good strat. He's not a drooler by any means. Thinks through his decisions everytime and seems to be profitable in the longrun. He's actually up quite a bit on me lifetime. We mostly play holdem 99% of the time but there was a period where he'd play omaha and mix games with me when I asked and I think I have the edge in him in those since he doesn't have almost any experience in that world. He's an actuary by day and definitely knows the math of the game, but I've seen him do some wacky loose passive stuff heads up holdem like limp/call 3-4x BB raises on button with dogshit hands (T3o) and defends versus my openraises OOP from BB with some raggy offsuit connect/gap hands more than I think he should. Postflop is relatively solid though but seen him make a handful of light calls over the years. I've been playing pretty straightforward this specific session but he's seen me pull wacky moves in the past for sure. I've been a bit limpier than usual lately and don't limp-reraise very often though, hardly ever. TBH the times that I have, I almost always have it versus him and rarely do those hands even get to river for him to know the truth though. I've been doing quite a bit of limp/folding this session and had a feeling he'd try to take advantage of it this time.

We are about 450 deep to start this hand.

A couple funny little things to add on here. I'm not exactly sure whether the 27 bounty was on during this session but lately almost always we turn a small friendly bounty on. Usually like $15-$25 (depending on blinds). His typical rule of thumb is if the blinds are 1-2, 1-3 the bounty is 15 and if the blinds are 2-5 or 5-10 the bounty is 25. Or maybe it's $10 versus $15, honestly I'm not even 100% sure. This hand happened within the past few months so I think there's decently high chance 27 bounty was on.

We have a few other funny wacky "bounty" type hands we play as well. Typically we start the game at either 1-2 or 1-3 blinds and have a "sign from the (poker) gods to raise the blinds" hands that will force us to raise the blinds if someone wins with the hand and tables it. Those hands include

A2 = 1-2
A3 = 1-3
25 = 2-5
35 = yonkers aka 3/5 blinds lol
5T = 5-10

This playa is too scared to play me in anything higher than 5-10 though we have played quite a bit of hours at the 5-10 stakes over the years (idk, maybe roughly 25+ hours if I had to guess). We probably play heads up somewhere in the realm of a few hour session every few months on average but there's times where we'll play 4 days in a row and times where we take 6-8 months off perhaps.

He had an old roomate we started this with and when him and I played we include
TQ = 10-25 ten and quarter
25 = 25-50
A5 = 50-100 (also was $0.50-$1.00 when we started at $0.25/$0.50 stakes...the first stakes games I met these guys at years ago)

It started as the blinds can only go up. Recently for the lolz we have allowed the blinds to go up and down throughout the session based on the "signs from god" depending on what winning sign is shown. God is dead if you flash the opponent a sign from god and muck it lol.

And finally, there is another sign from god to play black(jack). These signs started as signs from god to double down (any 92, 83, 74, 56, i guess a8 counts too etc.). Recently we've also added any blackjack hand (AT, AJ, AQ, AK) is a sign from god to play black(jack) where if he or I win with one of these and table it then the loser has to deal the winner a hand of single deck blackjack. Usually like a flat bet of $20 or so.

So a few wacky random side-game/bounty plotpoints to keep in mind anytime I play this playa

I have black aces. I limp in. He raises to $10. I re-raise to $42 and he calls after a moment thought.

Q86

He leads into me. $40. Seems pretty strange spot to lead since you'd have to expect the limp-re-raiser to make a Cbet here almost 100% of the time so I'm not thrilled about it on this board versus this opponent so I elect to just call

Turn 5

He bets $80. Hero?

double edit - added another sign from god but it's irrelevant to this hand and none of ya'll business

I would do some reading on heads up play. Heads up you should rarely, if ever, limp in.
As played I would call turn and plan to call river unless it's a heart. It's easy for him to have anything with the Ah and be semi-bluffing. That is villain specific though and if you don't think he will continue with a river bluff very often you can fold. Particularly since your limp/raise preflop looks a lot like a big pair.
Your preflop size was too small, if your going to limp/raise you need to cut his odds. $60-$75 is where I would be looking. A raise of $30 means that any legitimate hand can see the flop, only his air bluffs are going to fold.

I think your post is too long for people to be willing to read :/
If you hardly ever limp-reraise, opponents will assume you have AA/KK when you do. Much much better to just raise pre.
Normally I'd say call the turn with intention of calling most non-heart rivers, or bet/folding if checked to. Having limp/reraised makes it a harder spot.

Also, limp-folding with any frequency is not good Once in a while, ok

If you are playing $500 stacks HU frequently, I think you should probably look at one of the HU courses (esp. around black friday when everything goes on sale): https://upswingpoker.com/the-end-boss-system/


In normal games monotone flops turn into set, flush and NFD games very quickly ... HU is very possibly wider than that though, even when you limp/3bet.

I don’t do it much but find myself in the spot here and there where I’ll limp a medium strength hand worthy of trying to see a cheap flop getting 3:1 in position like q5suited or k7off etc and when the bb happens to raise to 3-4 bb I just don’t think it’s profitable usually to call again when I’m up against a typically dominating range and a non brain dead opponent.

And people tell me my posts are too long...

I think I read something somewhere about range-limping from the SB/BTN in HU play. So, I guess limp-raising here is okay?

Flop - donk lead is strange, but whatever. He didn't 4B pre, so he shouldn't have any AXhh or much AhXx here. I might raise if we think we know what V is up to, but otherwise, IP, a call seems standard.

Turn - might raise. Might call and see a river.

HU, any AX in the BB could be good enough to 4B. Any big suited KX, too. Obviously 4B'ing QQ. So, he's repping pretty thin when he donk-leads the flop. Mostly middling pairs with a heart, 88 or 66, or low flushes.

If you flat call turn, I'd probably fold if he barrels river.

I can't take your response serious after your first statement about there being 0% chance guy can have any nut flush or low likelihood of NFD here because of his decision to not 4B a tight LRR OOP. sorry

on second thought I meant to say more like K4/K5 off. I believe I'm raising K7o heads up from button >80% of the time

Fair enough. I skipped everything in your OP before "I have black aces. I limp in." Maybe there was something in that wall of text that was relevant here, but ain't nobody got time to find it.

Don't know how much HU or short-handed you've played. I used to play in a weekly 3-player freeze out, so, a fair bit of HU and short handed experience. Maybe the freeze-out structure dramatically changes the pre-flop ranges.

If I was defending the BB against a tight LRR on the BTN, I'd be 4B'ing just all my suited AX, KQs, a lot of suited KX, almost any AXo, a lot of KXo, 77+. The ranges in HU play are so wide, your LRR range isn't as strong by default, and if you're balanced, there should be some weaker hands in that range, so 4B'ing AX from the BB becomes almost mandatory.

doc I'll happily play you heads up lmk what stakes you're comfortable with thx

Spoiler

Results

I hemmed and hawed for 1-2 pacing in circles and muttering I can’t believe I’m gonna do this and fold. Face down.

Opponent also mucks face down. I ask what he’s got and ask was AQ or KK or AA or something like that good and he basically says “my money doesn’t matter I’m sorry (John) I don’t remember go **** yourself” or something of the sort. We play for another half hour and he ends up few hundred. To this day I always say I’m gonna get him back and make him fold aces and he lolz

tldr

Well it’s worth the read if you play short handed home games. You’ll learn the art of peer pressuring fish into playing above their head and inducing -ev gambooooool

Am I a nit for folding?