This one is heavily read dependent so I am wondering what others who have seen this before would do.

V is a 40 something chinese guy. Super lag. Has weekly 2k+ swings at 1/3 and is currently down about 1k. Seems to make good reads a lot of the time but I think he just enjoys bluffing and putting a lot of money in the pot regardless. Hes never gotten out of line with me in terms of trash talking/needling etc and is either quiet or friendly to anyone he talks to.

Another weird dynamic to this hand. V has raised my sb (or more likely the fish to my lefts BB) around 8 of the last 10 orbits.

UTG limps
$210 V utg+3 raises 15
$400 H sb AKo raises to 60
utg folds
V calls

Flop Ts3c2s. I have Ks.

I gesture to this guy, who has headphones in btw, to move his hands so I can see his stack. He starts counting out all his chips, piles them on top of each other and puts $160 in the pot out of turn. The bet stands. I am very TAG and cbet maybe 66% of the time in HU pots and have been cbetting a lot this session. I am not 100% sure if this is an angle due to him never getting out of line like this with anyone before and us never having any kind of words.

Is there a world where I should have called here?

Sounds like an angle. If you had gone all in you would have put some chips in and the dealer would have indicated to villain to act. How could he possibly interpret your behavior as an indication that you "put him all in".

So why would he do this? He has position. If he was planning on committing on no A/K flop why not let you bet first. It sure looks like a draw to me or just maybe AK but I wasn't there so it's hard to say.

I guess he could have thought that you were telling him that is was his action *and* he was confused and acted out of turn.

Feels like an angle, although I am struggling to see what his action accomplishes apart from to put you off bluffing or barrelling

Feels like a draw or some other kind of hand with 20-40% equity against your range like 34 etc

The important question is, would he allow himself to do this when he has a monster? Probably not

[EDIT] - To answer your question, I probably just fold this exact hand

Check (to make his action binding), and then call.

Just to clarify, is that $160 his entire stack?

Try not to think too hard if something is an angle or not. You know the saying "you can't cheat an honest man"? It kind of applies. Angles work because people get greedy and think they've got an unfair advantage. But you can't just do the opposite of what you think the angle is meant to do, because it could be a reverse angle. You end up flipping a coin when you should be using your advantage as a better poker player.

So instead of V making a weird out of turn bet which may or may not have been intentional, pretend you are in position and after you 3bet, V donked into you on the flop. Would you shove or fold? Your choice should be the same here.

The result of the "angle" is that V effectively gave up position in the hand. That's a pretty big advantage and you don't even have to play mind games to get it.

Just call it off with SPR 1.3. It's hard to have less than 25% equity when behind against a loose player and we are ahead of lots of draws/random punts.

As for what his OOT action means, my first thought is that he thinks the only way he can win the pot is if he gets to bluff first.

Yes. He counted it all out, said the number, put all the chips on top of each other and put them in.

Actually didnt think of that since I havent been put in this spot before. Kind of half and half in here as to whether I should call or not so I guess folding or calling is pretty close either way?

Im not understanding why we need 25% equity here. Its 160 to win 280.

Ty for this post

I'm not sure what your hand gesture actually was, but is it possible he thought you checked? People often just point to the other guy when they check.

And +1 to DK Barrel, hard to see how it's an angle. He wants to give up position, by going all-in, for slightly more than pot-sized, against the preflop 3-bettor?

Its very possible I pointed to the guy and as I said in OP this would be out of character for him to angle but during the pointing I was also making a "raise your arms" motion. V also doesnt over jam pot like this that I can ever remember. Hes more likely to make a smaller bet to see what I do imo.

That's not what I said. We need 36% equity. Against a pair that doesn't dominate us we have about 28%. He's going to have less than a pair a decent chunk of the time especially considering he should allow us to c-bet if he actually had something. This flop misses our perceived 3-bet range, too.

Im not questioning you, I just dont understand. Why do we need 36% equity here? Do you just punch in a typical lag range into equilab vs ako on this board and come up with 36%?

We need at least ~36% to profitably call based on the pot odds we're getting. The formula to find this number is [risk]/([win]+[risk]) = 160/(280+160). The formula is derived from the EV (Expected Value) equation which you can easily find information on in many places on the internet.

In my first post I guessed that we rarely have less than 25% against individual hands in villain's range. Our true equity against villain's range is anyone's guess, but we need to have at least 36% equity.

Ok ty. I do have the results from this hand when the comments die down.

call

I'd probably go slightly larger preflop to setup a PSB shove on any flop I whiff (otherwise slowplaying to induce).

Should absolutely know his chipstack before you make your preflop decision. For instance, if we knew beforehand that he was actually as deep as us then you could argue for a fold preflop due to risk vs reward differences in stack sizes (or perhaps a flat to draw in a dominated limper hand) or whatever.

So with knowing his stack size I would have just open shoved the flop and lived with results. We have FE against some hands and otherwise if called will suck out a decent amount of the time.

Trickier case now as it's possible your check has induced, although honestly it's unlikely it has on this board. My guess is his bet is mostly for value here and it puts us in an awkward spot where we likely have to fold all our equity.

It's your responsibility to protect your hand, and one part of this is knowing his stacksize preflop (or either somehow asking for his stack size less ambiguously postflop) to prevent these accidental weird spots.

GcluelessNLnoobG

You're going to argue for a fold versus someone that has raised the same player's blind 8/10 of the last orbits? lol

PF is fine. No idea what I would do here, probably still just bet half pot.

I'm not arguing for a fold in this hand with these stacks, since the relatively small dead money in the pot is still a decent amount of the effective stack plus we can easily set up a flop shove when we whiff. With larger stacks, I think you could argue for a fold as playing OOP with decent stacks behind HU against this guy won't be pleasant (although other options are obviously in play too).

The point was that we should know the stack sizes preflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

People shouldn't sit in such a way that their chips are mostly out of view but I suspect many do on purpose. Also, you should never interact with a player to find out his chip stack but instead just ask the dealer, "about how much does he have left"?

My ideology vs this V type and stack size is hes going to have garbage a huge amount of the time and on top of that its hard to hit a flop. I am getting all the money in regardless so why chase out bad hands by over raising pf? Is there a COTW that explains why making a psb shove for flop is so important because I dont understand how a slight overshove vs psb at 1/3 is going to be a huge deal.


I dont know if this is the right way to think or not but throwing it out there for GG to comment. FWIW I would have bet 40-60 on the flop to induce (for this board texture) and called any shove and/or bet the rest on the turn. He is for sure the type to make moves in weird spots/boards he know I dont hit well.

Ok well assuming he legitimately thought you were checking...

The fact that he raised PF 8/10 last times makes it kind of easy to build ranges I think. If he has a pair you're 25%. If he has spades you're 50%. If he has garbage you're 75%. If he has set/AA/&c let's just say it's 0%, close enough, plus maybe we'll assume he wouldn't play those that way, and if he's playing ATC those will be rare, I scribbled some odds and it doesn't change much. So let's just ignore them for now.

ATC will flop a pair something like 1/3 of the time. He'll have a PP 6% of the time but he we can discount big pairs since he didn't 4b. 2/3 of the time he'll whiff.

So ball park, we need him to have no pair about 1/4 of the time that he bets.
(0.25 * 0.75) + (0.75 * 0.25) ~= 0.36

What if his plan is to push whenever he hits a pair and you check? I do see that at 1/3. "I put him on AK!". Right. So 33% of the time he has a pair. We need him to show up with no pair 11% of the time, or something like > 1/5 of the time he whiffs.

Anyway I think since there is very little info (he raises ATC, calls, bets when you check flop) this really just comes down to reads a lot. What do you think his plan is? Then, plug the numbers in. You need to guess at what he's thinking, and you're probably the best one to judge that.

Given your description, and what I generally see at 1/3 at my local casino, I feel it's close. Call if you like to gamble!

I call. We should have decent equity and an aggressive V is liable to overbluff in this situation (monotone flop which we checked).

You didnt read the whole OP. I never checked. V bet out of turn, Im the sb.

If he's as loose swingy / going to have garbage most of the time / etc. like you say, then there is almost 0% difference in calling frequency between a $60 raise and a $70 raise. It's a big raise either way; he's either calling it or he ain't.

The $60 raise ain't horrendous, but it does leave us with $150 back in a $126 pot. A $65 raise would leave us with $145 back in a $136 pot, and a $70 raise leaves us $140 back in a $146 pot. The latter raise sizes leave us with much closer to a PSB left, which I like because a shove (even over two streets as you had planned which is fine) gives us 2:1 to reach the river; lots of times he manages to fold a small pear, and meanwhile if he manages to squeak out a call the 2:1 shove doesn't leave us too far off our required 3:1 to chase clean overcards. The more me leave back for postflop, the worse odds we give ourselves for making this move. Again, it's not horrendous or anything, but it's probably just that slightly more profitable with no drawback to do so.

GimoG