Puke. But no way I'm folding that pre.

I would like to point out that the fact that we have $10 invested here makes exactly no difference in our decision point now.

If never makes a difference how much money we have already invested in the pot.

Also, I'm folding here.

Exactly. That $10 isn't yours now. It's part of the pot. I am not spending $180 to protect the $10 I have invested with 5 people behind me who can have me drawing dead.

Would you spend $180 to protect $50 if you had put that into the pot already?
What if you had put $100 into the pot already?

Well, it would depend on the size of the pot but the same concept applies ... it isn't my money anymore.

True, but you can still think of it as an "investment" as the total pot size before any flop action is about proportional to what we've put in ($10 times 7 players). But because our equity tends to decrease as the number of players increases, how much we've "invested" vs potential future payments to the pot *is* a useful metric.

What I mean, is consider if we happened to call $40 and get heads up. There's a similar amount of money in the pot ($80). Here it would make sense to be prepared to throw in 10x our initial investment ($400). That's because we're heads up so we're in a great equity situation. However, the math works out so that we can think in terms of preflop vs postflop investment and still arrive at the same result.

Whether we "invest" $2 or $10 or $40 pre, to go ahead and throw 40-60x our initial investment into the pot on this board is in general going to be spew. But somewhere in the 10-15x range is usually going to be ok.

It's a similar concept as not going broke with 1 pair hands in a limped pot, but if you 3bet aces and have a low SPR seeing the flop, you most likely are going to want to go with it every time.

This is all very much "in a vacuum" reasoning, and obviously having this fishy guy who overplays everything betting out changes things a ton. But I still just can't find myself going broke here.

Results:
UTG had AQ, Hero folded, Gambly guy shoved in AJ for $700 and Tag behind him tank folded a 5 high flush.

So if you had called off the $180 and then faced that shove what would you have done?

I think it's important to consider stack sizes here.

If we're sitting on around a single buyin (say 75-120bbs), this is a fairly standard shove, as we're ahead allot of the time.

But here we are with 200+ bbs, it probably took a few hours to build it up, it's getting late so it'll be hard to recover if we lose, so mabe we should let this go and secure our gains.

Is this "fishthink"?

It isn't fishthink it is just pragmatic.

Also on the subject of how much of your own money you put in: It may not matter in terms of your decision on this hand but it does matter for your calling strategy in future hands.

If you see a pot like this and think "dangerous spot, reverse implied odds, deepstacked - nope I don't fancy it" and you'd invested $50 preflop rather than just $10 you'd have to seriously think about the preflop call. That's because it is likely going to cost you so much to eventually flop a hand you can go with in a MW pot that you can't show a profit when you win.

When I say: "I only put in $10" it is an acknowledgement of the fact I can probably afford to make similar calls in future and throw hands away on the flop repeatedly and still be profitable when I finally stack somebody. I'm not thinking about protecting my bets from previous streets I am trying to decide if my preflop calling strategy is profitable.

It is the same as pocketzeros is talking about above. Risk vs reward. It isn't wrong to think about it. It is just bad to think about it wrong. People go wrong when they get it upside down:

"I risked too much on that previous street to give up now, I call/am allin" This almost acknowledges there is a problem with my line but, because I'm just focussed on this one hand I can't see a satisfactory way out of the mess I'm in. Looking at just the one hand continuing is the only course of action that stands any chance of getting "my money" back right now.

To see the real cause of the problem and be open to the real solution I have to stand back and think about all the hands I played up to now and all the hands I'm going to play in the future.

Well, sort of. There are "strings attached."

It's like if you invest in a partnership and put up money and other property, the money and other property isn't "yours" any more, it belongs to the partnership. The money goes into the bank account and you don't own it in the same way as you did.

The "it's part of the pot" thinking is a useful simplification.

Never underestimate the usefulness of the call-bluff. Even after the game, the call-bluff can be used to slice tomatoes and open a bottle of beer.

It does matter that we only put a small % of our stack in this pot.

Sounds like THIS GUY just nailed it, and tripled up..

Racking and stacking...

I wish you posted the flop action without the results. The debate over what hero should do if he called the original raise would have been fantastic.

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Preflop is dicey for me. If everyone at the table is an ABC moron and there is virtually no chance of being 3bet, I could get behind a call. But typically I would fold here. Postflop if we flop a drawing hand the raiser could cbet a lot and then we're next to act with the world to react after us (bad spot), plus obviously being OOP makes it more difficult to get paid off. And if there are difficult players behind us we can get into gross spots.

I'd probably shove the flop and live with results. We obviously have the old guy beat but he's got outs and never folding, so lets do this now before a scare card comes (any club or T+ is a scare card). All the high clubs are out which makes it slightly less possible that someone has flopped a flush (i.e. no Axcc / Kxcc / Qxcc hands out). Board smokes a lot two pair hands that *might* not be able to fold.

GlatetothepartyG

Is it contradictory if I +1 both of these?

I agree with IRTM in that what's done is done; it doesn't matter how the pot got to where it is or who put what $ into it, the only important decision at this point (regardless if we've screwed up on prior ones) is the decision at hand.

I also agree with keeke in that we can't be punting huge stacks multiway having just put in a stupidly small percentage of our stack preflop. But I think mostly that applies to weaker hands (such as overpairs and stuff like that).

Here, the SPRs ranges are in the small category (3.3, 4, 5.5 with a maximum one of 9) and we have the nut straight on a non-paired board. Although it is definitely possible someone might have a flush (or is free rolling us) and we're drawing dead, there is still a boatload of hands that we're ahead of on this board (two pair+ from the old man, two pairs and pair + draw from others, etc.). If we were sitting on an SPR of 13+ or whatever with a lot of people, ok, then there's a lot more to think about. But with these mostly small SPRs and this massive flop bet, we're basically playing one street poker here, and I think we should be cool doing that with a hand that ranks fairly well against the possible ranges of other good hands that show up here.

Also not a huge fan of just flatting here. Against 3 of the stacks, we'd be putting in 1/2+ of our stacks; we're going to do that to "evaluate" the turn card (where half the deck could suck and yet we'll have like 1/3 - 1/2 PSB left on the turn?). Even against the deeper stacks we'd be putting in ~1/3 of our stack. I think we have to go with it now.

GimoG