This was from Wednesday's $250 at the MSPT series at Bally's Black Hawk.

2k/4k/4k, second level after late registration has ended, still a ways from the money (around 60 left paying 21). I'm down to 19k; I had a hand where I shoved A5s and ran into a shorter stack with AJo, then had to post the BB and BB ante with only 9k in my stack, but I won that hand against two players who went to the flop.

A guy who's been playing a ton of hands (seriously, I think his VPIP is in the 80s; he's playing any two suited cards, he's limped UTG and shown down stuff like Q5o) limps in early position. (I think it would be UTG 8-handed although I don't remember if we were 8- or 9-handed.)

Two seats down (LJ) raises his limp to 12k. Don't have a strong read on the player. (I was at this table for my first entry and played a few hours with about half the players who are here now; after busting, I waited to max late-reg and got reassigned to the same table.)

I'm in the HJ with A7s.

Should I take this spot, knowing I have no fold equity but I do have a suited ace and there's likely 14k of dead money in the pot if I shove? Do we think LJ villain-- who even if I don't know him is likely to have observed what I described of the limper's play-- has enough Broadway-type hands I could be ahead of to make this profitable? Is it close enough that I should take it considering I don't even have a lot of fold equity from an open shove and I can't realistically afford to let the blinds hit me again?

I always struggle with when to get it in when I'm really short, especially with action in front and no fold equity, and I feel like I always make the wrong decision. Which is probably results-oriented to some degree, but I also feel like I need a better methodology / range for making these decisions.

We are always going to have very little fold equity (BB's rarely fold to a 5 bb all in).

The key here to me is that we very likely will have 30% chance of winning the hand. It could actually be much less because the limper can also call knowing LJ won't be able to re-raise.

I would prefer to wait and get it in first in one of the next few hands. We still might have only a 30% chance to win but we could be a favorite. Or we could be have like a 40% to 45% chance with 2 live cards. If we have to wait until we are BB then that will likely suck but again we can do a stop n go (with basically no fold equity) and basically be able to wait for one hand with like 3 blinds..

I do think a shove isn't really wrong though. Especially if the guy who raised is young and GTOish. We could actually be ahead.

I might just muck here. Idk we have no fold equity. Best case scenario we run into kj, kq, qj etc and have to hold.

Think I would fold. The utg limp is going to be strong once in a rare while + the iso is never folding to our jam. Here- I might just click it to min 3! If we can just to look stronger but in this case you can’t. If we had say 23k, I might make it 21 or 22k hoping villian doesn’t look at our stack and realize.