Athough my strategy is to try and learn full-ring live, the casino I play at doesn’t have a third-man walking rule so I frequently late at night run in to scenarios where the table is 4 or 5-handed and one villain is trashed out of his mind.

I’m aware that there’s still significant variables such as position, aggression, etc., but surely some guidelines would help me more than just guessing myself.

So what kind of ranges should I be playing in these scenarios? (Note I play short-stacked, so I typically have $100 at 1/2-3, maybe $200 if I’ve been doing well.)

A super great answer would probably give 4 ranges:

In a blind, fish has folded.
In a blind, drunk fish has not folded.
Button or cutoff, fish has folded.
Button or cutoff, fish has not folded.

I don’t have a ton of poker exp but people that are 6 shots of tequila and 4 beers deep tend to broadcast the strength of their hand post-flop :-)

I am way too lazy to give a "super great" answer but try to play hands with good implied odds and just check and call to realize your equity + hit nutted hands rather than running semibluffs etc.

Also buy in deeper.

What’s the lowest suited connectors you’d do?

It depends on how "the drunk" is playing.
Is he betting everything? > play tighter, fold more, call lighter with value
Is he calling everything? > play tighter, bet less often, value bet bigger and lighter
Is he calling everything pre and then folding flop/turn/river way too much? > Barrel, barrel, barrel

As far as I know there's no strategy to adjust vs someone who's drunk.
There are strategies to adjust to how people are playing, it really doesn't matter what causes them to play a certain way.

There may even be drunks who just fold everything except AA.

There are basically 3 mistakes you can make in poker:
- calling too often
- betting too often
- folding too often

Figure out which mistake(s) "the drunk" is making and where they're making them (pre/flop/turn/river) and adjust.

Playing against someone who calls too much pre and then folds too much on the flop/turn is going to be completely different from playing against someone who folds too much pre and then calls too much on flop/turn/river.
Someone who's drunk could be doing either, or something completely different.

it kind of depends on what sort of drunk they are

Ah good advice.

I'm glad I made the post, because sure enough a few hours after making it I'm sitting at a table 5-handed with a guy chugging AMF's that checked dark whenever he was first to act, and would call most anything.

There was literally one hand that went
$15 around pre-flop
Flop: V1 check dark V2 bet $25 dark, cards arrived, V1 barely looks at them and calls
Turn: V1 check dark V2 bet $25 dark, card arrived, V1 barely looks at it and calls
River: V1 check dark, V2 actually waited for the river card, then made some decision with it which I think was a bet/call.

Actually last night was one of the more ridiculous nights I'd played, there were several people splashing around quite a bit which makes them all that much splashier. One thing that has surprised me playing poker a bit is how incredibly different tables can play even in the same room with a lot of the same people.

I should pull out my notes but I did get in to a hand while very short-stacked. 5 people called my $10 raise with TT, flop came K-8-4 or something. V1 bet $50, everyone else called, and I had under $50 remaining and felt that with the pot odds and the fact that he'd been playing such garbage cards I couldn't give him credit for the K, I called. I rivered a ten so I don't know what he had, but as I'm thinking about it I probably misplayed it. Although I almost certainly got some details wrong in the replay. But this guy was mostly calling except on this hand he raised, so I was probably in bad shape.

I also made another mistake last night. I had suited Ace-low and called a flop bet with a flush draw. Turn was a brick, and I was facing another bet, only like $40 or so, but then I look at my stack of $75 and realize that even with a fairly favorable board I just don't have the odds to call. I really need to shift more to high pairs from suited cards.

Yah when I very first started playing I kinda thought all drunks would play the same but that's not the case at all. Some drunks are random and fearless which is actually pretty difficult to play against.

Although in response to the note that there are three mistakes, calling too much, folding too much, and raising too much, I think being drunk is a modifier on all of them. Drunks will give off more tells. The tells will be more reliable. Drunks will miss your tells. Drunks will misread their hand. Drunks will forget what their hand was. Drunks won't see the three suited cards on the board. This guy literally did all of those in just the 2-3 hours I played last night. (And wouldn't you know it; he busted out. Go figure.)

So in that sense there's a huge difference between someone that calls too much sober and calls too much drunk.