Live £0.50/£1 ($1/$2) cash NLHE. Villain has recently sat down and is not known to me, although table chat indicates that he's a regular. He raises from UTG to 7BB, which is a fairly standard raise for this game. There's one caller from MP, and I call with AQo on the button making the pot 22.5BB. the flop is A-T-x rainbow and Villain leads out with a 17BB bet. MP folds. Effective remaining stacks are around 85BB.

I'm faced with commitment decision here and feel that I made a mistake preflop - comments?

Preflop seems fine to me. In position and without reads, I call the flop bet and see what he does on the turn.

I really feel like you can call this without committing yourself. C-bets are pretty common so this is a fairly easy call to me. If he bets again on the turn we need to make another decision.

His betting range here is wild and you are certainly ahead most of the time ,if you raise you fold a lot of hand that you are crushing and often only better hand will call on this board ,so just call this flop and reevaluate on turn ,if he bets again on turn you are only ahead of bluffs and maybe a few combos of AJ unless he is a fish ,without any reads i fold.

If the turn is a blank i will check behind with the intent to call any bet on river or vbet if check to me ,if the turns brings a lot of draws and he checks i wil bet call.

Interestingly unanimous on the call/call line. I think I'm a bit call-phobic: since I know it's better to raise or fold in most situations, my knee-jerk reaction is that it must be A Bad Thing to call. Specifically in this case, since I found myself in a tricky spot on the flop I put the blame on my preflop action, when in fact the mistake was probably more that I didn't think ahead sufficiently.

Re. commitment, if I call the flop I haven't quite put 1/3 of the effective stack in, but the pot is > 1/2 of the effective stack, so I suppose I still have the option to get away from it on the turn. Time to re-read Flynn & Mehta, methinks.

I felt like their book overstated commitment decisions and how you react to new information. Obviously, the majority of the time what they recommend is right. But you have to realize that there are times where you have a good hand that isn't worth folding but you don't know yet if you should be committed. Your hand is one of these cases. The fact that c-betting is so common means that villains range is so wide that you have to call. Another bet from him on the turn probably makes his range much narrower and may make you have to fold.

if you call the pot is almost the size of your remaining stack. so you need to decide what you are going to do and not call to see what he is going to do. if you are not going to play this hand dont be calling pre flop as this is the best kind of flop for your hand and the exact action you would expect to have at this point.