when to call a habitual pusher

[samoleus]

Opponent in question is donutboy. He absolutely cannot handle my style and hates me because of it. He sits down and my table and in the first two orbits, fires off all manner of profane tirades and tells me all kinds of things that I never knew about my mother and nonexistent sister.

Anyway, of the first ten non-blind hands that I play against him (he has immediate position on me), I raise seven of them to 56. Of those seven hands, he folds three of them and PUSHES for 2K in the other four! I fold to his reraise all four times.

I choose not to raise my raising standards (as if I do that, he is liable NOT to continue pushing with marginal hands). I feel like if I keep raising with my usual frequency, he will keep making this idiotic move and I will pick him off.

In the hand in question, it folds to me on the button. I raise to 56 with A-6 offsuit. He pushes (now the fifth time out of eight such raises that I have made). BB folds. Do I call or not?

Now when you answer, please remember that it is faulty logic to say that I should wait for a huge hand since he will surely do this at some point when I have AA or KK or whatever. This kind of thought process (passing up small edges for the guarantee of bigger ones later) may be sound in tournament play but is not accurate in cash game play. In a cash game (where one can reload), and as long as one is properly bankrolled for the game, one should never pass up a +EV situation for a zero EV situation (folding).

So with that in mind, should I call the 2K with my A-6 or not? Also, a couple follow up questions: what is the worst pocket pair and the worst unpaired hand that I should make the call in this situation with?

Cheers,
Samo

[Lj.]

is he also pushing ai from your UTG raises with everyone left to act behind?

[samoleus]

The game was six max (sorry I forgot to mention that) - so there are fewer people behind. Of the seven raises that I mentioned, only one was UTG. He did not push that one.

[samoleus]

As the subject line says, the game was six-max: sorry I forgot to mention that ...

[BluffTHIS!]

I seem to remember a player who used to do that stuff to me and others, only he didn't push but just raised to like 600 or 1K. I think his name was punk something [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img].

In answer to your question as stated, I would only call with QQ-AA and AK. But what I would do, especially since he is going to crimp your style more than others, would be to leave the table and either get position on him when a seat opened up, or come back in the same seat with a min buyin and then call a little more liberally to see what he was doing it with. But if I were going to stay there in that situation, then I would raise every other orbit in early position with some absolute garbage I didn't mind folding, and hope he did that [censored] and ran himself into a big hand behind him.

[TStoneMBD]

[ QUOTE ]
This kind of thought process (passing up small edges for the guarantee of bigger ones later) may be sound in tournament play but is not accurate in cash game play.

[/ QUOTE ]

not true in the slightest. if you call him with A6 there he probably wont be making this stupid push anymore so instead of getting your money in as a huge favorite you get your money in with this very marginal equity.

[lapoker17]

A9 and 77+ ish.

[AZK]

This has been happening to me a decent amount at 5/10 this week... I'll open and then an instashove all in, too often for it to be a monster, I've started calling with 66+ and A8+...this seems ok but isn't ideal since you are actually playing into their game taking a coinflip with them, obv. variance/money isn't an issue for you, so you don't mind taking these borderline +ev situations, assuming you don't tilt, but I still don't like it because more often than not I feel my edge should be greater than shoving preflop, so when you do this you are sort of giving them a bigger edge over you, does that make any sense?

[aejones]

I love the comment about not waiting for a huge hand here; it's very true but I think a lot of high stakes players even miss that point.

If his range of hands is something like: all pockets, all aces, and most face cards (which I'm assuming it is), I would say that the problem with calling with A6 is that you are either a slight favorite or a pretty big dog. Really, your marginal advantage is that you can beat KQ, QJish hands barely, only dominate smaller aces, and are a pretty big dog against bigger aces and pocket pairs between 7s and Ks.

That said, I think A8 is the borderline hand. As said in another post on this thread, call with A9 and better and (I would say) 66 or better. In this case, you are going to be racing a lot of times; however, I think that's not always a bad thing given that A.) you can probably afford it in your roll better than he can and B.) you can always reload and it sounds like you are a more mature/ non-tiltish player. I call with A9, sometimes A8, always 66, sometimes 55, and I establish an image that I am not only aggressive, but also loose, and that if he is going to put in a ridiculous raise, I'm going to gamble with him a fair share of the time.

[BluffTHIS!]

This isn't a tourney, and you don't know exactly how much you can lower your range without first seeing a couple showdowns and knowing a little better what he is doing that with. And like I said, I don't stay in that seat and try to coinflip with him or have him make me tighten up more than I want to.