[soah]

Venetian 5/10

I'm in early-middle position in the 8 seat with 33 and raise to $40.

Four people call, starting with the 1 seat and ending with the 5 seat. This many callers is a bit unusual.

My history with the 1 seat consists of him repeatedly threebetting me preflop when I open in steal spots. After he did it for about the fourth time after being at the table for maybe 90 minutes, I fourbet him, he insta-shoved, I insta-called and somehow my QQ was good on a board of KTxAx for $1200. Also, before all that got started, there was some hand where I raised in EP, he called and someone else called, I bet a flop of AQx and he folded and flashed an ace after the action was complete.

The 5 seat was a suspected 2p2er. I'd played with him once before and didn't remember him ever getting out of line. He knows I'm capable of making strong plays but I don't think he's seen me spew. For the first several hours at the table I was not catching many good starting hands, and never hit any hands postflop, and tried with mixed results to pick up some pots anyway. He was around for a fair amount of that time. Not sure how exactly that affected his read on me, but he has definitely seen me fold a lot of turns and rivers after showing preflop and flop aggression.

So, the flop is AJ4 with two spades. I think the 4 was the non-spade, but I could be wrong. Everyone checks.

Turn is the beautiful offsuit 3. Action gets to me, I bet $150, 1 seat calls in tempo, 2 players fold, 5 seat stops and thinks. Then he stacks out 15 chips. Then he thinks some more. Then he calls.

River is an offsuit J. 5 seat bets out $300. I'd guess that he has about $1000-1200 more behind after this bet, perhaps even more than that. I have him covered. Couldn't see the 1 seat's stack, but I was assuming he started with about $1000.

This spot is a bit trickier than just call vs raise, because any raise I make is going to lay me sick odds if he pushes, and just pushing myself is a very big raise. I did not want to ask for a count of his stack unless I was certain I wanted to raise, because if I end up just calling I'd reeeeaaaally prefer that the third player in the hand not realize how strong I am. So I only had a rough idea of how much more he had...

So if you raise, how much do you raise to, and what sort of odds do you need to call a push?

fwiw, his flop and turn actions made no sense really for anything I'm beating, but at the same time, it's not too easy to put him on something worse that plays it this way and then pays me off huge