Foolish overaggression?

[Ikke]

The game is 10/20 5-max on Paradise.

Player involved:

Button: A terrible player, who is way too loose, plays very straightforwardly when he has something, but can call with virtually nothing.

SB: A more decent player, but still bad in my book. I like to call it that he lacks "timing". He can play draws extremely aggressively when it's obvious he shouldnt, bluffs at the wrong moments, and seem to be able to make folds in (fairly) big pots.

OK,...UTG folds and button open-limps. SB raises and I call with Ks6s. Button calls as well.

Flop: 4c 6c 8h

SB leads out, I raise. Button coldcalls and SB 3-bets. I call as does button.

Turn: Th

SB bets. Now here's the trick. I think there's a fair chance I have button beat. He seems to have either a pair (can be any) or a draw or maybe even worse. Furthermore I played a lot of hands against SB in the last few orbits and raised him on the turn quite a bit and always had him beat when he called down. Also, as I said in the beginning he's capable of playing draws very hard, even like gutshot+good overcard etc.

I raised.

Button coldcalls, SB thinks a while and folds.

River is the Jc and we both check it down.

Comments?

Regards

[Chris Alger]

Definitely raise. As you've described him, he's can't make himself call you two more times with a rough ten or worse at the risk of learning that he's too dumb to learn or has no self-control.

[tewall]

This is an interesting question. I started to do a mathematical analysis of this but got bogged down. I got tired, but got far enough to figure out that the most important part of the equation I was working with was the probability that you'll win unimproved vs. one opponent as opposed to two. That is, the greatest gain to your raising is the equity you pick up when your hand is good unimproved against the button as opposed to being good against both opponents. So you should raise provided there's at least a small chance your hand will beat the button unimproved and that SB will fold.

[Pot-A]

Well played. If you've been showing SB the best hand he's gonna have a hard time calling you with a marginal hand, event if it's better than yours. The fact that button called you is troublesome, since he might have T-rag, but you're probable OK here.