Call or fold?

I played an afternoon session at Mandalay Bay yesterday with two friends. This hand occurred after they had both left. I'll describe all I can about it and let you decide what you would do.

I had bought in for $300, and at the beginning of this hand I had about $330 in front of me. I was in the small blind with Kh-8h. Nobody raised, so I added the extra dollar. I think there were five of us to the flop.

Flop: 887 with two diamonds. I led out for $8. Big blind folded. Guy two seats to my left min-raised to $16. It folded back around to me. I added another $25 on top of that. Within about two seconds, my opponent declared himself all in. It would be another $220 to call.

I can't tell you much about this guy. Young Asian, but he had not been at the table long, and he had played almost no hands. He had bought in for the max, $300. I had not heard a word from him. I had not seen him play a pot bigger than maybe $25. I was in the 4 seat, he in the 6 seat, so he was maximally difficult for me to see, and he was so far outside of my scope (because of both playing few hands and being nearly impossible to lay eyes on) that I had nearly forgotten he was there. I had effectively zero read on his personality or playing style. However, he had been there long enough that the fact that he had played few hands and no big pots was significant. He was no LAGtard, that's for sure. After his shove, he sat quietly, seeming comfortable--not the classic frozen, unbreathing posture of a big bluff. I couldn't make anything of his body language toward either a call or a fold.

This was by no means an instacall, as I saw it. I didn't want to blithely stumble into 7-7 or 8-7 and be drawing razor thin. But I couldn't put him on a hand that made sense.

If he had flopped a boat, I thought he'd be more likely to try to draw me in with a smooth call or another smallish raise, not suddenly overbet the pot by a factor of four. He couldn't be worried about a flush draw or straight draw; in fact, he'd be more likely to want me to hit anything I was drawing to. (That line of thinking is limited, though, by the fact that he would never have seen me bet and reraise with just a draw.) On the other hand, of course, it could be that he thought I would reason exactly that way and be more likely to call a fishy-looking overbet than something smaller. Or maybe he concluded with my reraise that I liked my hand enough that I'd come along no matter what, so he might as well go for the gusto.

Would he play a naked flush draw--or even straight draw--this way, trying to chase out either somebody else on a draw or somebody with an 8 but a weak kicker? Maybe, but that would be awfully risky, and he didn't strike me as that whimsical.

What about a 7 with either the 6 or 9 of diamonds, for two pair plus backdoor straight and flush draws? Possible, but not very likely, I thought.

What about a straight-flush draw, with 5d-6d, 6d-9d, or 9d-10d? That was a real possibility. However, I doubted that he would have limped UTG with the 6-9, and putting him on just one of two specific card combinations seemed overly narrow. Couldn't rule it out, though.

Basically, it seemed to me, my bet and reraise practically screamed that I had an 8. Whatever I was going to conclude about his hand, it had to be with the assumption that he was expecting to see an 8 in my hand.

That, in turn, meant that he either felt confident he could beat it (having flopped the boat or holding A-8), or he was afraid of it, and trying overly hard to get me to fold. As those internet kids say these days, he had a polarized range. I was either way ahead or way behind; there was only a slim possibility of having the same hand, or him having the straight-flush draw, which would make him a small underdog.

Given his relative tightness, I thought I could reduce the range of his kicker, if he did, in fact, have an 8. He had limped under the gun, and I thought he would likely do that only with A-8, 9-8, 7-8, and maybe K-8. I couldn't imagine him playing 8-5 or lower, even suited, that way. But if he had the connectors (likely suited), wouldn't he have to think longer and harder about whether he wanted to commit that much money when he couldn't know whether my kicker was bigger or smaller? After all, I had been in the small blind, and could therefore have any two cards. (I don't think I had folded a single small blind to limpers that entire session. Of course, he may or may not have noticed that fact.)

If I were right about how his position narrowed his range, then I could well be up against A-8, which would be just as much a disaster as running into a full house. But, again, I was stuck on the strange overbet. I certainly wouldn't play either A-8 or the flopped boat that way. Would he? I just didn't know.

Think about it. Decide what you would do. Leave a comment about your decision and your reasoning, if you like. I'll post the end of the story in about 24 hours.