Meta game

I want to talk about a hand I played recently which I think is quite interesting from a meta game point of view (probably not to a non poker player). I was playing at a 2/4 table as there was 2 fish in the game both on my right. Id played maybe 40-50 hands and hadnt won a pot and was probably $100-150 down. Id been getting run over a little bit up 2 this point. All pretty standard stuff imo. Id been iso-raising (not necessarily weak) the 2 fish regularly only to be called and then having my cbet floated or min raised. Or being min-raise pre-flop, having to call obv and then having to give up post flop. Also zomgchipriffle who's a decent player had 3bet my iso-raise 2 or 3 times. I suspect he was doing this with a wide range as he knows Im iso-raising a wide range.

So the following situation came up. We start the hand with effective stakes of $400 (100bb's).

Its folded around to a fish on the button who limps. SB completes and I make it $20 from the BB with KJhh, and the button calls. Flop 6 4 3 with 2 hearts. I lead for $32 and the fish shoves.

Now in a vacuum I think this is a fold, although having pokerstoved his range it's closer than I thought in real time.. His range here is pretty wide and therefore hard to get an exact figure from pokerstove but I worked out I had about 39% equity (feel free to give me your opinion, I could be way off). So I have to call $348 to win $474. This works out about 1.36/1 or more importantly means I need 42% equity to call profitably.

I only have 39% so I should fold right? Well yes in a vacuum. However my table image was pretty bad and folding again here would kill it completely. I felt by calling, regardless of the outcome Id get a little more respect and be able to carry on playing pots with marginal hands in position against the fish. So I give up 3% equity in a $800 ($24) pot for a better table image.

A couple of other things to think about are

• If I win the pot the fish may re-load and be tilting
• I gain some information as to how he plays
• If I lose I have a crazy fish with 200BB's on my right
• If I lose I may tilt slightly

Any thoughts or comments on this hand would be much appreciated. Plus my maths may be a bit off so feel free to correct me.