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Yea, stove should definitely help us out here.

As for your other comment, I generally use the rule that I don't assume anyone is making any adjustments based on my play until they prove it.

Definitely a useful rule of thumb. But the thing is this: say you've been playing super aggro and you "sense" that the opponent is getting frustrated, either from his body language and facial expressions, his words, or even just that intuitive feeling that Doyle talks about in that passage from SuperSystem about pushing the aggression until you can feel you've crossed the opponent's threshold of patience. Now say you flop TPGK and he raises your cbet. If you fold here because you don't assume anyone is making any adjustments based on your play until they prove it, then two things:

A) if he WAS bluffing, he's probably not going to bluff you again next time. Once they've bluffed you and you've folded, they feel good about winning the pot and even better about "getting back at you." Their good feelings of revenge sort of soaks up their feelings of frustration, and even bad players are aware of the fact that if they bluff twice in a row they will get less credit the second time. So you don't really get to take advantage of your bluffy aggro image unless you are lucky enough to flop 2pair+ shortly after your cluster of aggressive plays (and we all know that's hard to do) or if the opponent calls you down light here instead of playing back aggressively. But since it's hard to make a hand and a lot easier to have air, the aggressive bluffing adjustment might actually be more common than the light calldown. Plus a lot of live players will bluff with showdown value if they don't feel comfortable calling down. So if opponent flops second pair, instead of calling you down 3 streets he might just raise the flop or turn because he wants to play back at you but simultaneously doesn't like "not knowing where he's at."

B) You are not omniscient. So if you fold, unless he shows his hand, you don't know if he was playing back at you. That is to say, it's hard to obtain proof that someone is playing back at you unless you are lucky enough to flop big shortly after your previous aggression.

These are arguments for erring on the side of not folding-good-but-not-great hands after you've shown *significant* aggression (I'm not talking about a few cbets that worked. I mean like if you've shown a bluff in an at least medium sized pot, have been raising frequently and have other players at the table taking note of your aggression outloud, have just been aggressive in a pot *very shortly* before the current pot and the same opponent folded, and so on.)

Argument for erring on the side of folding is that if you are wrong, you lose a much much bigger pot, so folding will be the smaller mistake.

I've realized the same thing. Paying 1BB to play a pot with a bunch of bad players who you are deep with is really good imo. I've made a lot of money in limped pots in the last week and a half since I started loosening up my limping range. I might just be running well and have been hitting a bunch of hands and getting paid, but it makes sense that it would be profitable theoretically, and so far it's worked out for me empirically.
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Another HUGE upside to loosening up your limping range is that it is a natural counter to extreme boredom that often accompanies live play. It helps you pay attention and gain reads. Obviously you *should* be paying attention to as many hands you aren't involved in as possible, but that takes discipline and it's a lot easier to pay attention to hands you are actually involved in. I'm not taking anything away from cultivating the discipline to pay attention as that is certainly very important, but we all mess up from time to time. Limping a wider range does make getting reads a lot easier on yourself. Also, even if you are extremely vigilant in getting reads from hands you are not involved in, you will still remember hands you are involved in much more strongly because we just remember experiential events better. It's how our brain works.

I'm all for adjusting if we think our opponents are frustrated and we just have that gut instinct that our opponent is making a move. I actually did that a week ago when a pfr x/r me on an A86r board. I could tell he didn't like the flop and then when I bet after he and another guy checked, I just got the sense that he thought I was weak. I 3b him and he folded and later told me he had 99. It's exactly the situation you were talking about where they turn showdown hands into bluffs because they simply don't know what else to do.

So I agree we need to make adjustments when the time is right and our gut is telling us to do so, but we just have to be careful not to create those feelings when they aren't there just because we've been aggressive. If you pick up some vibe or physical tell or something, then I actually think it's worth losing a pot in the short term and acting on those feelings. I just had this discussion re: the hand above and I was telling my friend that I'm trying to tune in more to my instincts. Sometimes I'll be wrong, but like you said, if we never find out their cards, it's hard to know whether we should trust our gut or not. So we may make a minor -EV play in the short term, but in the long run it'll pay off even more once we get that much more comfortable developing and using reads and instincts.

Ivey makes fundamental mistakes that trained online players wouldn't, but his sense of timing and instincts cover up all of those mistakes and allow him much more freedom.

Unless you've seen this guy make adjustments to you or other players previously, you can assume he's not adjusting IMO.

I just feel like when we're making a mistake by calling here it is a bigger mistake than it is when we make a mistake of folding, since he has more equity when we are good than we do when we're behind, am I wrong?

Seems close / situation dependent, but I'm not certainly not happy about folding here for several reasons:

* We're behind only 21 combos (16 straights, 5 sets).
* We beat 12 combos that are fairly likely to play this way.
* A lot of poor live players are way, way more likely to be overplaying a hand like 99 or even as low as A6 here than to semibluff bet-3bet with a draw. We can discount some big pair combos because of the preflop check of his option, and we obviously have to discount any overpair or 6 + good kicker heavily because a lot of players wouldn't play such a hand this aggressively. I fairly often see a poor player show a hand like TT in this spot and then say something which indicates his thinking was along the lines, "I believe I have the best hand but I want to force my opponent out because I am scared of all the cards that could come next."

So, while I definitely think folding could be right if you have a read that the player is solid and straightforward and does not overplay marginal made hands to try to take the pot down immediately. But I would certainly be considering calling, especially since you're getting not quite 3-to-1 to continue. (You don't have to shove if you want to continue, you can call and decide what to do after the turn card comes and you see what his reaction is and what action he takes. Sometimes the third flush card will come and he'll check the rest of the hand down with a straight, giving you a chance to realize your full equity with implied odds. You can also consider turning your hand into a bluff if the third flush card hits, but I think that would be pretty ambitious.)