your play

Villain has pushed all-in a couple times before, and showed A20 once...

***** Hand History for Game 2445414204 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, July 29, 20:56:43 EDT 2005
Table Table 54946 (6 max) (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Geebs11 ( $0 )
Seat 2: EvilEcstasy_ ( $360.70 )
Seat 3: Pottan777 ( $624.35 )
Seat 4: r_pin2 ( $259.20 )
Seat 5: tigers2001 ( $311.60 )
Seat 6: wildey ( $58.80 )
r_pin2: RITE
r_pin2: AND UR BUSTED
wildey: u had 7 7
Pottan777 is sitting out.
r_pin2: RELOAD
r_pin2 posts small blind [$2].
tigers2001 posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to EvilEcstasy_ [ Td Ts ]
wildey is all-In [$58.80]
EvilEcstasy_ ??

Call, easy money

call. hand is good, price is right.

Yeh i thought the same unfortuantely.. bad beat?

EvilEcstasy_ calls [$58.80].
r_pin2: LOL
r_pin2: IHAVE JJ
r_pin2 folds.
tigers2001 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ad, Qs, 6c ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3d ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]
wildey shows [ Qd, Qc ] three of a kind, queens.
EvilEcstasy_ shows [ Td, Ts ] a pair of tens.
wildey wins $121.60 from the main pot with three of a kind, queens.
NH

not a bad beat, just bad luck...
but hey at least the donk has more money for you to win now

Why take coin flips against morons? I think with allin artists you can wait for a slightly better spot. Also, when he showed A2 you have to think that he is trying to stir up action, not giving a representative sample of what he's moving in with. I'd call him with AA, KK and maybe AK for the domination (and unlikely reverse domination) possibility. In general, I tend to give these guys the blinds.

That said, you are probably slightly ahead of his average move-in holding here, so if you don't mind the variance, your call is good. I just think this money is going to keep moving, and with a little patience you can be a much bigger favorite.

As a sidenote: Is this really weak thinking for ring games? Does not pushing every slim edge to the fullest mean you are playing too weak? Does your thinking change when you are reasonably certain you will get another, better opportunity?

If you say yes to the above, would you advocate reraising laggy players allin preflop when you know you can isolate them and you have a category 1 or 2 hand? If not, isn't there a contradiction here somewhere?

No, it's not weak thinking, like you said it's just a variance thing. And I would not advocate reraising LAGG players allin with category 1 or 2 hands since you will not be getting anywhere close to maximum value out of any of them, not to mention it's probably a -EV play with anything but AA KK and QQ.