I would normally post this hand in MHFR, due to villain descrip and game depth, but LLSNL has lately had some not-so deep hands masquerading as deep spots due to straddles, on top of being up against droolerish opponents. So I felt this might add some diversity of discussion to the forum. Onto the hand:

WSOP week and the game has busted wide open. 2-5 NL w/ 1K cap. An aggro, fishyish, lady reg just left the game with 7+k after being on a heater all night and nobody adjusting to her tendencies.

Villain: a young asian, sat down playing a maniacal style blew through 2 1K BIs, but stabilized on his third BI, and stacked up 4k+stack by bluffing, value-towning, and spew-inducing the weak players at the table. My view is that Villain is thinking, has brass balls, and is a gambling sicko; he is probably a winner at this stake/structure w/ obvi high Vol. I had one hand vs. V, when he intercepted a play I attempted to make on the aggro-fishy lady by c/r shipping into 3 people on a flop w/ unders and an inside straight draw, that he showed after I spent about 5 minutes deciding whether or not to fold middle pair (which I folded without showing--i prob appeared to have TP).
Villain has played something like 55-20 or even 70-20 preflop. He has straddled everytime possible (UTG and Button), and limped or called a ridiculous number of hands. His open range is to 50-100, and is called way to often by villains who seem to just fold to him postflop. His raise range is far more narrow than most of the other players realize, allowing him another chance to exploit his crazy image. Postflop, he is pushing every edge, with reckless abandon; he has demonstrated thin value, repeated sicko bluffs, etc.

Hero: Has played a super-tight, rockish game all day. In the 5 hours I've played with villains, I've been AI pre twice w/ KK and AA always vs a worse hand that he saw, and I've played a couple other hands weakish. Excepting those two monster preflop hands, I've been monumentally card dead and have had awful flops/action for the few hands i've played besides the AI pre hands. I believe V1 views me as another weak/nitty/mubsy 2-5 victim for his steroidal play.

Stacks:
V1 (BTN): 4k+ and has been crushing the game
Hero (SB): ~2300ish and has been nitting a sweater
Other players: Droolers who are b/t 300-1000


Game is down to 7 handed, with 1 walking. So i'm playing 6 handed.

Preflop: Villain is button and has straddled to 10.
A couple droolers call to Villain, who pumps it to 75 on the straddle.

SB--Hero wakes up to 33 (which is first playable hand in forever). Hero checks out the limpers, who are looking unhappy at the raise from the button.
(I am 90+% positive they don't want deal with this, i'd guess that one might come along for the ride, and the rest fold... small possibility of a donkey train if BB calls.)

Hero?

call

Call and hope for a donkey train because you not going to want to play 33 OOP heads up against a super aggro villain. With 33 your playing to catch a set, so you might as well invite some more money into pot. The other option would be to raise to $250. With 33 this is a bluff pre, and your probably going to have to bluff later in the hand. However, given your image villain will probably put you on AK or a big pair and it should be easy to bluff many flops. I vastly prefer to the set mining option because your hand is going to make life difficult later unless you hit a set.

Call and get the donkey train rollin. Beautiful stack sizes and the perfect villain to work with here.

I think 3 betting here is pretty awful personally, villian can 4 bet us super easy and he has position... the more i think about this I really dont hate folding here either. we are OOP and we're gonna be lost on so many flops calling and folding both fine imo

I don't hate 3betting pre because we have the image to give us the credit to do so, however, I prefer to let this go MW. Implied odds are there, and I think we win more on average by not bloating this pre and having to barrel when we don't hit.

Note on 3betting and Villain image. I had not seen much 3betting against this villain. I was guessing that he wouldn't fold much on the button, could 4 bet light once in awhile, and had already demonstrated the brass balls to multi-way bluff the whole stack. Not to mention, I expect to be jammed up in any super-bloated pot if I showed any weakness.

Balancing that, I had a nitty/clean image (which i'm not used to having, TBH), and would love to exploit that for a nice, easy hundyball on the table.

For those who suggest 3betting as a strat, I wasn't sure what my plan would be on different flops if my 3 bet gets a flat call: on T-high flops and less? On flops with an A? On flops with a K? If I actually luck into a set?
If I'm 4bet, do I have to fold? Can I 5bet ship vs. this sicko?

--------------------------------
Note on position. I had wanted to have position on him for hours and as soon as the table freed up a bit, about 45 min before this hand, I switched from 2 to Villain's right to 2 to Villain's left.

3betting OOP against described sounds like absolute spew

Meh. I hate playing oop, so I'd just let it go. Obviously, that didn't happen.

If you call, you're oop and don't have initiative. I see little chance of stealing the pot from him. He loves raising and probably will have no problem getting it in with 4th pair(not realizing that he's good against your 3s). He wants to gamble. Therefore, you're primarily set mining. The strategy is to c/c for as long as he keeps betting. If he skips a street, I'm make a weakish bet on the next street and then come over the top of his raise.

With a 3bet and his range, he's calling at least 50% of the time and could easily 4bet with what he thinks is light (but is actually in good shape). Therefore, a 3bet isn't taking the hand down pf and is going to leave you with a bloated pot and a bad situation. He's going to look at an Ace or King high flop as an opportunity to steal.

I think this is a fold. Theres a large chance people are just calling with other pairs here because they want to call shove the aggrotard. Aside from that possibility your completely out of position against a guy with a superwide range. Your barely deep enough to setmine especially when you might not get payed off. I would rather call here vs a nit who is raising jj plus than someone like this. Don't see how this hand can really be played profitably.

I play with reckless aggro maniacs all the time.

Given how deep we are, we can call. I think the real hard decision is whether we are going to take a set mining line (ie fold if we whiff) or take a bluff catcher line. Imo, this is something we need to think about before calling. Based on V description, I'm predisposed to taking a bluff catching line meaning that I'm hoping for board textures in which 33 can be the best hand and i'm prepared for the big bets villain is sure to fire.

Boards like 9 9 4 2 K or 2 5 J J 2

Obviously, I wish our hand were stronger like 88+, but it is what it is.

So call.

Even though I'm predisposed to a bluff catcher line, I'm still going to be incorporating board texture.

I'm not going to be itching to bluff catch on a 9 8 T 7 Q board

Lastly, tbh, unless I saw the other villains reaching for chips to call, i'm folding this pre. I'm not a big fan of heads up situations OOP vs aggro players with baby pairs. I'd much rather have 88+ and the initiative...

Against this sort of maniac, if your going to bluff you have to plan on bluffing multiple streets pretty much no matter what board is, and you have to be willing to shove bluff and call shove bluffs on occasion. The board doesn't matter much because he is super wide and you can represent a high pair or an over pair no matter what the board is. He isn't likely to fold pre, and some will never fold pre. If the flop is a whiff for them they sometimes fold to the flop bet and sometimes float. A lot of these guys will float flop and turn most of the time heads up with position. This forces you to triple barrel a lot if your going to bluff them. Which is why I wouldn't recommend it here in general. I would be much happier bluffing at this guy with small-medium suited connectors or a medium pair. The suited connectors are easier to get away from if the flop is bad for you and the medium pair makes for a better bluff catcher.

If he 4 bets pre, it becomes a question of soul reading and gauging his willingness to fold to a shove. Mostly it would have to be a fold though, because most players like this hate to fold preflop and your hand is crushed or coin flipping vs anything.

Fold isn't terrible here either, but this deep I don't like folding a pocket pair preflop. Against a hyper aggressive player, I'll play small pairs because he will bluff shove more often then he will have a higher set. Plus, his tendency to float flop and turn a lot help to insure we get paid something even when villain has air. In this situation I'm more worried about somebody else hitting a higher set then villain.

In my experience games with the Mississippi straddle encourage limp raises. Especially when the straddler is as aggressive and active as you described. Obviously you are done with the hand if you call the 75 and then face a lr. However, I suppose if you feel very confident that a limp raise is not coming (not sure how anyone could be too confident in that department) I don't think a call is that bad, as long as you perceive a high probably of the donkey train coming along.

Plan for Villain:
Folding for an hour in a live game, while a maniac CRUSHES a bunch of donkeys is painful. Villain had been winning boatloads of $$$ without showdown by Pounding any perceived weakness for multiple streets. Given the Level 1 ABC nature of the villains, and that many were over 150BB when starting hands, perceived weakness was real weakness. I thought that villain would perceive me as similar to these villains, and would be trying to steal heavily. I also felt that his range for big raises was narrowish pre (less than twice an orbit at a ring game, which is under 20%), and noticed that he had a C-bet range of b/t 50 and 65%, which seemed to match up with flop texture in a logical fashion

My plan was this: Take a hand with showdown value to the river on a mediumish pot (smallish pots didn't happen). I decided that my range should be something like: Ax vs the times he wasn't bombing, AQs,AK,pp when he was. I wanted to execute the dgiHarris plan of 88+ and the initiative, but that actually requires having 88+. After being a turbo-folder for a couple hours where I hadn't had diddly, I wanted to just hit my head against the felt everytime a nit sacrificed another middling pot to Villain w/o showdown.
Unfortunately, 33 in a blind vs a big raise was the best spot I'd seen in a long while...


Background on the Droolers: these were a group of Level 1, ABC, nittyish players. They ranged from the 300 stack (who plays loose-passive pre and a bit weak-passive post, he bets TPGK, but checks any draw. He buys in short, spews a bunch of blinds one at a time, sometimes doubles his now-smaller stack, and usually leaves broke) to the 1K+ish stack who is a middle aged nittyish reg--his idea of trickiness would be c-r 2pair+ into the maniac, or maybe betting a monster combo draw on the flop, in general he is nut pedaling, and getting run over by our villain.
These guys in specific, and most of these player-types in our game, have BLATANTLY OBVIOUS physical-tells that let you know when they are interested or disinterested in a hand. None of them was a hustling, physical-tell trickster. I was seeing the usual, looking away, moving card-protectors off of cards, rolling eye in disgust, etc. None had an error of obvious interest watching the action (a tell that a guy at least wants to see a flop). While all would've likely tried a limp-rere with KK/AA (that is the nits view of the best way to take on a maniac like this), none seemed to be doing it this hand.
Normally these are the usual targets, however, villains steroidal style, along with buck-wild earlier table dynamics, prevented most of my usual nit-crushing techniques.

And obv w/ 33, I first called in the SB, thats how we got here. I thought that decision was basically automatic, when the only PFR is 3.5X w/ at widest a range of TT+/AK (exploitable), or a button who I'll figure out what to do if/when he does it... this being poker we got the harder situation.

actually, if he really is good, it's not going to be that profitable.
being 225bb deep (w/ straddle) vs. him makes it even more of a RIO situation than an IO one in the final equation, even if he does actually have something, (AA/KK), which he is a big underdog to have. the prob is that you arent drawing against a real hand the majority of the time, so you have zero IO most of the time, ( and 33 is a IO hand); but, at the same time, you are up against a tricky and aggressive player while OOP with one of the weakest hands dealt. not a good formula...

but since droolers will always limp/call, it may not be bad to try to cooler one of them when they hit top pair, except that they prolly arent deep enough to justify it mathematically.

3-betting and turning 33 into a bluff is terribad, and is just asking for a bigger pot to get taken away from you, imo.
looking to get involved in a big pot OOP vs. this villian with tons of droolers available for you both is just unnecessary, and i just dont see it being profitable, either. Situations like this are super-profitable for you, though, when a maniac can cause them to play even worse than they usually do, and you can reap the rewards of it, so i would be looking to play pots with them, not the maniac so much. Keep being patient; you arent going to out-maniac a maniac, and theres no need for it what-so-ever, anyways. he's doing your work for you. he's ramping up the game; when you do pick up a real hand, you'll likely be walking into a ton of action.

i would be wiling to give up 33 here to not have to play OOP vs. him. being OOP means you make less when you do hit, among tons of other bad things, so i think it's way less profitable than one might think.

22 and 33 are ultimately two hands that you don't give anything away with by not playing vs. a good player, and especially out of the SB.

Yeah considering we are basically open limping up front with a highly aggressive opponent on the button I think this is a pretty clear fold PF. At a more passive table I'd prefer to limp as well.

Vs the raise, without knowing who is behind us and their tendencies I can't really give an indepth analysis but I'd probably fold as well. If we were like in the CO and there were several callers to us I would definitely be in the hand but we have terrible position here and I don't see how can really play profitably.

If we weren't seen as a nit I'd probably call here since we might get paid off with a set.

lol fold

Also 230bbs/straddles is not that deep.

You can 3-Bet to 5-Bet over if you think you can induce a light polarized 4-Bet I guess.

Vs described villain, and with our nitty image I would fold 22-55 here. Just very hard to play OOP when villain is happy to barrel multiple streets.

I'd fold. If you were closing the action, then I'd probably call.

It is deep.

It's kinda deep but not THAT deep.

10:1 says youve never played 200bb+ in a 5/10.
5:1 says youve never played 5/10
3:1 says youve never played 2/5 for 1k bi or more

OP, lets goto flop plz. You are oop with a fit/fold hand.

Hahaha nice try.

I disagree that this is a fit/fold hand. V is good, but he's not the caliber that I think the best posters on here are. I think I am a better all around player and thinker than villain, and presently have the edge that villain thinks I am a wimp who doesn't have the cajones to keep up.

I found some interesting views towards folding pre here that I really never considered with this stack depth vs this villain (Stampler, dgi, 11t). I would probably consider a fold more heavily if I thought he was truly top caliber, and not merely good at this stake/structure.
Onto the Flop (in the next post)