Hey guys. First post. Hopefully it's a good one. I wanted to know about situations where we have a very strong non-made hand preflop, we're OOP, and the player in front of us is a veritable Maniac.
For example, say the action folds around to us in the SB with AK. We know that the BB is going to call a raise with almost 100% of his hands and play pretty wildly postflop. Should we open or just flat?
I feel like if he's playing near 100% of hands, we're going to have so much more equity than him on most boards that we could theoretically just barrel a ton against his weak range, but those strong attacking lines get dicey against crazy players who don't want to fold--we've all been there. Would the best play be to raise and then continue strong only on the best boards for us like Axx, Kxx, QTx, 822, etc. and generally give up on the rest? Do our value bets earn enough to make up for all those flops we give up on? (Assuming, for the sake of argument, he doesn't catch on that when we bet, we have it)
Or is a better play to only open made hands like mid to high pocket pairs? And if he catches on and starts folding to those raises, then start peppering in more hands?
And if the answer is open AK, what about more marginal hands like QT, which we still figure to be ahead of his range? I would guess the answer is if AK can be opened profitably, then so can QT, just with less of an edge and a **** ton more variance. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Hopefully someone reads this