Maniac raises, good lag 3 bets, I cap AK

Flip is JT7

Check round

Turn is A

check, good lag bets

Plan?

I call turn, might raise some rivers if the maniac folds the turn, otherwise I prefer going for overcalls

FWIW, I think turn is close to a fold. I checked the flop and he is still betting into me.

He can 3 bet a lot of Ax vs maniac and a lot of those will bet the turn even though it hits your range hard. Plus people have random bluffs and other things. But yeah, river raise might be too optimistic, I'd probably still raise a 7x river though and expect not to get punished with a 3 bet from AQ/AJ while getting value against AQ and possibly smaller aces going crazy.

Of course I usually do get 3 bet and then cry call because the pot is huge and lose to A7.

I'd call turn. Think LAG range is wide even 3 ways on turn.

However, I might be under estimating maniac c/r bluff% on turn.

The flop check doesn't make much sense imo. We have a massive range advantage against a maniac and a "good LAG" who has likely 3bet pretty wide against said maniac. Betting our entire range makes perfect sense here. Additionally, we can get a little bit excited if the maniac check-raises and we get heads up since we have showdown value. Even getting check-raised by the good LAG isn't the end of the world.

On the turn, I would probably just call down since we look like we have Ax. Raising is also a decent option since we don't want to give the maniac a cheap look with a trashy spade or pair + gutshot or whatever. We would need to call down a 3bet though which is kind of gross.

Thanks. I thought the flop was close, but neither of them is folding anything and I thought the JTs just smashed everything.

flop looks like a value bet to me. even if you dont have the best hand your draw is strong.

I like the flop check fwiw I think it’s a worthless spot to bet

I call turn and don’t think it’s close. I think betting flop is against these two is profoundly bad.

What else in our cold-capping range are we checking on this flop?

AQ, 99, 88

I feel like having a check back range makes sense if we are capping any suited ace and 55-66 since we do have some really trashy hands at that point. But if hands like 88 and AQ are the worst hands in our range, that means that the bottom of our range still has 30ish% equity which doesn't give us much incentive to check back.

A tightish capping range plus a flop checking range means that we are extremely face up on the turn and likely to be abused by the good LAG. For example, the good LAG might raise stuff like A9 or 55 after we check the flop. After all, we are repping a range that has to fold 100% against a turn raise.

Also, our flop betting range becomes obscenely strong. Our weakest hands could be something like ATs and KQ. Again, I think a "good LAG" can pick up on this type of tendency and just avoid us in these spots. After all, we essentially become "old man coffee" when we bet in this spot which is hardly ever a good thing.

Bingo.