Hi all,

I feel like I was put in a tough spot here.

V1: I would classify him as a maniac. He is playing about 80% of his hands pre and raising most of them. He is doing crazy things such as jamming 100+ bb with KK on AA against multiple people. He also jammed like 150 bb with 10 10 on 33j again 2 other people

H: I’m on his immediate left. Looking for a spot to stack him. He has put me in a few tough spots already and has shown me some bluffs

OTTH:

V1 is straddling UTG

I have two red 10’s and raise to 45 effective stacks are about 250 and I cover v

Folds to him and he calls

(94)

Flop Jd 7s 9d

We bet 35 and he jams

This guy is probably never folding his straddle, especially with $10. You probably coulda made it $65.

Post is a fairly clear call, I think. There are a lot of draws he could have, not to mention stuff like A-9. There is plenty of money out there and not all that much behind. You have 6 outs almost all of the times you are behind.

Yeah I mean once you made it 45 pre and then sized down to induce, you sort of have to live with the consequences and ride the variance train.

Kinda just have to go with it. Is he going to show up with Jx a decent amount of the time, sure. He's going to have all kinds of other hands you're ahead of too, and your sizing may have induced this shove.

Yup

Let's think about the worse hands he can have. You block a lot of gut shots and straight draws. So, it's either a flush draw or top pair & better. If you look at the numbers against that kind of range, we should be ahead a ton. If you add some gutshot, straight draws, then we should be even better. You have to call.

With non-deep stacks we'd probably be better off sitting to this guys right so we can limp/reraise (playing for relatively huge dead money preflop). As stacks get bigger then we can think more about not being OOP to him.

If this guy is raising most of his hands preflop I would probably just open limp. We also get to see who else does what and can make a pretty informed decision then. TT sees enough meh flops where we're going to get into a lotta awkward spots postflop against this guy (and therefore want the bulk of the money going in preflop with a 3bet or even an all-in).

Expected awkward spot encountered. If he can get his chips in with draws / something other than TP then I think we have to sigh call at this point (he can have a draw, we do have some decent outs if we happen to be behind).

GcluelessNLnoobG

This ^

I prefer the maniacal villain on my left.

Yes, he acts after me, but I get to see what the rest of the "more normal" Villains do before "re-raise or shove" when I imagine a range advantage in my favor.

Still high variance but not as high as having the rest of the world yet to act. What happens if THEY are trapping with a limp or call?

This is pretty much the ole relative position vs absolute position debate. In most low stakes I too prefer the maniac on my left as it creates lot more opportunities to pick up dead money with the majority of the player pool being very passive. Yes it's nice to have position on the maniac, but the majority of the time with the maniac on your right you're just going to be isolating him and/or picking up just his opens when he raise/folds pre to your agression. Allowing the rest of the table to act between the maniac's opens and your action creates some really juicy spots.

You probably shouldnt be betting against described V unless you are planning on calling a shove since that seems to be his thing.