This hand is from a home game recently. It was a weird dynamic and I was truly unsure of how to proceed. This was a wild home game that had lots of drinkers and crazy plays. There were all ins about 5 times every orbit of a full ring game.

V1 ($2900) Fairly tight preflop but doesn't mind shoveling money in with top pair post. Set over set another player early to double up and doubled up later vs V2 with AK vs AQ by barreling all three streets. V2 raised pre and V1 did NOT 3bet pre.

V2 ($1800) Maniac. Loves to bluff and almost always shows aggression when checked to. I have played with him many times and he runs over passive players and typically spews to thinking players. Has shoved all in three times so far and shown bluffs every time. He is steaming a little from V1 previous hand where called and lost a big pot sized bet on river with his AQ. He has verbally stated that he is coming for V1 and seems to be calling every hand V1 enters.

Hero ($2200) Played two hands so far. Three way all in with middle set and AA vs KK pre. Typically I am the tightest player at the table which V2 definitely knows. No history with V1.

On to the hand.

Two limpers in early position, V2 raises to 30 and tells V2 to get in the hand, V1 proceeds to 3bet to 110. Hero on button with AK ...

V2 range can be very wide here but I do think his talking makes his range a little stronger from previous history. All PP and A8+. V1 didn't 3bet his AK hand so I wasn't sure if I can just assign him QQ+ range due to his 3bet. Do I flat with position here and the dynamic at play or get more money in? I don't typically play this deep so I wasn't sure of the best option here.

I don’t think we should put V1 on this range only. We are missing some information here... On the hand that he only flatted AK, did it had limpers, like on this one?
What positions it was? And what position are they in on this hand?
It all can change.
V1 could be a really competent player that is exploiting the maniac and the rest of the table.

He could have AT+, KJs+, KQo, TT+... for example, that don’t want to give the limpers and rest of the players good odds to join the hand. We do block part of his range with our AK. The thing is that if he is that competent, would he call your cold 4Bet with AQo and AJs?

I don’t believe he would. If you think that he might call with that type of hands we could make it 220-250$ and see how it goes.

I like more to flat and play IP vs his well defined range and the maniac that probably is calling along.

AKo I would 4Bet.

If you 4Bet and get raised are you ok to flip on best case scenario? If so you could.

I think its a nice spot to call and evaluate postflop.

So I CALL.

$300. Given the dynamic described AKs is the nuts. Just because you saw V1 flat AKo once doesnt mean you cant raise AKs for value here. You will still be deep enough to navigate postflop. If you get shoved on it sucks and you have to fold, but you were probably drawing thin anyways.

There's no chance I'm 4b here. Flat, call any further bets and see a flop.

Next.

If you're going to call a 4 bet, why wouldn't you just 4 bet yourself?

4b is so terrible

First... we don't know whether there will be any further bets.

There is no reason at all to blow up the pot preflop.

Just a question. Do you have any ambition of bringing anything else than negativity to this forum and telling people how bad they play in various sorts every thread?

I'm in this camp.

Are you calling 5bets? And 6bets?
When we 4Bet we reopen the action and give margin to more bets to be done.
So we gotta think how much reoppening the action is favorable for us.

If we call IP, we close the action or at least close to one of the players.
On this scenario, the player that have the action closed with our call is the player with the stronger range.... so, good for us.

Alot of reasons.

Depends on history and play styles.

2 main considerations. How often will they come over the top? In particular will V2 maniac bluff a good portion of the time? If so then flatting is better because you are too deep to get all in preflop with AK unless V2 is a spewy idiot maniac.

The second one is how often they will read your raise for AK. If they are going to put a lot of AK in your range, flat and push on any flop you didn't hit then flatting is better. In that situation better to keep your 4 betting range big pairs + bluffs so you can hit some non-obvious flops. If they are going to read your flatting range for AK a lot then raising becomes better.

This deep with suited AK I prefer a flat.

I have not played with V1 before so I defaulted to assuming his range was very strong. I think this was a mistake because he definitely could see V2 was the maniac and try to iso. The other described hands were similar in set up with limpers and V2 raising.

I call, limpers fold, V2 calls.

Flop (345) Q 8 4

V2 checks, V1 checks, Hero...

Given dynamic I would have 4bet pre as played I will bet here. We have two overs and BDNFD. I don't expect villain to be getting trappy with an overpair or AQ. He has AK himself a lot which I think we can barrel him off of.

Make it 200.

check

I think we are deep enough to 4bet preflop here. You have said that V2 is going after V1 and we have the opportunity to cold 4bet over a presumably light 3bet. We are also deep enough that if he shoves we can fold against a very tight 5 betting range vs a cold 4bet.

4betting and hoping to play heads up against V2 is my action.

As played on this flop, check. We are not going to get credit for QQ,KK,AA very often given we only flatted the 3bet and AQ while it is in our 3bet flatting range it is also in both of our Villians. And as we hold AK, AQ is slightly more likely holding in their range than ours.

I would check this flop. Somebody probably hit this flop or has an over pair and it didn't help you at all. Check and hope the turn helps you.

Betting isn't particularly bad though. $175 on such a dry board should clear out the weaker end hands that missed this entirely. If you are playing with these villains on a regular basis you should do this occasionally, both as some balance for your value and to setup when you do catch a good turn card.

I like the flat pre.

Yes, we're deep enough that we could 4-bet/fold but honestly I wouldn't be thrilled about getting into a 4-bet pot with AK heads up with the tight player. Flatting keeps ranges wider and keeps V2 in (who we can make more money from).

OTF, I bet small. If they're trapping with AA/KK/QQ, good job, but we can credibly rep AQ and get AK/AJ/etc. to fold their equity.

$165 or so.

V1 just opened. Im much more inclined to be okay taking the pot down preflop here which is why i lean towards the 4bet. 2nd best playing heads up against maniac. Depending on image.

If you look at our 4bet range in general here we can open it a bit to mirror our SB/BB 3 betting range which includes Axs and some Kxs against light opens.

These are 4bet spots you gotta jump on.

Can you clarify whether the maniac opened and was 3bet by the tight player or vice versa? I believe the bolded typo is confusing us

So it seems like some are still advocating for me to raise pre. To clarify, maniac bet 30 and the tighter player re-raised to 110. If the maniac raised to 110 I definitely raise it up. It was V1 that slowed me down at the time.

Obviously the maniac opened, even with the typo that seems pretty clear tbh.

I don't think we would want to lose the maniac, and we would also welcome someone who likes to shovel in money with top pair and could have worse aces and maybe even a couple of worse kings (maybe I'm being a tad too optimistic here though) with this dynamic between V1 and V2. Therefore I would flat pre here. AKs is very playable 3way in position, I reckon.

On this flop after two checks I'm not sure what to do. Does V1's check mean he's probably gonna fold? How often will the maniac call or check/raise you (specifically you) here? I don't want to be check/raised, but checking doesn't feel right either. I want to bet, but I'd really like to know my opponents for this.

I would not give V1 such a narrow range simply because in one situation where he had AK he did not 3-bet it pre. Do you ALWAYS 3-bet AK pre? I don’t. I play it differently for a variety of reasons. This deep I’m calling and seeing a flop with a hand that has excellent post flop playability.
Check flop. Play poker if turn gives you outs.

Looks good so far if you checked back flop.

I'm in the flat pre camp also. We want the maniac to stay in the pot. Also, 4betting probably helps V1 make the correct decision, ie fold all his light 3bets and dominated hands, and continue with AK/JJ+.

Flop i like a bet. We should have a lot of AQ and 99-QQ, we can get some underpairs and chops to fold, AK may actually be the worst hand we have on this flop, and we have lots of turncards we can barrel. Be aware V1 might still have QQ+ here, tho.

I’m checking. We can call some turns to float (if not so big) and some of em could be good to us.
No logic on beting.