I've been playing with this guy for years and he's one of my main nemeses because, well, he seems to be totally illogical, and i can never figure him out.

I'm sure he's up on me over the years, but i have 2 strategies against him, esp in position. 1 is to reraise small, like 2-2.5x, the other is to flat call and try and get him to spew. I've called against him a lot and tried to have the stones to simply call down light, or just flop a big hand that he can't see, but neither of those strategies seem to work

since he knows me well, i will give you some reads on me that most of the table already knows

right now we are playing at probably the toughest table you can get in the room. There is one tourist in from NY who's actually very good, the rest of the table is tough regs and it's not going to be easy to extract chips unless we take some gambles which we are prepared for

obviously i can't tell what my stats actually are but i'm a reasonably active player so i think i play about 19% of hands on average, probably standard, but i call a lot more often than most people pre flop, so people here think i'm a flop monkey, i float a lot of flops because i generally believe poker doesn't start til the turn

therefore i believe i'm a caller to a raise about 8% of the time, with a slightly lower than optimum 3 bet freq. maybe like 2-3%

expect villain to know this

a few orbits ago, I picked up AKss on the BB, late pos raise, late pos call, v raises the SB to 155, i reraise to 325, fold, fold, call....flop Js7d4s, check, we bet 500, v folds

that's how i normally win money vs him, but he's won when it actually goes to flop, turns and rivers, and i'm butt hurt about it

Villain seems to play with blind aggression. He goes for 3 streets of value every time, he has the most triple barrels and bluff raises of anyone i've ever seen. But that being said, he gets caught in lol bluffing spots, like check raising T73T boards and jamming all rivers even tho that river is the 3, giving the guy calling a full house with him showing the nut low. Like he is this irrational.

on to the hands in question

these are hands where i would normally 3 bet but decided to see if i can catch him in a 3 street bluff. notice the sizing. he is basically throwing unexploitable bet sizings at me where he really shouldn't be betting 3 streets but here goes

Eff stacks 3300, 8 handed

villain opens for 30 on the button, sb folds, we flat the BB with 77

pot (65) HU

T83

check, v bets 25, hero calls

(he and i both know I'm never folding a slngle hand to this size)

Turn (115) check

T

check, v bets 75, hero calls

River (265)

A

check, v bets 265


And another hand that i could 3 bet a lot but usually don't

8 handed, folds to villain in the SB, raises to 35, hero calls with A9

pot (70) heads up

973

v bets 50, hero calls

pot 170

J

v bets 225

KT, I'm not sure if you're trolling, and if you are, you're quite good and probably have a future in politics, but just skimming through you descriptions and things, your general outlook on poker is incomplete. I'd really recommend getting coaching, either one-on-one, or on a training site. I mean, if you're at a tough table... first off why play? Secondly, the way to adjust isn't by overcalling more and 3betting less. It's by almost never overcalling and 3betting properly. Regardless of what you believe, there's 4 streets to poker and the game begins preflop. Furthermore, your understanding of game theory and mixed strategies seems off.

T83 flop - you're allowed to have folds, even vs downbets, even from people who overbluff. Not saying that 77 is a fold here, but you're going to be really wide defending BB vs BTN, so think about your K4s or Q5s type hands, or 56s. Are you really going to float the flop with something K4ss here?

Honestly, just get some coaching and learn your ABCs at a lower stakes.

just stay out of my threads if you mention the word trolling because these hands actually happened

as for coaching, i think it's fairly important for the game to keep an open anonymous discussion because the people who have no information can't win anymore, so the poker world actually needs these threads

have you noticed the popularity of poker declining as the quality of posts in twoplustwo declines

if you mean "trolling" as in i made up these hands, as if i don't want to talk about them or have them talked about publicly, you are cannabalizing the site and the game

10 years ago this site was popular and so was poker, then idiots like you starting using a wierd word called trolling and everyone stopped posting

get it?

So maniac post flop when he is the aggressor but has some sense preflop? What does he do when he flat calls preflop and how often does he? Is he the sort that will bet when checked too or does he have the sense to avoid traps?

One thing to pay a lot of attention too with this sort is bet sizing. Do his over bets tend to be value or bluffs? Does he ever make small bluff bets on the river? Finding some sort of pattern to get a read on his betting on the river is often key to beating this sort.

The other thing to do is see a bunch of flops but only get past the flop with hands likely to make it to the river. If your calling flop and folding turn very often you are just giving him money.

If he is going to spew regularly then trying to trap him more is a good idea but make sure you still have raises against him. Particularly if your playing him regularly you can't get into the habit of only raising your very strong value. You need to trap some AA/KK hands and raise some middle pairs and a few suited connectors. Possibly even some bluffs if he has a fold button.

That is a mistake. You know he is going to barrel so you should be giving up air hands and hands that can't call 3 streets on most run outs.

Typical of this type of villain. The board has gotten dangerous and now he bets hard. All of his value and some of his bluffs beat you and villain has made a big bet. Against this guy you should mostly have folded flop because it's very hard for your hand to improve and lots of ways for the board to get bad. As played you got a bad run out and mostly should fold.

Just sounds like you should just never fold a pair.

And in that moment, the accuser became the accused...

Seriously though, I am just trying to help you out. If you're playing in a tough line up, you want to play closer to "optimal" than anything, especially preflop and on the flop as those parts are easier to figure out and implement. If you look at pf stats and ranges of people who really play well, they do little overcalling preflop, sticking to pf charts worked out by solvers like monker or simplePF that have them 3b preflop much more than the 2-3% figure you stated. If you get a coach or go on a training site you'll get a much better understanding of what your pf strategy should look like and how it's currently exploitable than by posts in LLSNL.

Moreover than anything, I'm not suggesting that you're making hands up. I'm suggesting that someone who floats a lot of flops because they believe poker doesn't start 'till the turn isn't serious.

As far as your HH

77, I probably play the same on flop and turn. River I think I'd fold. Our sevens and diamond block his bluffs and we do have better hands here. There are some 8x combos that call down flop and turn, with A8 being awesome here. Our FDs and Tx will be throwing in a raise sometimes, but once in a while we might have trips or a rivered A from a NFD.

A9. Seems like we could raise flop for value/protection. As played, I don't have a problem letting go OTT. Interesting spot to run, but I think we've got a bunch of flushes here, some pairs with NFD/2nd FD, and T8 that would make a better defend to the overbet.

I love the light calldown in hand 1, hand 2 could get expensive so maybe raise somehwere, flop?

so i did fold in both these spots which now that i posted them i don't like...esp hand 1 i just have to call because his draws busted and his range from the button is so damn wide.

as far as that float comment, i'm half-joking but the players are betting 1/3 of pot here and know i'm going to be a caller at that price because that's what the math says to do when people micro bet flops, for 25 i do not have a fold range, yes K4s is a float, it's K high which is still ahead of a lot of villains hands if he's making it 25 with 100% of his range, and yeah i think he's betting 25 on this flop with all hands so this sequence on the flop is standard and probably going to be played the exact same way a lot. I quite literally do not have a fold range on this texture

nice try OP, there are two 9d in hand 2. never happened.

like we literally don't have any hands without showdown value in our calling range pre, so i imagine this is a flop we are never folding, and expect villain to know that, he's a pro i believe, a fixture at the game who is probably +ev against me over the years, so my way isn't the only way

What makes you think that? Here's a solve for sb vs bb on the flop. (I did use "optimal" pf starting ranges for 100bb though, not 300bb. I don't have any deep-stack solutions) We certainly have folds to the 38%PS Cbet.

plug in our real calling range of Q9s+ JTo+, 44-77, A6o+, 9Ts+ that is all the hands i have pre flop

this is my general calling range, there are no low suited connectors in our range pre, none, those hands i have to 3 bet, what i'm trying to do is make money off him with my marginal hands without getting into trouble and maxing out on my high and low, so our strongest suited connectors are always 3 bets as is the top of our range like AJ+

K4s is like the worst hand we have, but yea we call with that for sure but honestly that hand plays better as a light 3bet, so really i actually don't have that hand often, i think i would 3 bet a hand that strong pre, the above hands are in the middle and are played as a call for variance control and hoping villain overplays, basically that entire range covers this flop so he is betting light into a flop that hits my range, but he might not be doing this pre flop math like you are

How are you 3bet 2-3% with a range including 88-AA and K4s but not AK?

I read that as three bets 2-3% less than optimal.

Oh, that makes more sense.

OP, I think you’re safe to have a 3-betting range of 10-12% against a BTN open. You might even go wider if BTN is opening much wider than 40%. Against a BTN open I would 3bet a linear range of any suited broadways hand {JTs-ATs+} (40 combos), AKo/AQo/KQo (48 combos), A5s-A3s (12 combos), 65s-76s (8 combos), 88+ (42 combos).

That will get you to 150 combos, which is close to 12%.

Or you could 3-bet a polarized range by replacing some of the weaker suited broadways combos by weaker suited kings (K45s-K3s) and suited gappers (75s,74s, etc).

Either polarized or linear is fine, and you might favor one over the other depending on Villains fold-to-3bet stats. But I think aiming for 12% should be an ideal sweet spot here for BB vs BTN.

Why is this in Low Stakes?

That range looks solid. As described the villain sounds like someone who'll call a lot and will be sticky post, so I'd lean to adjusting linerarly vs polar.

On a side note, I've seen some solves that don't have SC worse than T9 3b from SB, but other than that are mostly the same as the range you put up. They usually have more ATo and KJo to make up. I've also seen the Pluribus bot 3b sc from SB in youtube videos too though...

__
Also, I messed up that sim I posted earlier. I had hero IP as BB vs SB, not OOP as BB defending vs BTN because I got hand 1 and 2 mixed up. Still think x/f ranges exists against small bets.

so i'm just giving my stats overall, obv i'm going to be playing my blind against a 70% range on the button and in position to an SB range more aggressively

imo your 3 bet range should be around 4% overall and your calling % should be closer to 6% overall

villain has played with me enough to know that i tend to call more often than optimum and 3 bet less often than usual, that's why when i raised to 325 he started asking if i had AA

suited kings are just too strong here not to 3bet pre at least some of the time

like i said i'm trying to play by the book here and maybe i call with K4s half the time and 3 bet half giving me just 4 combos of that out of around 500, so that hand really doesn't figure here much

T8o is a defend btw as is J9o so i have a ton of equity with my calling range on this board, v probably knows this too, this flop usually hits me

also, he's never not cbetting but he's usually doing it small, because the flop doesn't matter, it usually plays exactly the same

he gives up here sometimes after the flop but sometimes he starts cocking the barrel, all the draws whiffed, so definitely a mistake to fold hand 1

hand 2 is a lot different he bet 50 then overbet i think i alot of the time he's got a better hand, he is adjusting for being OOP but i think the 200 ott is to get max value out of draws, so i like folding hand 2, it's fine, but for petes sake 3bet pre lol

seems to me your more interested in playing lots of hands against V instead of just playing a few and taking his money.

"suited kings are just too strong here not to 3bet pre at least some of the time"
so we play K3 against him just because its suited?

so i think my 3 bet% here is higher than 12%, it should be around 15%, i think 18% is closer to standard,

overall i have calling hands in my range like i can flat QQ here some of the time, just remember that he folds to 3 bets, if he has T6o he's just going to fold, so even tho he seems nuts he's actually got a fold 3b range, he's a winning player

just remember that villain is a fixture in the game, he's very hard to play against, he can both dump a lot of BI's or stack up, very high variance player but all of this math is running thru his brain

what he knows is that i probably have trap hands in my range, coz even if it's a 15% 3bet that's not enough, it should be 18%-20% 3 bet vs his BTN range

he's an action player, and he's got my number...i've flatted with QQ in similar spots and the flop went the same way and he's given up, so flatting with QQ all of the time is not good

so the main reason why we have suited kings in our 3b range is because it blocks has equity when called, and he folds enough that K4s plays way better as a 3bet, he's got 70% opens but maybe folds half the time and we are ecstatic when he folds, so yeah lets just forget that hand even exists here, he has a wide fold range to 3bets, the open money is just to provoke action and pretty standard actually

well, these are pretty interesting hands as far as 3bet ranges, but those suited kings are pretty strong against his range

i'm giving up some of the hands that are normal calls like Q2s i just fold that hand, J7s but not J6s not J3s, just a ton of stuff i would just fold given a good player deep OOP, i'm willing to give up some of the blinds, i think i probably call with all aces tho and just 3bet the juicy ones because i think villain will often pay off on ace high flops and wheel draws and whatever

so you plugged in Q2s into your range but i would just rather fold pf that hand all Qs up to like 8, so those hand shapes just don't fit into my range at all, i think if you adjusted the parameters you'd see i'm never folding here on the flop, never

and i'm joking about villains soul, he would think it was funny

What do you think your 3bet stats are in BB facing an open from this BTN? You say he’s opening 70%. Are you 3! 5%, 10%, 15%, or more?

If someone is opening 70% on the button, I'm gonna 3bet them until they stop opening way more then they're allowed to (or they're broke)

15%, which is too low, but i'm trapping with some pretty strong hands like 77 to compensate for my low 3bet freq and high fold freq, the computer in my brain would say 18-20 is optimum, if anyone wants to plug in the math go ahead but i like my chances, i have to rely on the math and not losing my bankroll to a strong player at the table isn't in the math