What a great thread. Our preflop equity is either the only thing that matters (Minatorr, SABR) or completely irrelevant (Amanaplan), and our plan to win is either FOLD EQUITY!!!!! (erryone) or actually, I'm just going to check call (OP).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Koss
Im at work and on my phone, but will try to jump in more later.
I didnt think I had much FE against the opener preflop, nor did I really want him to fold. I expected him to call with most of his opening range. The guy was a once a year type maniac. Like Sabr said, Im 60/40 against him, and I have no problem pushing that edge. My postflop plan was was to check/call him down on most flops. It doesnt seem like normal winning poker but this guy was just getting so far out of line that A8s looks a lot like KK against him.
This is a better attempt at a 3bet pre line than "we'll just keep betting with no pairs and that will somehow make money against a guy who calls too much". This will work well if the dude is a complete, unmitigated maniac who is just going to keep putting out bets no matter what. If he's more selective though, things can get ugly.
As a toy example, let's say he bets the pot on the flop with a range A8s has 33% equity against. Since it's 33% of the final pot to call, you're indifferent between calling and folding. That means that in either case you lose $33 just by facing this bet. OTOH, if this guy is just a betting robot and always bets regardless of flop/hand, you're going to win vs these bets at 60%, or whatever your preflop equity was.
My problem here is that when you ask how aggressive it is correct for the opponent to be against our actual A8s hand, the answer is "more aggressive than it is possible to be against our threebet range as a whole" which is also what I think the answer is to "how aggressive is this maniac going to be?". Being against an overly aggressive player is bad when we're near the bottom of our range (unless, as noted, they're so aggressive that they just always bet). So that's my argument here - that you're going to lose more check calling this guy down in the large pot you created than you gained in equity by reraising. My plan is instead to keep the pot small, to minimize positional issues, and make money with my implied odds postflop.