This.

3b A8s is def the superior option but it's def high variance against a crazy dude. If he's really open 60-75% of hands we should actually have a good amount of FE pre, and if we don't he's going to get to the flop with a loot of crap holdings that can't take any pressure.

I'd take A8s in the SB 3b vs a drooler opening 70% of hands anyday of the year over a good LAG who can handread and has position.

Zero reason to make it 50, smaller in this situation if expanding ranges, even 35 is fine. You can more easily fold to an lol 4b or have more room to 5b/jam w more hands if the dipsiht on your left is gonna try to be a tough guy. Not that you are going to start doing that, but at least it’s an option. The smaller 3b is still going to accomplish what you want most of the time, iso and the call.
I’ll tell you something else, the 4b guy is a clown, not just a dipsiht. He’s re-isoing you, the best player at the table, and locking out the fish. He should be flatting almost everything, but he doesn’t know that, so, once V2 folds, go ahead and throw your cards away becaaue more than anything, the maniac forces him to have more value more often. Next time, point to his headphones, motion for him to take off one ear to hear you, then ask him what’s wrong with him.

Here's what I don't get Minatorr, here is the guy we're talking about:

Here's your prescription for dealing with this:

Maximising dat FE? Against a guy who is sticky and aggressive? It's like being up against a calling station and being like "He probably has a weak range, I say we bluff!". If we win a lot off maniacs when we get premium hands - which we do, obviously - then we can't also win by making them fold. Those things are diametrically opposed. You aren't going to over-realize your equity by making this guy fold, that's the exact opposite of the mistakes he makes at poker. Beating this guy fundamentally involves showing down better hands than him.

That is true but has no bearing on the decision (I'd also rather flat against the drooler than against the LAG, in fact I'd always rather have any hand, in any situation, against the drooler than the LAG).

The reason I posted that btw is that unlike against maniacs, against decent LAGs, meeting aggression with aggression is the correct way to respond. The other thing is that looking at the A8s in isolation is misleading because 3bing it helps out with range balancing, which is a big concern against the LAG and basically not a concern at all against the maniac.

It's not necessarily my prescription for dealing with it. It's just that overall from the SB you're almost always better off 3-betting over flatting specifically vs a RFI for a multitude of reasons. Big, big one right here: BB is a LAG who has position on us and will 3b like a crazy dude here realizing how capped we are.

I think you are vastly underestimating our FE pre, if he really opens 75% pre and we make it 3.5x+, he should fold at least some of his garbage. And if he doesn't fold or very rarely, well it's a 3b for value. A 60/40 edge is huge, and as SABR points out AKo only has a 60/40 edge against a reasonable 3b call range, yet everyone is always fist-pumping 3b AK even OOP. So i really dont see why people would take snap 3b AKo SB vs a MP/EP open, have around 60/40 at best, but yet nit fold pre or just flat when 3-betting A8s here will give us around 60/40 plus it's suited. A8s will be good at realizing its equity vs hands like A10o, and probably better at realizing its equity than in the example where you 3b SB vs EP open w/ AKo.

If we flop an 8 or an A, we are going with it. If we flop a draw or a straight draw, we will most likely be going with it as well as we have too much equity vs his overall trashy range. we can even x/jam boards where we have a bare gutshot and it'll most likely be +EV.

I also expect him to make a good amount of mistakes post, so i dont mind playing a bigger pot with a hand that has 60% equity vs his range.

A whole lot of anecdotal evidence and reasoning is being used to argue against bloating the pot with likely a 60/40 equity edge.

Imagine thinking raw equity matters here. Come on guys. Before being 4bet, A8 is the nuts.

I think it's a bit rich to worry about getting pushed off our hand by NOT threebetting, when what you're doing by threebetting is reopening it for the known maniac at the table to have another crack at us. (A8s is a dog to top 20%, so the maniac can 4bet pretty liberally and it's going to be a losing proposition for us no matter what we do). BB is not a magician, he's mostly going to have been dealt J4o or something and fold. The maniac constrains him from getting too out of line.

"We're out of position" is hardly anecdotal.

Here is a guide to threebetting at HUNL. A8s gets threebet by some players and not others. Typical 3betting ranges are like top 17%, this is heads up against a button opponent usually opening like 80-90% of hands. You can't just sort by equity and threebet any hand with an equity advantage over their range.

Do you guys threebet 66 as well, btw?

Perhaps you're aware of this, but HUNL is different due to the BB closing the action. We are not closing the action here. Ask Polk how often he flats from the SB instead of 3-bet or folding.

I also never said to 3-bet any hand with an equity advantage over their range, so you're arguing against a point that I'm not making. 60/40 is also far from "any hand with an equity advantage." And yes I would sometimes 3-bet 66 as well. This math thing is not your strong suit I'm sorry to say.

And yes, "we're out of position" is anecdotal if you're arguing that it's going to cause you to get outplayed OOP with a 20% equity difference and an SPR under 3. I dunno, maybe it's true for you I can't judge.

The secret to successful gambling is to recognize 60/40 situations and be on the right side of the bet. If your image is good (which it is here), you want to 3! in this situation. You're going to get a lot of folds and collect a nice pot.

TBH, I'm not all that upset about 3!/f to a 4! from a meta-game point of view. Most villains won't realize you adjusted to the maniac, and will think they can get a fold with 2 napkins.

Agree with smaller sizing. Given the open raise was 6.5x and we only started the hand with 150 BB it’s gonna be a pretty shallow spot post. If villain called the $50 you’d have an SPR of 2.5x versus 3.8x at $35. Not insignificant, provides you more flexibility post, and BB should react fairly similarly with his range.

Would definitely like OP to chime in here with whether this stuff about FE is reasonable. Preflop and postflop.

Well definitely don’t flat pre obviously. Folding would be fine though.

The adaptations to 100% vpiping zero fold equity villains are more complex than most people realize.

Aesah recently postulated this question in his thread and got the same thinking that has been given since 2003 which is to have a wider range yourself.

But that might not necessarily be the best adaptation.

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.

3 betting here with A8dd is a leak. people are overrating how much FE we have here. Luckily we got 4bet so we can let it go

It's a mistake to think the correct adjustment for loose openers is to 3bet them a lot... what matters far more is if they have a high fold to 3b %, there's no point if they are calling a lot. Most spewers in LLNSL that are loose openers are also loose callers... have fun stacking off against fish with A8dd on A high board.

when the game is spewy and loose, the correct adjustment is to 3bet for value and in position, neither of which we have here.

Call > 3bet

l disagree that A8s cannot be 3bet for value against this loose of an opener, but am open minded about it. Even OOP, I think there is value here. What do you think is a good value 3! range vs a 75% opener who is also calling too often?

even against once a year type maniac, I think we're overestimating our skill edge if you want to play a bloated pot OOP with A8dd. are you prepared to hero call him with A high? That doesn't sound like normal winning poker because it's losing poker...

beating fish should be easy, don't make it hard...

Koss already knows how I feel on this one.

Overall, I feel continuing to the cold 4bet is a *massive* spew. And if we think it's fine then I'm not convinced at all that continuing to the original raise (either by 3betting or flatting OOP) is going to be profitable.

FWIW, I think folding originally is fine because I'm not convinced how profitable it is going to be for me OOP against a guy who can obviously apply pressure when the vast majority of the time I'm going to end up with no pair no draw OOP to a guy who isn't just going to roll over (i.e. hanging our hat on our preflop equity advantage ain't gonna mean much when we get to most turns UI OOP). If you're an expert (noting that I'm assuming experts snap fold to the 4bet) then you can obviously do whatever you want.

GcluelessNLnoobG

And your bankroll thanks you for this.

As for the play, I think folding is far superior to any other action when we are in the small blind. We have the best position versus this maniac and will have 8 other preflop chances to 3! him with whatever range we want when we are in position. And, given we seem to have a preflop spewtard to our left as well, I think letting this one go will be way more profitable long term.

I am pretty confident saying that over any decent hand sample size, even the best players in the world would have a loss with A8ss in 3! pots from the SB. Just sayin'...

Option 1:
Fold and get a seat change to the left of v1 or the right or v2.
Top off your stack to at least 200 bb, preferably more.
Go to war.

Option 2:
Fold and show the 8 to v1, try to talk him into showing his hand (it’s a good spot for a 4! bluff and it’s important to know if he has that in his bag of tricks)
Play tight but pick your spots to bluff post flop and bluff more often.
Also try to trap with a few monsters pre where v2 opens you call, v1 3! And you can 4! or 5!

How is v1 cbetting as the preflop aggressor? Is he cbetting too much?
Then start check raising him on flops, and stabbing really wide on the turn after he checks back flops.

Someone in here is going to have to explain to me why all this 60/40 w A8s has any bearing on anything.

What you are trying to create is your own personal HU game vs a maniac where you are going to have the button ~3/4 of the time. You are not going to be able to achieve this always, but trying to iso him with the range you would play if it were just HU otb (save maybe some hands) is the prime directive. Sure, the other players might try to prevent this but mostly they won’t be able to, so you size down (becasue you’re doing this a lot w a lot of hands), get the iso, play the btn HU. It’s not full ring anymore and generally the other players make it easy on you when there is a whale like this bc their adaptation is to play less hands/pure value/then trap. No way in this game you’re not making the most money with that strategy if capable of executing it well.

Now tell me again why you would fold? How does 60/40 matter?

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).

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.

You have zero clue what you're talking about.

First of all, yes, the SB is a bad position to play from, and everyone will lose from the SB because you can't do anything about the trash you get dealt there. Good players will win from non-blind positions because they can fold their trash for free. Your goal as a poker player is to lose LESS than you would by folding the SB every time, and a good way to do that is to fight for your share of the equity, especially when you have an equity edge as huge as 60/40.

As an extreme example, if you folded the SB every single time, you'd have a winrate of -50bb/100 from the SB. Now if you folded every hand except AA and simply jammed AA against any action, you'd do slighly better than -50bb/100 because you'd win your AA hands but you get AA very rarely. We can obviously do much better than that, and in fact we don't even have to show a profit to 3 bet a hand here, we literally just have to lose less than 0.5bb on average, and it will be a net win compared to folding. This is literally poker theory 101 for anyone who's ever played online poker.

For anyone who thinks I'm wrong or that 60/40 equity edge is not a big deal (this is truly hilarious), this is why you will never get out of the kiddie pool of low stakes, because not only do you not understand poker math at a basic level, you don't want to get out of your comfort zone or get any better. And that's absolutely fine, if everyone played at a higher level there would be much less point to trying to win at poker. But the sheer arrogance of people who are not only wrong but have absolute confidence and conviction in being wrong, makes me feel that poker will always be good.

How are we losing $33 to the bet? Folding has EV=0 so I assume calling also has EV=0 if we’re indifferent