Hero - $1000 - pretty fresh to the table - maybe been here for about an hour but I know at least half the table now because I play every day now and the player pool is smaller the higher up you go. Most of them know I am a winning player as i've heard comments like "I rarely see you lose" - "You're a tough player" ext. I'm generally very nice and will engage in talk even when losing at the table though so no one seems to have a problem with me, and Im always very friendly to fish.

Villain - $1000 - just sat down with $500 and immediately raises to $40 with AKo. 976 flop and he just barrels away. Ends up losing and is left with $175 and comments how can you call pre with that? (LOL how can you barrel away on that board is what I wanted to say but I said nothing) Next hand he jams it in with AhTh and hits a flush and stacks 2 people. Next hand after that he goes $40 with J4o and hits top pair. Ext - ext - plays about 80% of hands and they are $40 - $50 raises. Our 2/5 game is now a 2/5/40 game essentially.


I have the best seat as this guy is on my direct left. So I am obviously going to be limping 100% of my raising range now.

SB
BB
2 limper
Hero is dealt AJ in HJ and over limps.
Villain goes $40
BB calls
1 limper calls
Hero goes $200
Villain calls
fold
fold

345
Hero $200
Villain call

Turn J
Hero jams all in
Villain tanks forever and eventually calls.

Thoughts?

Edit
Do we still jam if we don't turn the J, Club, 2, or ace - Tough to say but I probably do as I could easily see A high being the best hand and he has a hand like 6x or random flush draw???

That's the way I'd play it in fiddy cent 1 dolla' $100 cap game, as I have 100 buy-ins.

Yeah I'm happy to get it in here I'd probably bet less than a jam and be happy to get the rest in on the river

Pre-flop: just open this for a standard raise and fold if villain 3-bets us pre.

He can't keep doing this forever, it's fine to build some history for when we get a genuine premium hand and we need to worry about the other players at the table.

As played, c-bet on the flop is fine. If the J had not come on the turn we would usually need to give up.

Why are we raise / folding against super wide open from V?

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Here are my thoughts as an admitted n00b who is studying hard...

Your 3bet sizing kind of sets you up to play for stacks. And maybe that's what you wanted to do against this crazy LAG. I am actually genuinely curious why you 3bet $200 and not like $120? Is that type of over betting standard against lags?

It kind of left you in spot where shoving is really all you could do on the turn.

Anyway, on the turn, you are clearly ahead of his ludicrous range so it's a clear value bet. I would bet half pot ($400) but given the fact you only have $600 left, a shove is fine.

As for do I shove on a brick turn? Probably not. It comes down to the question of why am I betting? As little respect as I give this guy, I can't say with any certainty that Ace high is good. So maybe if I want to have a bluff here, I shove but clearly I'm looking for a fold.



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We don't have position. Hero is in the hijack and villain is on the cutoff or button. There are two early position limpers so we should start off by narrowing their range with a normal raise.

We have only been at the table 1 hour. I embrace variance more than most but there is no need to go to war in a bloated pot out-of-position by limp-raising the maniac with our AJo.

IMHO, if we wanted to have a limp raising strategy in this spot then AQs/JJ+ would be better candidates and we could limp/raise it to 140/160 pre-flop rather than 200.

You want to limp more but 100% is usually excessive. The optimal rate is situational though because it depends both on how maniac and how the rest of the table is responding to raises along with stack sizes. If maniac will still call after you raises then you raise to set sizing and get more FE. If maniac likes to reraise then raise some strong hands that are good enough to rereraise/shove preflop. If raising cuts down his range then limp/call more.

The specific example you give depends on maniac. Maniac is a wide range and they have wildly different profiles of how they react to aggression on the part of another player. Against some you can push them out of pots if you show aggression post flop, others just will not give up and you need to wait till you have value. Your limp/raise with AJo and then c-bet flop depends on your maniac having a fold button. He doesn't sound like that sort. Few maniacs have a fold button preflop but some will fold flop if they have nothing and you continue.

In any case you should plan on giving up on the turn if you don't hit your top pair. Some maniacs can be pushed off a hand if you barrel but this pot is way too bloated. He can have total air but he might fold that to a shove, he will call with his 56 hands. This is one of the best reasons to raise yourself, that lets you be the aggressor in the pot without bloating it too far. If you make it $25 preflop you can barrel flop and turn.

Completely disagree with raising pre ourselves. We've got the god seat on this guy. If he's raising 80% of hands, I'm never raising myself. I can let him raise, see how people react and close the action. Assuming we have good reads on the other players, we should have a good idea who's playing back (and we can play back even more), who's playing square (so we can dump our marginal hands), and who's calling and hoping thing go their way (so we can raise them out pre and go HU with some dead money).

Once we get the preflop reads (which probably took like 10 hands) we really need to get a handle on his post-flop play. As @QuadJ says, some V's like this have a fold post, some don't, and some are in between, continuing with any piece of the board.

AP, there's about 490 in the pot OTF and 800 behind. Unfortunately, we're now flying kinda blind. Maybe V will jam over a cbet wide, maybe he'll fold without a hand, maybe he'll call almost everything.

With two overs, the BDNFD, and a GSSD, I think a cbet is in order. Betting 200, if called, puts 890 in the pot with 600 behind, so we're basically committed without better reads. So I think we should just jam ourselves. It's super high variance, but that's the downside of playing a maniac.

Once we have better reads on V's postflop mad skillz, we can tune our strategy a bit better.

But I'm not putting in 20% of my stack pre and then folding without a more reliable indication I'm beat.

There are 7 other people at this table who also get dealt cards and are capable of hitting hands. There's some value to narrowing their range along with villain's and to knowing where we stand in the hand.

Good luck with limping 100% of our raising range.

We could definitely mix in some limping/calling and limp/raising but we've only been at the table an hour and to decide that we should now be limping 100% of our raising range to target this one player risks placing us in some unnecessarily awkward spots.

If you were villain, what would you find hardest to play against?

2 early position limps followed by a raise or 3 limps to you?

This.

My main problem with the hand is not the limp/reraise, its the sizing of the limp re-raise

Hand is quite awkward when villain (always at least) calls and similarly multiway

There is value to narrowing the range of the other people at the table. I believe we accomplish that best by seeing what they do in response to V's raise before we act.

I would find it harder to play sandwiched between V, who is raising 80% of his hands and an aggressive H who acts effectively after everyone else. I'd be much happier if H raised first so that I didn't have to worry about what s/he was going to do.

To be clear, V isn't raising 80% of the hands he plays, he's raising 80% of all hands. We're effectively playing 2/5/40. Limping lets us effectively have the button preflop. Raising leaves us in our normal rotation.

If V were happy to 3b wide, then I'd get behind raising ourselves. But I'm guessing he raises way too much but probably doesn't 3b particularly wide.

Before limping, I might choose to narrow down my open range a touch, open for slightly less, call plenty/4b more than usual. Even if he continues 3b me at a high clip, it’s going to get me in lots of HU spots post which where we can print, even OOP.

Frankly, there are rarely enough hands that I want to limp backraise against this guy that wouldn’t just play better as an open raise. Also, it also doesn’t take long for the non-idiots to start flatting all their monsters IP as well. Average players are a lot better at doing that than they are at finding/playing a cold calling a 3b range.

We would find out very quickly if another player has a monster because they would ether call or 4bet.

how much is V playing?

played very well. Maybe bet more on the flop. 300 is better because we are never folding to this dude and we have more FE while not looking like we are FOS.

If J misses the turn, definately shutting down if a Q or K gets there. But any club or card pairing the board and I would continue barelling .

I like it.

$200 is fine (and good) with the two limpers (3x + limpers). Good cbet and great turn -- jamming every time vs. this player.

Not sure what I'd do on other turns -- it just depends on what the turn is and my feel of V.

I am never raising first time around vs. this guy unless the other player profiles suggest I do.

That's an ancillary issue and I wouldn't want that to be your takeaway from my post.

You are in a race against the clock (and the card contest nits) to stack this guy (or get stacked and then stack him), so your prime directive is to max-ISO. 'Obviously limping 100%' is not yet a profitable exploit until you know how he treats your open raises. If he is going to routinely 3b roughly the same range he opens with, then you ought to try a less exploitative approach first. Also, are you going to limp-backraise 100%? What about mid-late position spots? overimping-backraising when the vanilla regs are quickly employing the same standard strat? Don't be vanilla, don't think "100% limping time gonna get him" like everyone else auto-thinks. Get in there, know you're gonna win a million/lose a million, and lock out the table. Not everyone can play this way, but you ought to try and seem to have a handle on things well enough to make some dough making pots huge.

Imagine if the limper actually raised 76s like he's supposed to, now you're in a spot already pre and post you're dead.