1/2 5-handed

Villain: MAWG who cares more about winning pots and making great plays than winning money. He's ego driven and loves making big hero calls, folds and bluffs. His observed button pfr is 100% over a good sample. He never folds to a 3-3.5x 3! He's also fairly aggressive postflop. I've observed one light 4! in a previous session with A8o and previously folded to a 4! jam of $200 into $40 holding KTo when I 3! his button open from the SB. This was the first time anyone 3! him this session.

Hero is viewed as a tricky, winning player, I think.

Assume variance is not a factor.

Was the KTo hand a fold to the 4-bet? I think yes because of limited data at that point.

The next orbit he opens the button again to $15 (atc) What range do you 3! and with what sizing? What range do you plan on calling a shove with? Do you even have a flatting range?

BB is an unknown with 100BB

If he's really this aggressive then I dont want to 3bet at all, just call him down light and let him valuetown himself

I see nothing in your description of the villain that would cause me to think it is good to 3 bet his button raise out of the SB with KT, and if I did 3bet this hand I would absolutely fold to his huge 4b.

I don't think I quite understand the question about a stack off range pre flop when the pot is so small. I'm not looking to jam it in with a maniac with weak holdings, so I'm likely folding most hands out of the blinds, calling some and raising only premium hands.

He will probably shove a lot if you raise him out of the blinds but probably will fold out some of the weaker end of his range. Take a look at a poker odds calculator and see what you need to be ahead of various ranges. Start with a pretty tight raising range and see how he reacts and adjust from there.

Flatting OOP will depend on stack sizes. At 100BB with a big button raise I'm raising with hands I'm willing to get in with preflop and folding everything else. If he will consistently pay off I will set mine occasionally. OOP against a raise that big it's marginal but may be workable depending on how much he will lose postflop. When stacks are shorter I'm always raising or folding and the raises are likely to be shoves. If effective stacks are deeper I will flat more often, flatting with some good aces and big suited connectors that would be raises with smaller stacks. I'll be set mining more, if he will consistently bluff off a good chunk of money I might set mining with TT- every time. Also flatting with some middle and occasionally with low suited connectors.

Strategy will have to adapt to how other people at the table are playing also. The above assumes there is a lot of limp/fold and limp/call, if people are limp/raising then you would have to play tighter and more carefully preflop. If the table is limp/calling real wide then skip the medium and low suited connectors OOP unless you expect to get a really great price and most villains are deep.

KTo was a 3! for value. Folding this the first time around seems insanely nitty to me. This is a rather strong hand here. He may be a maniac, but he's not a total drooler. He does have some poker skills and will notice if I start raising premiums only.

I'm the only one at the table adjusting AFAIK.

The question is about approaching a 100% button open who doesn't fold to 3-bets and may 4! light.

100% agree.

In this spot, I call. KTo is a fine hand with good high card value against his ATC hand range (it dominates a ton of Kx and Tx), and I'm fine playing it oop because I think my card advantage + skill advantage vs. V as described make up for it enough. I wish he raised smaller, probably more from a variance perspective than an EV perspective (I might call a bet with K-high).

Putting in a 3-bet either with the plan to 3-bet/fold or stack off seems pretty bad. There's no reason to think he'll stack off so light that KTo has even OK equity; and 3-bet/folding turns KTo, which is a fine high card value hand vs. his range, into a bluff. I also don't think the 3-bet works as a value 3-bet.

I mean... aren't you in position again this villain the vast majority of the time? You should be vacuuming up his chips. Considering a 3-bet oop with KTo in this spot sounds like you might be the guy trying to win every pot.

You could even fold pre-flop. It's not a big mistake to fold KTo pre-flop oop facing a 7.5BB raise, even from a guy who is raising quite wide.

I'd say call >> fold >>>>>>>> 3-bet.

Why do stacks matter if V is raising the BTN with ATC, and we have KTo?

I mean, we have 60/40 hot/cold equity against ATC. Our post-flop equity is even better because we dominate like 90%+ of his Tx hands and ~66% of his Kx hands, and boards that give us hands stronger than one pair can often hit V.

We then just have to think about villain - if he's going to c-bet every flop, I think we just have to flat flops with K-high a lot. It gets dicier if we think he'll keep betting. Obviously, if he's raising pre and barreling every time until there are no chips left, we can just blindly click call with 60/40 equity, which is pretty good. I don't mind folding pre-flop, I prefer calling, and I'm not sure how stack sizes make a difference in EV. In variance, yes, but not in EV.

The reason I ask about KTo is that I'm suspicious of his 4! given circumstances. I guess you don't like the 3! because I may get blown away by a light 4-bet? He has a near 100% continuing range, I just don't know his 4! frequency.

A couple orbits later I decide to 3! A8s to $50 and he jams for $200. Now having a 100% 4! with a sample of two I'm even more suspicious so I call despite feeling sick about it.

Here's the issue with the KTo 3-bet. When you 3-bet, he will fold so many hands you dominate. Again, he's playing ATC, so I'm saying he'll fold K2o, T4o, etc. You want him to continue with those hands post-flop. Meanwhile, he will call with a stronger set of hands. And he could 4-bet in such a manner that you probably do have to fold, but maybe you are or maybe you are not getting close to enough equity to call. You're guessing.

If he's a maniac, playing aggressively back at him is the wrong plan.

These bolded statements appear to conflict - OP stated villain never folds to a 3 - 3.5x 3!. If OP's read is correct, we absolutely want to 3! with a merged value range and ISO Villain as much as possible. If we can 3! larger and he will still call with ATC, we want to go as large as we can assuming we don't have to worry about other players exploiting our wide 3! range.

If he is readily calling $50 3!'s PF (assuming we start ~100bb effective) with a dominated range, why would we not want to do this? Until Villain adjusts, we should be relentless exploiting these tendencies. Then, as we pick up information on how he plays post-flop in these situations, we will continue to refine our actions in order to optimize our play against Villain.

Why don't you believe me about his continuing range? He has shown down hands like 83s and 52o in 3! pots where he r/c preflop. I don't recall him ever r/f preflop to a normal bet sizizing over maybe 20 hours, particularly against me. It's possible he has and I don't remember, but it's certainly rare. I don't know what else I can say.

Ah, I missed the part in the OP that he calls 3-bets with close to ATC.

Sure, you could 3-bet for value with a pretty wide merged 3-bet range.

But you could also just call and play against the same range with deeper stacks.

And I think I prefer just calling.

Making a wide 3-bet for value pre-flop eeks out a little pre-flop value, and "pre-flop value" doesn't mean much.

Keeping stacks deeper and playing with your card advantage can help you capture major post-flop value.

What sort of hands you want to play depend on stack sizes. The deeper effective stacks are the more hero can flat with marginal hands that can flop well. Set mining is the most obvious example of this principle but it applies to suited aces and various connector (suited and unsuited) also. OOP KTo isn't going to flop well enough often enough to very profitable unless villain is really spewy. If effective stacks are 200BB+ then flatting for the occasional hand hero hits two pair+ starts to be worth while.

That isn't the biggest problem with KTo though. The problem with KTo is that villain may not be the only opponent in the hand. If hero flats we end up 3+ way to the flop a lot and KTo plays badly OOP against multiple opponents. If hero raises hero will run into other opponents who where trapping the maniac too often and KTo doesn't have enough equity when it does get action.

You're looking at hands that don't have good hot/cold value against a somewhat standard TAG opening range but that can flop well and have implied odds post-flop. That's the example of the set mine or suited ace.

You're right that playable hands can depend on stack sizes; but they mostly depend on ranges. In this hand, you need to look at the straight up card value of KTo. Sure, against most ranges, it's a fold, but not against this villain. We actually fare very well heads up against this villain's hand range. And rather than looking at the implied odds, we need to look at the direct odds.

Stack depth has nothing to do with it when we have a straight up hand/equity advantage. With KTo vs ATC, we often have the best hand, probably somewhere between 55-60% equity, some % of the time we have a dominating hand and almost never have a dominated hand (which suggests far greater post-flop equity than our hot/cold equity vs. his range suggests - in some ways, our KTo actually has implied odds rather than the reverse implied odds it has against most other opponents, so it's better than the 55-60% I noted), and I'm definitely playing this pre-flop oop against this villain with the certain card advantage and skill advantage even at the positional disadvantage.

I mean, OP thinks he might be able to 3-bet KTo for value because villain calls so wide. If we can 3-bet for value, we can certainly flat and play a hand. I'm not sure if someone else was in the hand, but I think a trap is generally unlikely. Yes, if villain raised to $15-25 over multiple limpers, I'd fold because I have terrible multi-way equity against other players' continuing ranges.

IME trappers aren't too big of a problem and it's only 5-handed so there were usually one or no limpers. I'm curious to know how frequently others have observed unknowns adjusting to a maniac by limping big hands and/or widening 3! ranges. I think usually they just continue to limp and adjust by calling wider. The BB probably isn't adjusting by widening his 4! range in this situation.

I didn't say much about Villain's post-flop tendencies because he can change strategies across sessions and I don't really have him pegged down yet early in the session. In the past he has tried spewy aggrotard and after I started calling him down and widening my value range he went more passive/trappy. So far it seems like he's probably back to spewy aggrotard.

In his first aggrotard phase he was floating the flop a lot and sometimes floating multiple streets, bluffing at weakness or with equity/blockers, but sometimes with neither. In general his bluffing and calling ranges were way too wide and he just hates giving up a hand.