Love that we have a live strat forum now.

Late Friday night in Vegas last month, lots of starstruck people in town watching the NBC HU championships. Walk in to Caesars about 3am and get a seat in the clearly very insane 1/3 game. I am in the 7 seat, very drunk 60ish Euro in the 8 seat with ~$2500 playing about 90% of his hands pre-flop, raising about 99% of the pots he enters to ~$40-50, and shoving most flops. A couple of Asian 20 somethings in the 3 and 5 seats are very active as well trying to isolate seat 8, sitting on $600 and ~$1k respectively.

I have obviously struck gold. I have several buy-ins on me and can fade the variance.

I double up through a rando irrelevant player and am sitting around ~$550, getting close to 5am when this hand comes up.

Seat 3 is the button.

Seat 6 UTG (New girl at the table who has been watching for almost an hour) $300 raises to $15
Hero has QQ and ?

Great hand! With all the crazies behind me I think I flat the raise expecting the uberaggro to 3-bet. If he 3-bets and seat 3-5 either flat or raise, I'm taking my next cue from the new girl. If she flats or puts in another raise, I am out. The thinking being that if she has watched this table for an hour, her UTG opening range could be small and if she is still in the hand after the aggros and isos do their work, I don't like QQ much.

If she folds then I either shove or raise based on the action before me with the intention of either picking up the pot now or getting it in on most flops.

Edit: If I get three more callers behind, I throw up in my mouth a little and hope for a Q on the flop.

Calls and then 4bets big, calls any push and pushes to any 5bet. If you get to any flop and still have chips left, open shove, cross your fingers that the girl does not have AA and no one else sucks out post flop... and you collect at least $250 from seats 3,5, and 8.

OK I dont like my answer, will have to think more about this one...

I agree with Sactown Joey, with the exception of folding if she flats a 3 bet from seat 3, 5, or 8. It would be a terrible play for her to just flat with you behind if she has AA or KK. If she flats, I am thinking she has 1010, JJ, AK. If she just flats, we are not going anywhere and probably 4 betting, right? Thoughts on that?

I'd flat, let the maniac 3-bet, then evaluate it when it gets back to me based on how big he raises and what the girl does. I'd have a really hard time laying this down preflop though; even if she has you crushed, she only has 300 and you could win a side pot with the maniac.

+1
When thinking clearly I have played a hand just like this (was actually QQ too) just like it was the nuts because it might as well have been. I smoothed the first moron raise, next moron repops to show he is tough guy, first moron calls, then I 4bet shove and get 2 callers. Won nice pot! You really need to know that the tough guy will 3bet though. In this spot even if the girl 4 bets she could be doing it with AQ or AK too and maybe JJ. She knows they are crazy and she is still ahead of thier range.

I feel almost no matter what if it is 3 bet by the drunk you get this all in pre and arent upset about it.

I thought about this after I posted and you are right. If aggro 3-bets and it's flatted by 3, 5 or UTG, then I should 4-bet.

This is true but I think we'd need more than the maniac in the side pot if UTG puts in another raise pf. She's repping AK at the worst, I think so we could reasonably expect to lose $300 to her leaving $250 for a side pot. I think even aggro and the iso-ers would fold most of their hands to a repop by UTG and since they act after us, I don't like the prospect of being heads up with UTG who is showing only strength.

I flat. Drunk Euro 3 bets to 200. Seat 1 is all in for ~$120. Seat 3 calls. Seat 5 shoves. New girl folds. Hero?

I may be a donkey here, but I snap call (seat 5 has you covered, right?)

Wow that is suck a sick sick spot. I'v played in games like these before where you are just praying for a big hand. I think you pretty much have to fold here, calling would be just praying for a flip

I hate the flat call by seat 3 for 1/3 of his stack with multiple players (including the original raiser left to act) leaving an SPR <1. I got what I wanted and am not happy about it. The seat 5 shove has little/no FE for seat 3 so you have to expect he's coming along no matter what you do so you are looking at at least a 3-way hand.

Now it comes down to ranges for 3 and 5. They could also read you as weak with the previous flat call and be doing this pretty wide. The flat by seat 3 gives me some pause but probably not enough to fold. Call.

I tanked, and my thought process went something like:

Drunk has top 70% or so.
Seat 3's call is really f'in weird and he hasn't done anything like that yet. Really f'in weird.
Seat 5's shove is clearly not a bluff as he has no FE vs. seat 3, what hands can shove here? Also, he instashoved so clearly not too concerned with seat 3's call.
lol @ girl's fold.
Then I got to thinking of seat one. He probably has AA, KK, or AK 2/3 of the time or more, which is great for me because of card removal.
Drunk calls the clock on me.

I puke and ?

Forgot about the lol-stack but I don't think it changes the calculus too much.

Awesome! I'm still calling, tabling my hand, then putting my head down and hope to hear the dealer push the chips to me.

Call, you have the money to rebuy if need be. It would suck if there is a 100BB cap, but you have a pretty decent shot at take a majority of the pots.

IME the flat by seat 3 doesn't mean all that much. He likely has a holding he wants to see the flop with, but doesn't want to commit AI PF with. He has about a 50/50 of calling after his friend shoves. Likely his thoughts will go like "that is a huge pot, and it's not much more to me, but my buddy shoved, flip a coin, heads I call..."

Don't worry about seat 1, he can win the little "main pot" and you can still make out like a bandit on the hand.

Definitely try to get a seat change for position on the drunk... Sometimes in situations like this I like to be directly on the maniacs right, lets me act like a relative button position, i.e. I know what the drunk is going to do most of the time, and now I get to see what everyone else is going to do before I have to do anything knowing the drunk is rarely folding, mostly calling and sometimes shipping it...

I think this is the key. If seats 3 and 5 were two old rocks who hand't played a hand all night and were oblivious to what the drunk Euro was doing, I think you could safely put them on AA/KK and get away from it. That's not the case at all though. Instead you have two young, aggressive, thinking players who are acutely aware of how the drunk Euro's playing and are trying to exploit it. This means their ranges here much wider and it's entirely possible one of them shows up with 88 and the other with AJ or something. I've played in wild and crazy games like this before and there's simply no way I'm folding QQ pre-flop without airtight evidence that someone has Aces or Kings, and you don't have that imo.

This is what you've been waiting for. What's the issue?

I called. Drunk calls, seat 3 calls.

The issues are the flat call of the $15 on the first action and what to make of Seat 3's flat call of the $200 and seat 5's shove before it got back to me.

I was seriously considering a fold, and it was seat 1's likely holdings that brought me to a call. Am I really overthinking this?