In this hand, the villain is a maniac who can hand-read very well and is very experienced. He has had really good showings in live tourneys and he is playing 2/4 just for fun. He is famous for and enjoys his maniacal image. He perceives me as being a nit who plays well, and he might also think I am playing scared, because I always buy-in short.

I have $360 and he has me covered. I am in the big blind.

5 players limp pre including villain on the button. I pop up it to 40 with AA and everyone but him folds. At this point I put him on any two cards, because he never folds the button there and I am positive he would never fold even after my raise.


Flop: Q9K with 2 hearts (I have Ace of hearts): I bet 70 and he snap-calls.

Turn: T (non heart). I check, he insta-shoves.

Me:?

Fold you beat nothing IMO

this is a pretty good spot for him to bluff imo.

If he sees you as tight, he is going to assume you have significant strength since you raised 5 players out of your blind, and not much of your range is going to include a jack. Again if he percieves you as tight, hes going to know that youre not apt to call without a jack on that turn.

That said, i still ditch this... theres just too many 2 pair combos now, esp when we take into account that he will float here with any pair.

So fold, but realize that youre often going to be folding the best hand.

This.
I like a c/r-ing the flop here. He could call with a draw or one pair. Betting $70 is fine too. Fold turn.

Fold. Most players who have a maniacal image but who are very good are not nearly as crazy as their image lets on, particularly in spots like this. It's kind of a leveling spot here, does he recognize that you're itching to pick off a bluff, etc., but he could easily be betting two pair for value here knowing that his image will get a call from a player one level down. We only beat a stone bluff and he knows we have a real hand so he's very unlikely to have been floating with pure air.

He is bluffing some of the time here, of course, but not enough to snap him off.

Checking this flop is pretty bad. If he's good he won't bet this flop with any drawing hand

As played fold. When the board runs out like this you're pretty much screwed. A good aggro with position is going to own you pretty much every time unless you can convince him you've got the straight.

You could b/f the turn, but if he's as good as you say he's probably raising his any two cards. He could've floated the turn light with the plan to push you off your overpair on a scare card. Kinda sucks. I like your c/f. I would just enjoy the fact that this is one of only two times he has position on you. But his shove is fishy. If you've got the nads and want to show him you wont be bullied I suppose you can call.

It depends on how much of a thinking player you think he is. You could argue that his range is polarized in thast he has the nuts or second nuts or air.

But would he do this with 2 pair combos like qt, kt. But a lot of maniacs won't limp those hands on the button including jt, qj, kj etc. So I would rule those out.

So back to random j rags or small sc fd.

But basically you're aces are a bluff catcher. You're check on the turn was pure weakness and he picked up on that. Would he shove random jacks to scare you away? Is he capable of floating the flop to bluff at scare cards?

These are all relevant questions. So my answer is...meh call is 50 50, you play with the guy enough go with your read on the player.

@ Pharaoh: Obviously I can only check the turn. Betting would be utterly transparent and any legitimate hand whatsoever has me beat here. The only thing I could possibly gain by betting is to induce him to fold his 54 suited or whatever and with a turn card which is obviously awful for the range I have, he is more likely to just shove on me.

Also you need to read the hand description better: I already specified he would limp ANYTHING- Hell he would probably limp with two pieces of paper that looked like cards......and with position, great implied odds and a good idea of my range he would call any two as well heads-up, confident in his ability to push me out on any scary board.

@Koss: I took a long time trying to figure out what hands would shove here and why. I concluded that its probably the nuts or absolutely nothing, but he is definitely capable of shoving sets for value as well.- and yes, i did fold though I am not sure why you deduced that.

I guess it just seemed like such a fold to me that I already had it in my head that you had folded. And I somewhat disagree that betting the turn is transparent. I'd play TT-KK pre and flop the same, and bet the turn. Unfortunatley that's still a fairly narrow range. And there's no way he has a set here. No halfway aggro player is limping 99+ OTB.

True maniacs aren't limping any two pair combos there as well except for maybe 9 10.

I understand that he will call with any two, which is why I narrowed his range to hands that have you beat are jack-rags. Everything else you're ahead of, except for maybe 9 10.

I understand the check on the turn but I don't like it unless it was to induce a bluff or pray for a check back. What would this maniac call flop and then shove for a pot sized bet on the turn. It's jack rag or air.

You can wait for a better spot or choose to make a hero call now.

I understand the fold but I would've called, because I'm somewhat of a maniac myself.

IDK, im reading maniac as a dece lag from the rest of OPs description. I can definitely see your point, i just see it as more v dependent.

A good lag isnt bumping up tqo or tko behind 5 limpers, esp if he percieves them as loose. the whole point is to flop a monster and get paid off in a spot like that.

He never has a set here he has many two pair pair combos....+ many jx hands.

Pharoah your wrong here in that a smart lag knows with this many limpers and his image he gets more value from playing all those hands with a flop...mainly for the fact hell get little credit pre...

This villian has infinite combos here....

When we check this turn its to c/f

When we bet IMO Its cuz we are not folding.

Given reads IMO c/f is fine...c/c just is bad imo

I wont blame some for calling....but expect to be beat

Well maybe I'm stuck on the label of maniac. There's a difference between a good lag and a maniac tourney player that plays 2/4 to spew I mean for fun.

@ Pharaoh:

Didn't intend to be confusing with the tag "maniac", it just that I thought that it was a tag which related more to play-style than play-strength.

He might have been playing only for fun, but I don't think this meant he wanted to spew. FWIW, this is his default style in the early blind levels of tourneys too, as far as I know it is possible to play Hyper Lag profitably, though its far from my preferred style.

The real issue for me was that a HUGE amount of his floating range hit the turn (everything but the flush draws) and however maniacal he might be, he isn't floating garbage like 32o or 75s, because there very few turns he can push me out on.

normally when you say maniac, people get the idea that youre talking about someone who is both unthinking and super aggressive. I kind of got the sense that wasnt what you thought about this guy from the rest of your description

incidentally, i don't agree with you that his shove range here is polarized. I think he shoves the middle of his range too... what do you think he does with T9 here?

Well that was the one hand which I thought wasn't 2nd nuts or air that shoves. I just thought all the two pair combos either raises flop for the q9 k9. Then k10 q10 kq, jtO+ raises preflop from the button even with 5 limpers if the player is truly a maniac. But if he's a good lag then a limp behind is a strong possibility.

Oh well I always like to play devils advocate.

Fold.

From villain's perspective, we can have a J in our hand and if we've truly been playing tight then villain doesn't know if we're capable of folding TPTK here. But... he's doing this anyway.

IMO he's more interested in the rest of our stack than the money in the pot.

fwiw, I am familiar with the term good maniac. They are reasonably rare but there are some good live maniac players about who can have a great win rate when stacks are deep. I've only seen 5 good maniacs in about 3 years of recreational live poker but I can remember each one.

I guess part of the problem is that its not that easy for even a good maniac to instaship the turn here with air unless its pre-meditated.

This is very much not a spot where villain's range is polarized, if he's as good as the OP states. We've communicated that we have a real hand and that we didn't like the turn, which means we definitely don't have the straight. This opens the door for all kinds of awesome 2 pair thin value shoves on his part. He likely knows we're a thinking player and is 100% aware of his image, meaning we're likely ready to gamboool and put him on absolute air.

@ AEP: I think he shoves T9 too. Frankly, I think he is shoving almost everything he got here with. Unfortunately, here this narrows to two pairs, the straight, flush draws and not as much random air as I would normally expect, because he can't possibly float the flop with 100% of his range.

@Nogyong: We have sat at the same table on tourneys and chatted about poker generally, so he knew perfectly well that I was a tight online player who is capable of folding TPTK and better, and he knows that everyone thinks he is a maniac. I don't see why villain would think we have a J. If he think's we are nitty, the only hand we are raising with pre is JJ since few good tight players will want to create a bloated pot with AJ OOP.

@ Shaffer: I agree with this entirely, but I also have a feeling his range might be weighted slightly against the two pairs because with 5 limpers and deep stacks he was quite liable to put in the raise OTB with the hands which are now 2 pair.

maniac is a fairly neutral term, really.
online, a smart, dangerous lag, and an aggrofish have the same stats, yet are night and day in terms of how you have to play vs. them.
(so much for HUDs lol)
get inside the maniacs head. be a maniac, if you have'nt, just to see what it's like.
what are they (trying to) accomplish??

actually one thing a fishy/bad and dangerous/good maniac have in common is that they get called down light, thusly getting max value from even marginal, but good hands.
one does it knowingly, the other prob unconsciuosly, yet the result is mostly the same.

the fact V is a maniac, and a smart one, makes me want to muck this hand even faster for this reason.

ppl get caught up in the wierd things maniacs do,
and lose track, sometimes, of what a maniacs game is really about,
which is getting paid off,
and fail to ever give them credit, which is a huge mistake, imo.