Long-time lurker, first-time caller. Apologies for the long post!

This is a 1-2 game early Friday evening at Mohegan Sun.

H - 32 y/o WG who should be known to the regs at the table as a solid TAG. However, this session I have played a series of bizarre pots and am stuck several hundred dollars. I also just got a big all-in river bluff through (against the same V in these hands coincidentally) and I showed it afterwards, so I may have the appearance of being a bit tilted and aggro.

V - Late 30’s/early 40’s WG who looks a bit like the actor Brett Gelman. He is the titular maniac. Currently several Jim Beam and Diet Cokes in and starts the hands off close to 2k deep, which is very rare at MS 1-2. He has been bullying the table, raising and re-raising a ton pre and often overbetting flops, seemingly to generate folds from the weak-passive fish at the table.

Extremely relevant HH:

AKo - Maniac open limp CO, I iso $15 next to act on the button, folds to maniac who limpraise $40. This strikes me as very likely to be a bullshit hand, given the positions and my history with the player. I consider flatting to trap, but this guy has a fold button (he previously folded the river to me facing an all-in river raise and has folded a few other times in big pots) so I decide to 4b $140 leaving around $320 back. He pretty quickly jams. I say, “I actually think you have it here, but I can’t fold” and call. He doesn’t look happy. I ask, “Do you have aces?” and he doesn’t say anything. I table my hand.

The flop is TT8dd. He checks his hand and I catch a glimpse of what I believe is Q7o. He says, “I think I am drawing dead.” The turn is a 7. He doesn’t move. The river is a 5d. He still doesn’t move and I brace myself to be slowrolled, but he mucks and I drag a pretty huge pot.

I don’t know whether I misread his hand when I glimpsed it or if he misread mine, but this is some context for what comes next.

OTTH

Several hours have passed. The maniac seems to have been subdued after punting off nearly 1k of his stack. He has still been VPIPing nearly 100% of hands, but has been limping and using “juicer” raise sizes, whereas before he was sometimes opening to 15bb or 20bb over a few limps. It doesn’t seem like he wants to play many big pots anymore. I have stacked another fish at the table and now cover him in position. We start this hand $820 effective.

AKcc - Fish open limp, maniac iso to $6. I 3b $25 and it folds to the maniac who 4b $75. I consider 5b, but think a lot of my hands (including maybe aces) will just call in-position this deep, so that is what I do.

Flop is Jh Th 5c. ($155 before rake)

V cuts out two full stacks of red and methodically counts out $150, then stacks it up into one tower and slides it into the middle.

Hero?

You are basically at the bottom of your range here aren't you. So you can fold. Not sure bdfd is enough to call given the massive bet size. He has 18 pairs that beat you. I guess if he can have all the aq and some a4s A5s and ak it can be a call. Basically you need him to have all the aq here to consider calling. I don't think you have any worse hands yourself though, do you? He bet huge full pot, so you can fold half your range, so why not fold you worst hands? You have all the pairs down to TT here I guess.

Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk

I think that I agree that I am close to the bottom of my range. Earlier on in the session, I told myself that I would 3b this guy a bit wider given how many hands he was opening and the fact that I had direct position, but considering the fact that he is spazz 4betting so frequently, my range may look closer to a typical UTG1-UTG2 3bet range. Which of course means I have hands like JJ, TT, AKhh, AQhh, and A5hh that are fistpump calling here, not to mention the overpairs.

Really not sure how to range the villain though. I think it is fairly likely that he is still much wider than optimal and going for some suicide line, in which case it is fairly likely that AK is chopping or ahead.

Also curious if anyone 5bets this guy in position. If so, do you 5b-fold? Or get it in for $820?

Is he just going to go bet/bet/bet regardless of board texture? I mean if that's the case then fold here and print money in the future whenever you make a decent pair+. If he's not a complete maniac I would call the flop and see a turn - he has an insanely wide range and you have plenty of equity.

Against a maniac just five bet pre

You whiffed the flop entirely and the JT board is more likely to hit maniac then a lot. Just fold and wait for a better opportunity.

The way to make money against a real maniac is to not get past the flop without a made hand or high equity. The maniac is going to put money into the pot no matter what so you can wait for good situations, you don't have to mess around with marginal situations where you are going to be unhappy calling down.

If the maniac has become wary of you enough that he doesn't play all of the hands your in with a maniac style then you can add in some bluffing and calling down with marginal hands.

It was unclear to me at the time whether he would continue betting if I called. In earlier spots, when he covered everyone at the table by at least 2x, he would overbet a lot of flops and then slow down if he was called. But, with my read that he tightened up quite a bit after he started losing, I was somewhat afraid of calling and setting up an SPR of 1 on the turn in a spot where I might be drawing to a Q or running cards. Obviously, I would call off on turn if I hit an A, K, club, or (duh) a Q, but there is also the possibility of getting a brick turn and facing a "same bet" size where I would be priced in to putting the vast majority of my stack in drawing very slim.

Thanks. I think I agree.

This strikes me as really good advice. Per your third point, I did briefly consider bluff raising the flop as a way to ensure I realize my equity, but I think that is probably a torch.

Would be much happier 5b pre. with QQ-AA, the problem here is that maniac tendencies can see JJ,TT or even as low as 88 and just not fold pairs unless an AKQ hits. 200bb deep it's whatever but 400bb deep you can't (shouldn't) just shrug pile money in with AK unless they are going to be doing it with AQ/KQ.
Also there's an old concept about "having the last bluff" where here shove is a terrible 5b size for us which means he can easily shove an unknown range over a 5b, so if you make it 175 and he shoves $820 what do you do? Honestly think both options suck a lot without more reads.

Saying reads ... since he calmed down a bit from losing, how much have you 3bet and has he ever 4bet? Has anyone else 3bet him at any point and he 4bet them? Also would have tried to not show AK until he showed something in the previous 500bb pot, for reasons like this.


As played I think both options aren't great on the flop, there's some chance he has AK and you are crushing ... some chance he's gone maniac mode again and you are in front, some chance you are crushed by a real hand and a decent chance you are behind a random pair.
Would lean fold, esp. without reads that he might 4bet light ... so more likely he's spew betting with QQ than he has like 76s or Q8s or whatever. Also calling flop praying to hit turn vs. a maniac is often terrible instead of bad.

Welcome to the board! Nice to see another Mohegan Sun $1/$2 reg here ;-)

My first thought was 5bet, but I agree with illiterat that you are in a nasty spot if he raises again. And I also don't think he folds very often to a small 5bet, so post-flop is going to be a challenge if you don't hit.

On the flop, I think you have a comfortable call against a smaller size but against full pot you can fold. So easy for you to have a strong pair plus (I am guessing you have JJ and TT pure in this line) or a strong draw here and you don't have to continue that often when he bombs it like this. Sucks to fold but I don't see how it can be a real mistake to do so.

Hot take but best way to combat a maniac is to play back at them, not trap.

Appreciate the detailed feedback and maniac insight. In the OP I couched my pre-flop call with some sense of playing balanced (which I did legitimately think about in-game) but in reality a big part of the reason I didn't 5b was because I didn't want to get jammed on.

Unfortunately I don't have a ton of other reads related to 3b/4b dynamics. It is Mohegan Sun 1-2 so I may have legitimately been the only other person re-raising pre-flop. He did hit me with the limp-raise at least three times, from every position (EP, LP, and B v B) including in one bonus hand history that I will share along with the results of this hand. He did not showdown very often at all and when he did, it was usually with complete garbage. To that point, I appreciate your tip about waiting for the showdown... I am still somewhat new to casino poker (maybe two years of live play) and had a very embarrassing situation early on where I mucked AQ at showdown in an all-in pot and had to retrieve it in order to win against a worse A-high, so since then I have defaulted to fast-rolling. Prob time to get over that.

It's been around 48 hours, so sharing results of the hand (plus a bonus hand history with the same V) below.

Im calling here only because im too deep to jam. Dude 4 bet jammed junk into you before, who cares what the bottom of your range is, your whole range crushes his junk.

As an aside, He didnt go $6 with JJ/TT. Maybe AA.

Thanks. As I mentioned above, I did consider raising or jamming flop with the idea that I was fairly likely to be ahead or chopping and, if I was behind, I would like to see both the turn and river.

And I agree that he is pretty unlikely to have any of the sets, but could still have hands like AJ and JT that I am in pretty bad shape against. To illiterat's point, he could also just have any random pair that is spewing off on what he perceives to be a safe flop.

Maniacs are playing a psychological game, akin to "chicken". They bet everything, daring us to call. Slow playing pre flop and calling wide post flop is falling into their trap.

Post flop, we should only be calling with our nutted hands, raising a polarized range of nuts or air, and otherwise over-folding with marginal hands. Trying to bluff-catch with marginal hands is not the way to beat them.

Pre-flop, we should be calling them a lot with speculative hands, and 3B'ing them relentlessly with a polarized range that can play 3B-5B or 3B-fold.

I'd probably just flat call pre with all our PP's from 88 up to QQ, all our low-middling suited connectors and Broadway combos, and all our middling suited Aces and Kings. I'd be 3B'ing PP's from 22 up to 77, AA/KK, AK, AQs, and our worst suited Aces and Kings.

When stacks get shallow or deep, we need to be more careful with our bet sizes. We either want to size way up with our 3B, or size down.

With AKs, a hand we know we can 5B, we need to think about the 5B size, realize we don't want to 3B-fold, nor do we want to 5B-jam or go to the flop with a super shallow SPR. So I'd size down a little with the 3B, inducing the light 4B, so we can still 5B.

So, we could 3B to $20. If he goes $60, we can go $150 to $180. When we make it $25 and he goes $75, I still want to 5B, but I'd probably just click it to that same size - $150 to $180. If he jams, we're just folding.

Once we get to the flop, we're mostly betting small if he checks to us, and mostly folding if he bets into us, unless we have thick value.

When we flat call his 4B, we're capping our range. I wouldn't love calling a huge flop bet without at least TPTK. He could be bluffing here, putting us on PP's below TT or unpaired over-cards, but he could also have a lot of value here, even thin value, like AJ, AT, KJs and KTs. His bluffs are going to mostly be good draws.

If we call, are we just going with our hand on an A or K turn? Against his value and bluffs, we don't have many clean outs to improve. As played, I think we can fold here, let him drag a smallish pot, and pick a better spot to punish his aggression.

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

Your pre-flop strategy makes some sense to me, although I can't see myself ever flatting TT - QQ against this guy, at this table. He is never folding to my 3bets (only calling and 4betting) so isn't it good to get a bunch of money in pre with good hands when we are mega deep and in position? If he 4bets a reasonable size I am still calling with all of those pairs.

The problem with flatting at this table is that everyone behind me is loose passive and trying to play bingo with the maniac (see: my bonus HH in the spoiler tagged post) so we are almost assuredly going 4 or 5 ways once I call.

That was my thought process with 3bet sizing too -- if I make it $20 at this table, we are getting multiple cold-callers. Plus, sizing up when we are deeper makes it easier to pile the money in when we do bink the QJTcc flop. But I agree that it would set up better 5bet sizes, so definitely something to consider.

EDIT: Also wanted to say that I like the idea of 5b small and fold to a jam and kinda wish that was the line I took.

Yes, he could have a random pair, a random pair might start checking turn, or fold to a bet. But also its very hard to hit a pair in NLH.

Id recommend this video on how to play against maniacs. The big takeaway should be that simply knowing the gto ranges can let you crush maniacs, because most likely you are overfolding compared to optimal, which is a reasonable adjustment vs your typical V. But what you need to do against maniacs isnt to adjust, its to UNDO your adjustments youve made against everyone else and just play a gto sound calling strat.

AK is never folding to a 4 bet 200 BB deep in GTOland (i put it CO ve btn, and the more common sizing is half pot), its raising or calling. so youd have to make the assumption that this maniac is TIGHTER than gto here to fold.


https://youtu.be/CJ2lVmXMrDk?si=pWT-7zr3IqlbVxpy

Head's up that the linked video is to an ad, as opposed to a poker training video.

Also want to note that I didn't fold to a 4bet with AK (nor would I ever dream of doing so against this player) and instead am asking about this spot facing a pot-sized flop bet with two overs, a nutshot, and backdoor clubs. Not sure if there was some confusion because it sounds like you are talking about pre-flop. Thanks either way.

Yes, im saying GTO calls or check raises the flop bet after calling a 4 bet and never folds. With some caveats including 200 bb deep not 400.

Edit, i see that my previous post wasnt clear i meant postflop, my bad

https://youtu.be/sn3ndC5sUBU?si=Td-be1a0Ytg1Cdy5

You could 5b here but it matters how the villain interprets the 5b and what his 4b range is. Is he 4bing a hand like KQ and will just jam over your 5b? If he's a complete spewtard then great 5b, but each additional bet changes ranges dramatically. I would probably prefer to call the 4b as I don't want him to fold all the hands we dominate

You're welcome. The good news here is that you're obviously smart enough to be curious, and open to both logic and alternative views. I'll try to give the best advice I can as I break down your response...

Flatting 88-QQ pre / he never folds to our 3B's, only calling or 4B'ing - shouldn't we want to bloat the pot with hands like TT-QQ?

Answer - no, not really. Think about the game WE'RE playing, versus the game HE'S playing. WE have a skill advantage post-flop, and we have a positional advantage when he's to our right, which he's trying his best to negate by building huge pots pre-flop, decreasing the SPR (stack to pot ratio) post-flop, allowing himself to play fit-or-fold, which is most likely to mean jam-or-fold.

What are we expecting to happen if we start piling money in pre-flop with middling pairs? Understand, against this guy, playing the game he's playing, QQ is a middling pair, because as you said, he's NEVER folding when we 3B, only calling or 4B'ing.

What do you think his 4B range looks like? I'm guessing it's probably a lot tighter than you think. It's probably AA/KK, AKs, and not much else. Even if he's 4B'ing 99-JJ and a lot of his suited aces, how does QQ and worse fare against that range if we call? Not really all that well. His AA/KK has us crushed, we're flipping with AK, and we're just hoping to hold against the rest.

So do we want to 5B with QQ when he 4B's, turning our big PP into a bluff, praying he calls with worse, knowing that if he does call, we're probably flipping at best, and crushed at worst? Hell no.

The thing is - why do we want to play his game, that looks like "War" pre-flop and "Bingo" post-flop, if we have a skill edge on him? Why not play big pots with our VERY best hands, and otherwise play pot control until we make a HUGE hand and stack this a-hole?

What about his calling range? It's probably not literally any two cards. It's probably going to be a lot of AX / KX combos, a lot of low and middling pairs, a lot of suited connectors, and occasionally some random garbage. How does QQ fare against that range, when we DON'T improve on the flop, and he wants to jam?

He WANTS us to blast off with all the marginal stuff in our 3B'ing range, so he can play jam-or-fold post-flop. Do WE want to do what HE wants us to do? Hell no. We want to disappoint him, by showing up post-flop with some stronger hands.

It may help to re-emphasize that a maniac is playing a PSYCHOLOGICAL game. He's not there to win money, because his strategy doesn't win money long-term, and he's not afraid of looking stupid or torching his bankroll when he gets his money in bad. He's there to cause pain. He does that by playing every hand, sucking out with garbage, and showing his bluffs when we fold. He wants to make his opponents feel stupid. He's a tilt generation machine.

He might only have one buy-in, and when it's gone, he's going home, having ruined someone's night. If he has multiple buy-ins, he's planning to ruin LOTS of people's nights. But we can never forget that he's playing super-wide, for max pain.

We need to break down our pre-flop opening and 3B'ing ranges, and make them more polar. When we have a HUGE hand, we want to bloat the pot before the flop, or take it down pre-flop with the worst parts of our 3B'ing range. With our more marginal hands, we don't want to bloat the pot until we see the flop and know we want to play for stacks.

Everyone is flatting behind the maniac. If we don't raise, we're going multi-way, so shouldn't we raise with our entire 3B'ing range?

Answer - no, not really, unless we have a HUGE hand that doesn't necessarily mind going multi-way, and would love to get stacks in now, and can stand up to some post-flop aggression, or we have a speculative hand that doesn't mind folding now, and plays well multi-way post-flop.

Think about it - you said everyone is flatting behind the maniac. So, even when we raise, everyone is coming along anyway, at least some of the time. If the maniac is on your direct right, everyone at the table should realize he likes to raise every hand, and he can re-raise when action gets back to him. In fact, some of them may be sand-bagging a huge hand themselves, counting on this guy to raise (and salivating when we 3B him with TT-QQ).

What sorts of hands do you think they'll have, knowing that? Odds are, their ranges are going to be stronger when they limp in front of this guy, and stronger still when they flat behind our 3B. Do we want to play a bloated pot, multi-way, with TT-QQ, and all the other marginal parts of our range, in that situation?

Hell no. Why would we?

Better plan - we flat call his raises with the middle of our typical 3B'ing range, and 3B him with our new polarized range. When we 3B with our polarized range or we flat call his raise, if the fish call behind us, we'll have some strong hands in our range going to the flop, when he just flat calls, too.

Our polarized 3B range is going to be doing a lot of raise-or-fold post-flop, with a bloated pot. Our merged flatting range is going to just play poker - we'll raise some, call some, and fold some, depending on the board texture and action.

If we flat call and one of the fish suddenly wakes up and limp-3B's, we know they were trapping, and we can make a trivial fold without having bloated the pot. If we raise, they all flat call, and he comes back over the top with a 4B, we can put in an absolutely ENORMOUS "eff you" raise with the best parts of our 3B'ing range, and fold the worst parts.

I don't want to play my normal 3B'ing range as a 3B, and still go multi-way with this guy at the table, or worse, have to fold when one of the fish 4B's, or he 4B's when we have a hand that can't call. I want to have a 3B'ing range that's going to be easy to play as a 5B-or-fold pre, and easy to play in a low SPR situation on the flop.

Understand that if we flat call pre, action will likely be checking to HIM as the pre-flop raiser, and we'll be next to act, but we'll also be out of relative position, with everyone else acting after us. Most of the pressure will be on HIM, but there will still be some on us. It helps to get to the flop with a merged range that has decent board coverage on a wide variety of flop textures.

But if we 3B him pre, with a merged range, ALL the pressure will be on US. We'll have to figure out how to respond to the donk-bets and check-raises he and our other opponents will be throwing at us on all sorts of flop textures.

If I raise to $20, we're going multi-way, so shouldn't I size up on my 3B's?

Answer - it's NO limit, not POT limit. There's no rule which says our raise size has to be 2x, or 3x, or whatever. We can make it ANY size we want, to shape the pot how we see fit.

Before figuring out your bet size, figure out what you want to have happen. Notice that we 3B to ~4x his ISO, and his 4B was 3x our 3B size. I'd bet he's always using 3x raise sizing, which is info we can use to our advantage.

How does he react if we min-click him to $12? Does he still 4B us as often, and still use 3x as his raise sizing, or does he slow down and call more, because he's confused by the min-click, or does he size up, because he assumes we're weak?

What if instead of 3B'ing 4x, when we're this deep, we go stupid-large, and 3B him to 8x, and make it $50? I'd bet we're not getting nearly as many field callers, and he thinks about it before he makes it $150.

Pay attention to the hands he shows down, and the bet sizing HE took. Like, this is 1/2, and he's opening 3x over a limper. Did he do that with something weak, that just wanted to see a flop IP, without risking a lot of money, or did he do that with something strong, praying someone will 3B him?

What do we want to happen here? Do we want to fold to a 4B, or see the flop multi-way and IP with a big pot and low SPR, or do we want to 5B over his 4B, or see the flop multi-way and IP, with a somewhat bigger pot and somewhat lower SPR?

Also - do you REALLY think people who are calling a $20 3B because this guy is in the hand are now folding those same hands when we make it $25? I don't think that. I think they call $20 or $25 when they have a hand they want to play, and fold when they don't. And that's a problem, because we're playing a bloated pot multi-way when THEY want to, not necessarily when WE want to - which comes back to our 3B'ing range, as well as our 3B sizing.

If they have a hand they want to play, awesome, let's make it $30, or $35, or $50. Remember, it's NO limit. We want to play bigger pots when we're IP, and smaller pots when we're OOP.

Also - say we 3B to $20 and get multiple callers. That's not the worst thing that can happen here. Best case, this jackwagon 4B's us, and we 5B him. Worst case, he flats, and we're going multi-way and in position with a good starting hand against multiple fish who helped bloat the pot. Somewhere in the middle, we're flatting his 4B, and the rest of them either fold (more likely) or call (less likely), but either way, we're going to act last post-flop.

How is this something we should complain about?

There's two ways to approach this - we're either in a game with him and everyone else, or they're all in OUR game, with us. If we're playing big pots when we're in position and have way the best of it, they're in our game. If we're playing Bingo with a merged range, we're in their game.

Also balance goes out the window. It really doesn't matter what you would do with AA/KK, you don't need to balance that with AK.

The guy never folds to a 3 bet so TT-QQ is weaker somehow? What?

[quote]What do you think his 4B range looks like? I'm guessing it's probably a lot tighter than you think. It's probably AA/KK, AKs, and not much else. Even if he's 4B'ing 99-JJ and a lot of his suited aces, how does QQ and worse fare against that range if we call? Not really all that well. His AA/KK has us crushed, we're flipping with AK, and we're just hoping to hold against the rest. [quote]

He has relevant HH in op where the guy 4 bet jammed with worse than AK, and he thought he saw Q7o?

I agree 5 betting QQ-TT maybe isnt great necessarily, but AK blocks AA KK…

I mean im fine with a call, but AK is a perfectly reasonable 5 bet here.

Villains waiting for a better hand is literally how I make all my money at poker, and im not even a maniac derpwad. This kind of reasoning is bad bad bad bad reasoning. Good poker is playing on the absolute edge, its betting a lot of money with some very questionable holdings. Maniacs probably closer to the correct % than the people on these forums, and the overfolding is doing the exact opposite of exploiting them.

Wrong. He wants you to fold all your marginal holdings and make a fortune with FE.

Im not saying they are winning money, they arent, but i got a feeling they leave winners much more often than you think. If they are playing anything even sort of reasonable preflop like even a 40% range they may well be turning a profit. A young me was definitely identified as a maniac, played probably a 40% range, and i was winning.

So… you said he folds to 3 bets 0%, 4 bets only AA KK AK, and also we should polarize our 3 betting range? What?

I mean if the old man limp 4 bets, just fold. Youll lose a few bucks once every few hours?

TT-QQ should not be the “middle” of our 3 betting range.

I mean of course, according to you, hes only 4 betting AA KK AK, so like… what, we got the money in bad with KK? Idk, you totally whiffed on this whole thing.

Sorry i sort of lost interest, went too long, but i will respond to the final comment, the game he wants you to play is the one where you overfold, not where you are just as willing to put your stack in as him, but with a proper pre flop range, because youll just absolutely crush him with solid theoretical poker. These people thrive on scared money philosophy like what youve suggested here.

If you play correctly against a maniac, you will get stacked, quite often. Thats OK. Thats poker. If youre getting 400 BB in as a 60/40 favorite range vs range, youre making a fortune. (Or youre folding him off of 100 BBs quite often, and getting 400 BB in as a 50/50 range vs range)

That makes sense! I am not necessarily surprised that GTO calls the flop here. I was aware at the time that I was pretty likely to be folding the best hand (or at least a significant amount of equity) and have been thinking about the spot incessantly ever since.

RE: the discussion with docvail, I agree with a lot of what Tomark says and want to re-emphasize that this guy was 3betting, 4betting, and 5betting with absolute junk. I was trying to get to the flop HU, with a lot of money in the middle, and a significantly stronger range, and then I was (mostly) planning to hang on. Clearly that isn't what I ended up doing here, though...

EDIT: And to that end, I want to be HU so I CAN hold on with one pair (or even A-high) in spots where I would often need to fold against 3 or 4 or 5 people.

.