I want to clarify that I am not saying anything about what V is or isn't doing. I'm just going off what OP tells us, stipulating that it's 100% accurate and true, while somewhat assuming that what OP tells us is likely somewhat exaggerated, based on his perception. So, let's break down what OP tells us:

1. V is VPIP'ing nearly 100%.

Okay, so at least he didn't say 100%. It's probably not even nearly 100%, but he's probably playing way too many hands.

2. V is limping and using juicer raise sizes, like he doesn't want to play big pots anymore.

Okay, so what does that mean? What does his range look like when he limps, versus when he raises small, and how does that differ from when he raises big? Regardless, if V has changed what he's doing, compared to what he was doing earlier, than the earlier hand history would seem less relevant now. OP isn't even sure if V actually had the hand he thought V had there.

3. V doesn't fold to 3B's. He either 4B's or calls.

I'm assuming he does actually fold to SOME 3B's from SOME players, and SOME raise sizes. But if he's mostly 4B'ing or calling, with a wide range, regardless of who 3B's him, or the 3B sizing, that can't possibly be a winning strategy.

Even if we assume that OP is somewhat exaggerating what V is doing, VPIP'ing over 50%, forking his range into limps, small raises and big raises, and not folding enough to 3B's, he can't possibly be a winning player overall with this strat, regardless of what you want to believe.

This V wants to turn the game into a dick-measuring contest, by putting in lots of bets and raises pre, and forcing us to make decisions for our whole stack post. It's silly to say "it's okay to get stacked by this guy sometimes, that's poker", if we know how to exploit him, and we should know, simply by observing what he's doing.

The solution to playing against maniacs isn't to play more GTO, or play the same way we play against the rest of the population. The solution is to figure out how to exploit his leaks, and then exploit them.

If we know this guy likes to bloat the pot pre, and play jam-or-fold post, we should counter that strategy by not inflating pots pre with marginal hands that don't play well against post-flop jams.

We shouldn't be raising a merged range pre, because that's just going to lead to lots of difficult decisions post. We should be raising a polarized range pre, which leads to easier decisions post.

So, to point to one example - all our middling pairs from 88 to QQ are going to shrivel up in strength when over-cards come on the flop or turn. Those hands are fine to raise when our opponents aren't 3B'ing us very often, and the stronger hands in that range are fine to 3B when we're not getting 4B much. But when a maniac is relentlessly 3B/4B'ing us, and playing jam-or-fold post-flop, they just don't play that well as a raise, and play better as a flat call.

If V is going to be relentlessly 3B'ing and 4B'ing, we want to be raising with a polarized range that wants to re-raise or raise-fold, and doesn't mind playing for stacks or turbo-mucking when V jams post. Instead of flatting with 22-77 and raising 88-AA, we should raise-fold 22-77, raise-re-raise AA/KK, and flat 88-QQ.

I just don't believe this guy is 4B'ing PP's worse than 77, or 4B'ing a lot of garbage sc's. I think he's opening VERY light, and 3B'ing fairly light, but rarely is he going to be 4B'ing light, when he's limping in and making small juicer raises.[/QUOTE]

what do you think is the exploit to a player betting more often than they should? Fold more or less?




Lets say V is opening a semi reasonable range, like lets say a 31% range, and lets say whej you 3 bet him he folds some, but calls with all sortd of junk like he never folds suited connectors, calls with a bunch of Axs, Kxs, any PP, and he will 4 bet you light occasionally with hands like K9s, 76s, J9s, A4s, etc.

we already have an answer for what to do because thats what gto does. And it 3 bets 88-QQ a hell of a lot.

Do you think V raising an even wider range increases or decreases our value 3 betting range? Do you think V calling more and folding less when facing a 3 bet increases or decreases our value 3 betting range? If you dont think hes 4 betting light as often as gto, do you think that increases or decreases our value 3 betting range?

In my life I've had 2 maniacs divulge their honest down to earth thought process for what they do what they do.

1. To hurt other players. His goal was just to make you suffer. He knows 72o is not a good hand but he relishes at the opportunity to stack some thirsty grinder playing AA with it. He knows there are a lot of pros in the room and he resents them since he gives tons of action and gets very little back.

2. Thinks he can represent 'whatever is out there'. If the board runs out 78AKQ then he's shipping anything because he thinks you'll just have to put him on JT. It doesnt matter how he arrived at the river, you cant call without the nuts so he's going to jam. He thought I was crazy for looking him up with 2 pair, "how can you call?! Dont you see the straight!"

I would always 5b pre and happily stack off against Q7 guy. 5b jam is a bit too much here so I would make it 200 but I wouldn’t fault you for shipping and trying to gobble up his dead money.

As played I would fold flop to a pot sized bet but call a smallish bet. Sure he might have queen high but he could also have bottom pair or a big hand.

I mean lets say btn maniac raises, bb calls,

78Add flop, btn bets 33%, call,

Turn K btn bets 175% pot, call

River Q btn bets 317% pot all in. Even with these huge sizes, Gto calls not only with A7 A8 but also with AJ AT.

Like, this is my point, you arent exploiting the maniacs, you are simply removing your overfolding exploit youre using against the rest of the field.

This is not a small caveat though, imo.


My two cents:

- Preflop you may 5bet/fold, but this deep I do not hate a call in position. The bottom line is that I'd prefer to take full advantage of position in a potentially huge pot against a maniac, rather than reducing the SPR and ending up playing somewhat of a coinflip for 800bb. By the way, you do not necessarily cap your range by calling, as long as you call also with AA and/or KK, at least at some frequency.

- On the flop, I'd probably need to have at least a bdfd to call.

Want to confirm that I am not exaggerating when I say that this guy is VPIPing basically 100% of hands. It's not like he is seeing every single flop -- he is sometimes just limp-folding when there is heavy action behind -- but he is calling or raising almost everything with the possible exception of an 83o or something. He showed down almost never, but in one of the few spots I can recall he showed up in a raised pot with K4o, for example.

I am gonna share one more HH with this guy (the first of my big pots with him and the only other one I haven't posted) for additional context. I don't think I played this perfectly, but it adds context to the OP: (1) He and I were battling; (2) He may have viewed me as looser and more aggro than I actually am; and (3) his pot-sized bet on the flop in the OP could be more of a strength tell as you can see that he bets much smaller in this hand when (presumably) bluffing.

A2cc

OMC open limps, maniac overlimps, I iso MP to $15. I know that this is too loose. I am not proud to admit it, but at this point in the session I am stuck heaps and pretty tilted. It folds to OMC who calls (pocket pair or two big cards) and maniac overcalls.

Flop is 8d 5h 5c ($48 in the pot pre-rake)

Checks to me and I cbet $10. OMC folds and maniac check raise to $35. Obviously, I could easily fold here, but I have already played enough with this guy to know that I could be ahead here, and if I am behind I can pick up equity on the turn, so I call.

Turn is 8d 5h 5c 3s ($118 in the pot pre-rake)

Maniac sad check, appearing to give up. Now I am pretty squarely putting him on junk, maybe a gutshot or high cards at best. I know I can bet to try and fold something like 44 or 22 (think he open-raises 66 and 77 all day) but I decide to x back.

River is 8d 5h 5c 3s Kc ($118 in the pot pre-rake)

Now maniac bets $55. I debate calling with A-high no kicker, but decide that I can't call when I still lose to a random pocket pair, A-high, or 3x that is trying to showdown for cheap. So I decide to jam for around $290 with the knowledge that this guy has a fold button and may likely have a hand that cannot call regardless. I think I would play all of my AK the same way and would probably hero call with AQ and AJ, so this may be one of my better bluffs anyway? He appears to want to fold instantly, but gets a count, tanks for about a minute, and then folds. As he does he says, "I think that is probably bullshit." I don't show bluffs often, but I show here after his speech. The table seems surprised, but the maniac doesn't say anything, which leads me to believe I may have been bluffing with the best hand and the maniac was just tanking to save face.

We've all played against this type, and while there are individual differences there are some things that most of them do:

1. They are limping a lot. Like they aren't raising A7o to get less multiway because that's one of their better trash hands.

2. They are often only raising a good merged range. Maybe occasionally something trash, or they might have a "favourite" trash hand like T5 ... but in general if they are playing 95% VPIP they are limping the bottom 80% and raising the top 15%. They also probably don't know what a good range looks like, but they'll still wing it to be something similar and probably more offsuit.

3. They aren't often getting into 3bet/4bet preflop wars, mostly because nobody is open raising enough at 1-2 and esp. nobody is 3betting enough... plus their whole strat. is to hit big hands and get paid or bluff people out when everyone misses ... it's hard to do that if you put in 200bb pre.

4. Because they are playing so many hands they'll often overplay the better ones, because they look amazing compared to the 80% of trash they usually have in this spot.

...all of which heavily implies he doesn't have K4o when he raises a limp, and then 4bets your 3bet. He's much more likely to be overplaying 99.
Maybe your guy was a bit different and he was raising small a lot pre. and had started to get into a preflop war with you, but the extra hand history you posted he also just limp/called pre. so that doesn't tell me he is.

Playing fit-or-fold against a maniac is how most TAGfish end up dribbling away chunks of their stacks.

I know I've been away for a while, but it feels like this entire forum is The Land That GTO Left Behind. Bluff-catching with marginal hands IS EXACTLY HOW YOU BEAT A MANIAC.

100% Agreed. We're folding 2 overs, a gutshot and bdfd vs a maniac who got in 250bbs pre with total air.

People are advocating fold because they're 400bb deep and too afraid to play a big pot. Never in a million years is flop a fold.

Absolutely terrible advice.

You guys want to call a PSB on the flop with AKcc, rather than wait until V does this when we actually have a hand? Aight. Good luck with that.

Well?

This guy is going to punt off his stack and has already punted off over half of it. I'm peeling at least one here. If we get a terrible turn and fold, he's still going to punt off the $150 we deliver to his stack. If we bink an ace, king or queen on the turn we probably win all of it. Adjustments from theory should also take into consideration that this guy is already drunk, it's late, and he's not going to be rebuying for another one thousand bigs when he gets stacked. Like you said, he's already punted off most of his chips within an orbit of this hand. We're in a race against time to maximize the opportunities we have to stack him before he punts to another player and have a frontdoor draw to the nut straight and a backdoor draw to the nut flush with two overs. There's a good chunk of the time that we already have the best hand too.

I'd prefer a 5bet/call off pre here at a higher frequency than call with the suited combos of AK, since we definitely crush his range, but as played we should be planning to float a flop like this when we call.

Well what? I already posted multiple replies explaining what I'd do here and why. If you want to call off a PSB here, okay, good luck with that. I'd rather wait until we actually have some showdown value, or more equity, when V is potentially value betting.

We don't know what V had here, because hero folded. But, if V is truly a maniac, there's a pretty good chance he would have showed a bluff, and a better chance that when he folds without showing or saying anything, he was probably betting for value, hoping to get called.

I already explained my strat against guys like this - 3B/4B/5B them relentlessly pre-flop, and just flat call with speculative hands, but post-flop, don't pay them off by trying to bluff-catch with marginal hands. Let them punt off all their money when we actually have a hand.

This is mandatory 5Bet preflop, as played, we can call or shove flop, you need more reads since this guy is playing 100% hands, it's easy to get reads. Folding flop and saying I'll wait to flop a hand is quite bad when you have play like this one.

AK high is showdown value vs this player type and we have draws to the nuts which is very relevant against a villain that is likely to try to represent the nuts on any runout.

In general we want to "wait til we have a good hand" against players that make the mistake of paying off too frequently, not bluffing too frequently.

Awesome.

In case you guys missed my first post, I said we should have 5B pre.

Once we flat call pre, the pot is $155 going to the flop. We started $820 eff. If we call the $150 bet here, we'll have a PSB left behind going to the turn.

So...are we planning to call 100% of turns if this guy jams? Are we just jamming now? Are we hoping he checks turn if we flat call here? Suppose he does, are we then turning our hand into a bluff, by jamming, or are we taking our equity by checking back?

Yeah, he might try to rep the nuts on any run-out, if the flop checks through and the board gets scary. But that's not what he's doing here. He just c-bet for full pot, on a wet board that more than likely smacks his range.

If we wanted to just go with our hand, we should have done that by 5B'ing pre. If we want to just go with it now, we should just jam, while we actually have enough stack depth to create some fold equity, and pray he doesn't snap us off with thick value.

Flat calling here, hoping to turn some equity, and hoping V doesn't jam, when we can just fold and move on for a $75 loss, is nuts. Why would we want to risk our stack trying to bluff catch with AK, or turn AK into a bluff?

We are not turning AK into a bluff if we jam

If he's playing every flop with a playable hand then it doesn't smack his range any more than 56Thh does.

Please proceed, Governor. Tell us more about the maniac's range.

Total punt to call or jam.

Is this really the bottom of his range of "Hands that call a 4-bet?"

Are you assuming we didn't read what you've already written?

You either have no clue what a maniac is, refuse to concede what a maniac is or you're scared money. Regardless, absolutely everything you said is just terrible advice.

Nut peddling vs maniacs is the opposite of how you play vs maniacs.

Does it? When his range is ATC? 90% vpip? 80% vpip? How can you be so confident when you can't even get ranges right?

I would hope it's not vs this guy who seems to be playing 100% vpip.