2/3 No Limit Holdem
Villain is maniac type raising $35 on button with 9 4 off, on a big heater up about 600 in 2 hours. Said some racist **** to guy on my right called him out and he said I am his next “target”
Hero is young white male, villain asked to have my id checked earlier on
MP2 limps in Hero ~$540 in CO with AsAc raise to $15
Villain on button calls MP2 calls
Flop Ks 10s 4h
Checks to Hero who bets $25 Villain calls everyone else folds
Turn Jd
Hero checks to Villain ( he looked eager to bet ) and bets $25
Hero raises to $75
Villain snap calls
River 7s bringing in front door flush
Hero ??

Are you likely to go broke with aces on a decent amount of run outs?

Think of the implied odds your tiny preflop raise gave a guy who is calling/raising you 100% of the time. He is calling $15 bux to take your entire stack here. Make your raises bigger.

Flop: super wet board. Bet pot. Given V's trash talk overbet pot. He is going to call with any pair here.

Turn: Scary card but you have the balls to x/r. Most people giving advice below this will say the turn x/r is bad. I say way to fkn go for grabbing your balls and putting in a raise where most people dont have the guts to against someone who still has a massively wide range here. Well done, only problem is you didn't make it big enough to price any decent pair+draw out. Should have made it $125. Due to your small bet sizing pre and on the flop even making it 125 is giving him amazing implied odds to crack your hand assuming you have a decent % chance to call a river shove. His snap call tells me he has a pair and a draw.

River: This is the strength of the maniac. He can claim half the deck. A K J T 9 4, spades, all of which could have made his hand. Its a guessing game if he has the flush or a whiffed KQ type hand here. I can't blame you if you folded or x/c. No idea what I would do as played. Maybe say "got anything racist?" and go from there..

x/r turn is very meh
ap x/f to a big bet, x/c small

Turn check raise is really bad on that board.

you guys.

This V has over a 50% calling range here. Are we just going to put a batsht maniac whos also threatened us on KJ/JT/KT, call and hope for the best?

What I do when I play a maniac check list:

Preflop if he calls or raises: "He has nothing"
Flop if he calls or raises: "He has nothing"
Turn if he calls or raises: "He has nothing"

I then jam a bunch of money in on one of those streets and follow it up with an even bigger bet the next street. Seems to work well for me. Ive actually thought about writing down all the hands I play vs maniacs since I have an absolutely insane track record of destroying them and posting it here but I can imagine it wouldn't go over very well and be a waste of time. I always argue my way of thinking in H vs maniac threads and I always get crapped on and yet the #1 problem I see on 2p2 over and over is playing against maniacs.

Out of interest, how come you called him out on his racist ****, but the casino let it slide.

Preflop: Villain has called you his "target". He's on the BTN where he's previously bombed it pre with 94o. This seems like a textbook opportunity for a limp/reraise. Villain will likely make it bigger than $15 himself, then you can drop the hammer on him. The best part is he'll likely still call. If you can get $80+ in preflop, you have a trivial 2-street stack off with your AA on pretty much any flop/turn.



Flop: I go a bit bigger here. Maniac will continue with any piece. $35-40 at the very least

Turn: Just continue betting it yourself for the same reasons that we want to bet big on the flop. $65.

River: There's still value to be had here IMO. Bet $115.

Table change. Life is too short to play with ***holes like this V.

More pre. Pot the wet flop.

Check/call turn.

Check, crying call river where H loses plenty of times. Just play your AA like you would against any other V. It's a mistake to get off your normal line because V is a maniac/jerk. It's what he wants.

they gave him a warning the card room is basically out of the 1980s

To all the reply’s thank you. Makes sense I should just raise more pre, (or limp reraise) pot the flop bet turn and bet river, I ended up going big on the river $150 and he had KQ, which after I thought I played horribly

Is sounded like you won the max here, and got him to call on a scary board because "toP pAiR iS uNbEaTaBlE".

Doesn’t make my play any better I just got lucky

Bet bigger pre and bigger on the flop. If he is trying to outplay you just c/c turn and river. His range is wide open on every street so let's let him blast off.

c/r turn is the worst decision in the hand besides the sizing.

Do you think maniacs will generally just call bets or should we be giving him the opportunity to "outplay" us by check/calling? I think your logic is exactly backwards here. What you are describing is a station not what I would call a maniac.

This guy is likely trying to "outplay" hero. Blasting away into him or c/r and folding out his bluffing range is the exact opposite of what we should be doing if that is, in fact, the case.

You don't beat maniacs by calling. I have seen that said multiple times and agree with it, so I don't get why so many people dislike your turn raise.

You are blocking the nut flush, so you aren't going to get flushed too often. No, you aren't always going to win, but overall decent play. The only thing I dislike is the turn check, but I am assuming the "he looked excited to bet) was a read you had BEFORE you took your action?

Real easy overlimp preflop for me to let aggrotard raise where we can then reraise to setup a trivial stackoff situation. Now all we do is play a bloated pot OOP to a guy who has his targets on us having gotten in a lol meaningless 3% of our stack preflop (the only time we know we are ahead) and meanwhile the other 97% can go in pretty easily postflop (where we'll mostly have no idea where we are). Can't think of a worst setup for a hand, honestly. But I'll be outvoted cuz we haz AA so raz ldo.

I'm ok with the cbet although obviously not loving life going to the turn OOP against this guy, and thus totally ok with our turn check (our goal should be getting to showdown at this point).

Really dislike our check/raise on the turn even against a small bet, I just flat. Keeps his bluffs in and meanwhile doesn't continue to bloat a pot OOP against a difficult player when we could easily be behind on this board.

River obviously sucks but I start by checking and then see how big a bet I face before deciding whether I should call or fold.

ETA: In the end you somehow managed to get max value, albeit out of like the lone hand that you could get maximum value out of plus doesn't need to bluff / put you in stoopid spot.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Well maniac is a loose term and there are different types of them for sure. The ones I run into almost never fold to a single raise. They want to chase and claim every card that hits the board if you take the lead away from them and judging by the average comment on 2+2 there aren't too many of you playing back at maniacs with a looser range anyway. I know this because I blast away on maniacs all the time. Call down mode vs these types is insane and I will say it in every H vs maniac thread I see. Btw, on this board there are no pure bluffs, if it was a Q742 board it would be a different story but there are no bluffs we are folding out here except weak pair hands that decided to bet.

The turn is actually a nice card for us because it gives every QsXs a big combo draw and by V's description he is calling every suited spade Q pre. It gives KQ QJ QT a pair and a OESD which is a huge range of combos that V will be continuing with as well. What else can we get value from... 43s 54s 64s 74s, OP mentioned V raising with 94o so I think we can add almost every single suited 4 in the deck to the range. AJo might bet the turn when checked to. It is very possible V decided to bet then peel off another card with a 8 high FD with no pair here. Another thing not being mentioned is the x/r on the turn might make this guy spazz and shove it all in with his draw which I guess everyone here would fold thinking omfg JT when I would be snapping and collecting the $1100.

Go over the massive range of hands this guy is going to have in this spot and tell me Im wrong. OP played the hand amazing and just needs to work on his bet sizing. Oh and I called the maniacs hand perfectly after backing my **** up knowing everyone was going to say the turn x/r is bad.

You're kind of all over the place here. What you are generally describing is a calling station. ANd sure if a calling station is in a pot with us we should be value betting him to death.

However, villain as described in OP, is trying to outplay OP based on the back and forth they have had. Against this type of player we should be keeping his entire bluffing range in as he will blast off more than the average low stake player. C/R this player gives him a chance to fold out his bluffing range.

His value range is wide too. And certainly includes KQ like you said...prob doesn't include AK based on preflop action. But certainly includes KJ, QJ, perhaps JT, AQ, AJ, J9 and random flush draws. So we beat many of those hands and we know that villain is likely to go after us hard. But we are essentially flipping against that range so not sure why we want to c/r into a range where he can fold a chunk of the range we are beating and continue with the range that beats us (or has great equity).

The vast majority of his bluffing range stays in when we x/r on a board like this. Example: this hand.