Recently I found myself in a weird spot on the turn vs. a Maniac and although I played it a certain way I was wondering what other lines (correct lines) or mistakes I made along the way.

The game is 1/2 and I'm sitting on roughly 75bb ($150) at the time and Maniac covers me. He is in the BB and I'm in UTG. Villian has a reputation for action and 3 hands prior (after rebuying from going busto the hand before) he called a shortstacks AI Preflop (who covered him), with 87 and got pissed when he flopped 69Q but regardless ended the hand with 8 high.

Back to the hand. I open UTG with AQo to $12 and the BTN who is of no threat (Station) just calls which leaves the Villian in the SB open to call for $10 into a $27 pot which he does with very little hesitation. At this point I know V plays alot of junk and is willing to go broke with TROUBLE hands no problem (K-Jo, QJo, etc). The flop comes down Q9-6 at which point SB fires out $20 into a $37 pot giving me just under 3-1 on a call which I make and the BTN follows as well; pot is now $97.

The turn is a 5 and again V fires out $50. At this point there is now $147 in the pot and I have just $118. Taking into consideration what the BTN might have due to just his calling (marginal hand, straight-draw) what do you think the right course of action would be in this spot? Just call to see river? Raise to isolate V? Or realize TPTK is really worth a fold in this spot when action intensifies with 2 players in?

Also if they're are any other corrections to how I played the hand, be it PF bet size or just calling on the flop instead of isolating V please let me know.
Thanks.

Just read the title, and based on that alone, let him keep betting and value-cutting himself. Call him down. Now off to rad the post and see if my opinion changes...

Edit: Not really changing my advice here after reading, though the other V (station) becomes VERY important in this hand. What range do you put him on to overcall the flop bet?

Still, we're not folding here like ever, and board is pretty dry. Only 78 got there, and it's not going away no matter what you do. No point in shoving, as any draws (of which there are only BDFDs and pairs that turned a gutshot to go with it) will still be getting a fine price, and we definitely don't want to get rid of TPGK. Just keep calling and live with the variance with TPTK against a maniac and a station.

Playing maniacs and overaggressive villains with no brakes at all is one of my fav topics OP and i could write ten pages about how to own them in several spots.

One of the key factors is to adjust your own stackofftresholds, due to maniacs wide open range because they often play almost every hand dealt. As you probably already now, you just cant sit around waiting for the nutz against these monkeys.

In this spot i want to ship the turn. The pot is more than big enough and we "only" have top pair top kicker. I dont agree with Garick about just calling the turn and let another card come off. We dont know how much equity villain has against our hand, and the pot is big enough that i want to rip it in right here on the turn. Make the maniac commit the rest of his chips.

Maniacs hate to fold any kind of made hand/draw (especially when there is some juice in the pot and they have fired the flop and/or the turn), so he most likely will call with the majority of his range regardless. So i see no reasons at all to just call the turn and let him see another card.

Sure if we have a near nutted hand, just call and let him commit suicide. But one of the most profitable lines against maniacs and ultra lags by my experience is to let them juice up at the pot preflop/flop and sometimes on the turn and then pop them. First let them put some money in the pot and then fight fire with fire. They will often call it off with all kind of inferior hand, not believing you have a hand (they expect you to just call everytime, because they are so aggressive). Or they will gamble with any kind of drawing hand.

Grunch.

NH WP, now shove the turn. Stacks are too short to do anything else IMO. Against a maniac we aren't folding. Obv 87 got there and having another player makes our hand relatively weaker... but not weak enough to fold.

You don't shove the turn with only ~$70 more?

Does anyone like raising the maniac SB's flop donk bet of $20 to $50 to isolate the maniac and his wide range and fold out the BTN?

Not as much as I like flatting. We don't want to blow the SB out of the pot if he's leading out with 9x or 77 or whatever donks lead out with. And as you can see here, it appears he is committing himself here OTT (which is good for us).

Its not a bad idea at all,but with these stacksizes and this kind of hand i think just calling and commiting us on a great amount of turn cards is the most EV line. As we can see the SPR is near perfect for our hand to comfortably getting it in on the turn without overbetting the pot.

But with deeper stacks and another type of hand i defintely like your idea of raising and allow us to go HU in position against maniac.

I don't dislike it, I just hate getting rid of maniacs' air range. In this particular case, there's little enough left behind that it probably makes no difference, but when playing against maniacs, I usually hate to take the aggression away from them, because they'll just keep barreling. I prefer to give them the rope to do so.

Maniacs are often bad at keeping track of effective stacks and pot ratio's. The remaining $70 is still "bigger" than the last two bets, and will thus seem like a big bet to him. I'd rather let him make it thinking it has FE than make it ourselves and have any portion of his range fold.

Shoving the turn folds out the maniacs range, and shuts the stationary button out of the hand with all the crap that he has.

Flatting looks good.
Close your eyes and call all river cards.

Shove turn. Should be just enough to get the other guy to fold and V to call.

In flat camp. Allows button to call with weak hands too. Ride variance train against Maniac and station here.

Shove imo, rep the draw

Flat the turn call all rivers, I'm not folding top top in this spot ever. If he gets there, reload and move on.

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I think the problem too often in these threads is that posters don't properly understand the definition of a maniac. It is one of my pet peeves how terms get tossed around in here like nit and TAG and maniac when it is clear that the person using said term has no clue what it means.

A maniac is someone who is super aggro and blasts away and has more air in his range than the Goodyear blimp. So like Garrick has said, why on Earth do we ever want to take that aggression away from him. If we raise him and he has air in his range he can never call with that air.

And since a maniac has MORE air in his range then he has value hands, it is virtually almost always incorrect to raise a maniac when he is blasting away at the pot and hanging himself.

Since he is betting 1/2 pot-ish bets, let him FFS. Just call him down. The optimal way to own a maniac is to just station him. And the reason is BECAUSE he has more air in his range than he does value hands or even drawing hands.

The biggest mistake you can make against a maniac is to raise him with you have great equity like TPTK. You have no idea how much money you are leaving on the table whenever you raise a maniac.

Paper covers rock.

Its not often we disagree DGI, but we do in this case. I think the picture has more nuances, than only station maniac down everytime 100 percent with no other lines possible.

Maniacs (or at least many of them) also loves to call it off and gamble with any hand, any pair, any gutshot or any equity. In other words: they simply hate to fold, especially after having put some money in the pot.

As an example i will take you through a hand i played against a drunk maniac at my Vegastrip. The guy played close to all hands dealt, C-betting full pott every time he raised it up and double barrelled alot. BUT, he also hate to fold when putting any significant bets into the pot.

This was at 1/3 and the guy got felted for his 1300$ stack in 3 hours when i arrived. One of the key pots was this, i played 400$.

Maniac bombs it to 25 pre like he always does. 3 callers and i with black 99 in the SB calls.

Flop KQ9. I check,maniac fires out 100$ pot sized bet, everyone folds in between when it gets back to me. And i check- ship allin for 400$ total.

Maniac talks to himself about how he is losing, and that he has a pair and haz to call! I hit quads right away on the turn and ship the monsterpot.

I think maniac was drawing very slim already on the flop (he didnt show), he most likely didnt have a diamond in his hand. Still he called it all off to me on the flop, so i got all my money in when my equity in the hand is through the roof with a flopped set and two more cards to come. He called because maniacs simply cant fold, they fall in love with their hands/draws and want to win every pot.

Yes, he maybe would have kept firing on the turn and the river. Yes, he may had bluffed it all off to me regardless. But the chances is he would have slowed down also on a number of turn/river cards. After putting 100$ in on the flop i bet maniac is calling a ship with almost any piece of the board, even bottom pair with baby diamond.

But: dont come to me and say i played this pot bad when i got the maniac to pretty much instacall 100 BB on this flop most likely drawing dead. Station maniacs down is one way to own them, putting pressure back on them if you sense they dont have a fold button is another way of doing it.

The argument I'll make for shoving is the fact that:

1. We have so little behind and even maniacs may shut down on the river knowing we are committed.
2. We may not get paid on the river if he misses what ever sort of random hand he has, meaning we lose value. If he will pay us off with any peice of equity no matter how small I am more in the shoving camp than the Flatting camp. Not to mention we have a station in the hand meaning our equity edge may be diminished in a 3 way pot.