1/3 NLHE

V - Combination of bad maniac/whale. Playing close to 100% of hands, usually only folds the ones where he wants to go smoke. Middle aged arab guy in a shawl thing. Doesn't care about the money at all. Tipping 50% to the waitress. Opening 20-40$ cold over the BB. Calling 3-bets wide. Has a hard time releasing post-flop too, TP2K is a hard laydown for him even multiway. Doesn't care about position. Bleeding multiple BIs until he flops trips or something and then stacks multiple people. Weird 2pair, trip combos, flush combos are all in his range. Covers. UTG1.

H - Has had very few hands to play and hasn't hardly played much at all all night and should have a very nitty image. Doubled up through V once hours ago and then went back to folding. 800$ BTN.

HH - Two limps including V in late position, SB limps, Hero checks his option in BB with Q7o, 4 ways. Flop Q-7-3r, hero leads 10 into 12$ pot pre-rake, limper calls, V raises to 50, SB folds, Hero 3-bets to 200, limper all-in for less, V jams for about 350 total, Hero calls off. V has 73o, limper has QJo, Hero holds.

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UTG folds, V opens UTG+1 to 25, Hero calls with K 7 when folded to, blinds fold, HU.

Flop 50 - T T 7

V bets 35, Hero calls.

Turn 120 - 2

V bets 95, Hero calls

River 310 - K

V checks, Hero?

Mandatory, slam-dunk value bet.

This is interesting for a few reasons.

1) Why has mainiac not barrelled river? Has he just given up, or more likely he has some value hand here, e.g. has he backed into a King.
2) What are we doing if we bet and villain jams. Against nearly every other player, it would be a clear fold, since we have no kicker, but against this villain I'm hating life.

K2-K6 we're splitting, every other K we're losing to. Perhaps he has JJ-QQ, but this is only a very small part of his range.

I'm inclined to check behind, or if we think he's gonna bluff raise, bet small to induce a bluff shove, but that feels pretty high variance.

Of course jamming is another possibility to rep a T and get him to fold his Kings, but that really seems super high variance against a bad player.

Looks a whole lot like an unsofisticated V with JJ or QQ. Not sure why he stopped betting. I think he has more JJ and QQ than Kx 10x or a monster like 1010 or 77 he decided to check or check raise. I probably bet fold $$150-$175

If he's doing this with close to ATC, there's a lot more Kx than JJ/QQ in his range. Given that there's also a whole lot of air in his range, and he may have just thought "**** it, he has a T, I'm gving up"

A jam will get snapped off by ANY T by this guy. KX will likely snap as well. K8 or K9 will sigh call.

Im not sure what Kx a maniac plays this way. KK is the only thing I can think of. Blasts off twice and hits gin and fancy play syndrome takes over. Just feels a lot like 88,99, JJ, QQ the way he played it. I think its close either way and hard to tell if checking back is better or worse. Depends on how much of a calling station he is.

Depends how tricky he's been playing but check seems fine considering your kicker doesn't play though I don't mind a small bet either.

He's probably betting most if not all of his Kx on the river. His hand looks a lot more like QQ/JJ/99/88/7x. Versus the described player who has a hard time laying down a hand, it looks like a solid spot to value bet...not too thin at all IMO. Go for $120 or so, give him a good reason to call all his pairs.

I'm assuming up to the turn, that Villain's range can be close to ATC. Fair OP?

After the River Check, I think 3 things are possible
1) He suspects that Hero has trips or better and so he's just giving up
2) He is in check call mode with a hand like Kx, QQ, JJ
3) He has a monster, e.g. he had KK.

The reality is that even if you give him a low probability that he'd react in this way with 1 than say 2 or 3, it is way more likely since ATC are in his range at River. Effectively we're taking a Bayesian approach.

To illusstrate my point I put some probs in:

Let's say:
80% of the time after turn he has air, and only 20% of the time he'll check back
10% of the time he has Kx, and he checks 50% of the time
5% of the time he has showdown value hand like JJ, and he checks 80% of the time
5% of the time he has a monster and he checks 100% of the time.

When he checks on River, 53% of the time he has air, 17% he has kx, 13% he has value hand, and 17% he has a monster.

i.e. air is by far and away the most likely thing he has, and the key reason for this is his range is still so wide after the turn

Pretty much, with the caveats:

1. He looks at me as one of the tightest players at the table.
2. He opened up front and knows enough about poker to understand he has to open a bit tighter up front (this would mean dropping hands like 53o and only opening 53s to him).

His range to the river is something like:

Premium/Value = TT, 77, all TX, JJ-AA, 22.

Middling = 75, 76, 78, 79, J7-A7, A2, K2, Q2s, J2s, 33-66, 88, 99.

Air = AJ, AQ, AK, KQ, KJ, QJ, 89, AXhh no pair, KXhh no pair, QXhh no pair, JXhh no pair (some of which hits the K), some AX no pair.

HH ex: TAG grinder that usually plays higher buys in for 100, folds a few hands before jamming from BB over Vs UTG open + a few cold calls, V snap calls with others left to act. V shows J 2 and hits runner runner trips, TAG grinder had red Aces.

If you assume he's checking 100% of his Tx then yeah it's a check back for hero. But I'm not sure that's a typical behavior and I would say most players rarely protect their checking range with trips+ in this spot, much less always trap trips+.

Yeah that's fair, I wasn't necessarily trying to make a case to check/bet, but wanted to show that a large percentage of his range even after checking is still air.

Villain knows how he’s playing, and he knows everyone is gonna be looking him up light (and gladly go to a cheap showdown without the nuts). If he has a ten or a boat he’s gonna bet $300 on the River and laugh in your face when you call with 99 or A7. The guy VPIPing 95% didn’t suddenly pick this one spot to get trappy, let’s get back to reality here.

Bet the River. If he puts you on a draw, well, all the draws missed, and these guys love to hero call. He has Any Two Cards, he could call you with a deuce, or ace-high, or ****ing queen-high (it beats 98!)

This is a fist-pump value bet. Time to make money.

LOL @ above.

Just check back. Too many reasons to list.

Fold flop. Floating paired boards with backdoor flush draws and bottom pair is not where you want to be when V is such an easy target.



No need to make marginal/thin plays against a whale who's going to give us infinite shots at his stack.

Result:

This was the most likely type of hand given my analyses.

If he mostly gives up his air instead of bluff repping the King then betting like 50 to induce a spaz raise or light call from Ax is kind of a nice move. I think you're good like 80% here so some type of bet is mandatory.

This is where I landed. Checking is a huge mistake here. You’ve gotta know how to play these types.

For those betting, what are you doing to a jam?

His range at River is dominated by air, so he only needs to bluff check raise a small amount of time vs obviousl always check raising monsters for you to need to call it off.

Obvious fold to a jam. But we can’t let that fear keep us from value betting!

Totally disagree with davo.

If I’m betting 50 the plan is to induce a bluff raise and I’m calling. I honestly don’t think Tx is very well represented in maniacs range. Most maniacs know their image and will not check Tx on the river. They know the table plays way too passively and scared versus them so checking Tx is giving up value because Hero won’t bet all that frequently.