In this session I have doubled up my $40 buying in opponent a couple of times due to some very lucky breaks. He put his money in very bad those times and now that he has a stack he is overplaying most of his hands, totally unafraid to gamble it up, and also attempting to run a couple of big bluffs by me. No stats on this player as this is the first time we've played.

HAND 1:

Hero is dealt 75 in BB.
Villain is BTN/SB.

Hero/BB: $199.70
BTN/SB: $190.80

Pre Flop: ($3.00)
BTN/SB raises to $6, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($12.00) 4 2 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $12,


HAND 2:

Hero is dealt 98 in BB.
Villain is SB/BTN.

Hero/BB: $273.40
BTN/SB: $301.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00)
BTN/SB raises to $6, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($12.00) 7 8 6 (2 players)
Hero donks $9, BTN/SB raises to $30,

In Hand 2, this is the first time I'd donked into him on the flop, and haven't been reraising much preflop at all. I had been planning on doing it with a strong hand and chose this to be that hand. Otherwise, I haven't been playing very passively vs him. In other words, I wasn't giving him too much reason to try to run me over, although his play was still very aggressive.

raise hand one to 34
shove hand 2

Explanations are helpful to me at this point! I'm just starting out with HU NLHE, but have been playing HU LHE for years. Thanks!

hand 1 raise flop to something like 34 or so. we're pretty much playing for stacks here against this opponent, im not sure if there is any merrit here to making our raise size particularly small or large to give villain the opportunity to make one more play at us.

hand 2 is a tough spot to donk. we certainly cannot fold our hand and we're going to get played at by a very wide range of hands on his part here, any 9x, 5x, any 2 clubs, any overpair, possibly a good 8. i dont like shoving here, as icarusJam said, stacks are much too awkward for that. i think you just have to call, and be prepared to make some gut-wrenching decisions on the turn when you miss your draw.

1) raise till all money is in
2) raise to 123

Buy in full
I don't mind check/call or cr on flop 1 (prob prefer call if he just wont give you credit)
I check/call flop 2, as played you really can't fold but getting it in is kind of ugh, I suppose you should 3 bet get it in but it really isn't that strong. I lead the flop with a polar range against these types if I do consisting of easy bet/folds or hands I'm going with 89o here is kind of a middling hand.

This.

Hard to explain the obvious though....

That's irrational.

i think you played these hands backwards. hand 1 i would rather donk - 3b shove. hand 2 i would c/r and then 4bet shove if he 3 bet. if he's a maniac, you basically just have to assume your hand is good when you flop it like that, and i'm always trying to get the last bet in on those guys in spots where i don't want a call.

as played, i'd just pop hand 1 to like 40 and call a jam; hand two i would raise to 99 and call a jam. like, if the dude's playing wild and overplaying everything, you just gotta put the money in when you have a good hand.

yeah definitely lead shove the first. you said you wanted to wait til you had a strong hand to lead... sounds to me like this dude will be raising your leads light and floating your check raises light, making it better to bet shove than c/r.

2nd id rather check raise because his bet/call range is much wider than his raising range, sucks to let him flat 6x, 7x and stuff. stack sizes being deeper also makes bet/3betting less appealing because you do worse when he gets it in vs your 3bet than you do when he flats your c/r

as played yeah just raise first, 32 is too small like 38-42. 100 area is fine on 2

i could see defending w 57cc but 89o i usually dont defend especially against a maniac, reason being when u flop top pair its usually not good and it puts u in a bad spot, ur basically looking for dream flops w both of those hands and u have hit them, i just get it in on both flops as played, not sure if its because ur use to limit or not but u dont hafto defend ur bb every single hand, thats my personal style tho, obviously i mix it up ocassionally

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I did get it all in both times on the flop. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't insane to do so!

download pokerstove, put villian on a range of cards, run the numbers, see how astoundingly great they are for both hands and rest easy