Drunk maniac whale

Plus with such a wide loose goose who is donk bluffing with 9 high on a super connected board for 300$+++ I need to make sure I have a very strong hand just incase.

...scary board for someone playing so wide and I don't want to donate here or make this pot

Are you properly rolled for this game? You sound like scared money.

I've already put in an 10 hour session and finally got unstuck for the night so I was playing much more protective for sure.

If you're tired and dealing with "lock-down" tilt, it's best to just go home. Playing like scared money in a deep stack game vs. a maniac is going to cause you to leak away chips.

So I would probably bet this flop - he can have a TON of single heart hands that will call down. As played honestly folding the flop is really not that bad as crazy as it seems. While this guy sounds like a maniac esp betting 200 into 135, we're insanely deep and there's a number of bad turns/rivers that we have to fold. If you want to hero it and never fold other than a heart more power to you but patience against these guys is the way to go.

I'll enjoy posting this spoiler later fellas..

PRE - If V is a tilted whale / maniac, I'd raise larger, at least $75, but if he wants to gamble, maybe go as large as $90, or even $150, because why not? Pray he wants to 4B, then 5B him. I'd be happy to get stacks in pre holding QQ vs a maniac when he has position on us.

FLOP - I think I'd c-bet small, and just go bet-bet-bet.

As played, when we check and he over-bets the pot, it seems like a pretty trivial fold. If he's bluffing, let him.

Getting into a shooting match with a maniac or whale is just torching. Just wait until you have a hand, and let him blast off.

If he's on the BTN and we're SB, we're going to have position on him 90% of the time. Don't sweat having to fold a good hand when it's a bad board.

Poster above said it perfectly already - Lock down tilt def ruins even good spots like this. Guy is any 2 cards and only takes a line like it’s the nuts? Call down and evaluate. Sounds like he’s willing to max pressure any time so there’s two ways to deal: there is no strategy from villain really beyond “do I have it this time?”

If you remove the player and say: here’s a game where you’re 80/20 favorite how much do you wanna bet?

It’s not a poker strat question - it’s a risk tolerance/bankroll question.

Do you want to small ball and see a showdown? Sounds like villain doesn’t have a fold button described.if so check call him down.

Alternatively: do you want max value? Here we can discuss options but first you gotta answer the risk tolerance / bankroll management question

This was my first thought. Someone is raising big with 94o and donking big with ATC on a connected board, and you're getting twitchy with QQ because there's an open size which is a bit different from usual? You are sitting very deep and need to be prepared for this.

Could you get the table straddling if you're uncomfortable playing 500BB deep?

The guy opens ATC and 4bets wide and you only 3bet to 4x OOP? This is a major blunder. Raise as big as you can get away with. Approaching 100.

The donk on a monotone board when you don't have a heart is tricky. Decision point is probably now. Sounds like this is the sort of guy who won't slow down, so decide now whether you want to play for all your chips.

But mainly stop being scared. These are rare situations and you need to push your massive advantage whilst knowing that you will lose everything a fair amount of the time.

When the range is close to ATC, by definition no board is ever very scary, and likewise no boared is ever very safe.

wow 3k cap at 2/5? mondo game.. anyway. I fold. there's better spots than this sitting on this guy's left. It's just one-pair. We have all sorts of hands with 1-or-more ♥ here. Maybe x/call small sizing, but we have position, bet size and a face-up image to deal with. Plus its a single-raised pot.

These types of players hate folding, especially pre, and will pounce on any indication of weakness, and look to apply max pressure with huge bet sizings. The way to beat them is to make them pay more to see a flop when we have a strong hand, and let them bet themselves out post-flop.

Pre is fine, although you probably could go bigger. Flop I check/call. No need to get blown off our hand, and I'm not ready to fold to this guy.

If I did fold, I'd rack up and go home.

(Also, the effective stack is $2, 300.)

I think there's a big nuanced point that nobody is talking about:

If I am playing close to 100% of my hands and I am playing them as if I have the nuts every time my response to any action by opponent in a simplified strategy would be: bet the **** outta everything, overbet when cards come that seem more beneficial to me than opponent, and 1 last point but this one is the most complicated in my experience:

FOLD to SERIOUS reactive aggression or aggression across successive streets where flop -> turn -> river do not offer sufficient evidence that they benefit the wider "can have anything range" vs a tighter value range.

Anyone who plays a solid LAG poker game knows that more often than not, players who will combat this style tend to tighten up considerably pre flop. They do so because the LAG can and will pepper some preflop costs to attempt to prevent hands like A6s or K8s from entering OR they will correctly assign the range differences to opponents wherein preflop aggression is much more face up - eg. opponents arent taking A2s as a bluff 3bet/4bet but WILL commit to standard value 3 and 4bet ranges if only slightly modified.

So right here, the lesson is: the response to the LAG is incorrect given the assumption they are GOOD.

If they are not a good player, the above falls apart obviously. And I'd say we arent dealing with a LAG in this situation but a maniac/loose cannon/purely ignorant rich guy who just wants to swing dick.

OP:
In the hand histories given, did the villain play hands where they hit the nuts different from hands they were stacked on?

I'm going to venture a guess that the lines were probably similar and the only differences would be outside actions uncontrollable by our maniac whale.

If this is the case then there is no difference between maniac whale having Th2s on a JJ38T no flush run out and a AsKs4s8h8c run out. And same again if maniac whale hold JJ or J3 or T5o A2o or KTo (these hands are selected specific for certain qualities they hold on that runout) etc etc etc etc.

So then what is the response to this manner of play? There is no real information to be derived from their actions given the hypothetical assumption above, which means the best we can do is: try to get all the money in with a shove ourself (risking them folding) OR calling until they snap and shove and deciding whether we can call.

We can simplify the game tree and analyze the simple structure then start to add further complications:

There are only two streets where action can occur: PF and River. both players must check to the river. If Hero Checks on the river, villain always goes all-in.

Hero has 300BBs, villain has 600BB.
Hero is to the right of villain and not in a blind all other players always fold preflop. villain obviously has position on you. This scenario leaves out some important that WOULD alter our strategy considerably but in my experience and im sure you've all seen this too - the table tends to adopt a similar strategy when there's that one guy who is always 10x'ing it preflop or something stupid.

You are always dealt XY - AA, AK

And for now, lets say villain always raises a limp, 3bets a raise and shoves over your 4bet. We can deal w/ the mixed frequency in a follow up - wanna establish baseline strategy to build off first.

My 1st question for the discussion is: what is the minimum XY that you're willing to GII pre vs what looks like a range of A2C expecting villain 5bet shoves with a frequency of 0-100% of the time?

2nd question for discussion: What is the minimum XY that you're willing to check to a river and either call it off vs A2C knowing villain always shoves the river?

I'm sure you realize this, but if you are adequately rolled, playing this way is suboptimal against a true maniac.

i've been trying to dance us towards this conclusion breadcrumbing with discussion about why this is the case, but this is my ultimate point as well for transparency.

but follow up point: this also leads to a question i wanted to ask OP as well as suggest to forum about included reads - we need well defined info. If read is: guy's a maniac, i can only assume maniacal **** and response in kind.

If its hyperbolic or attenuated descriptions, its going to really throw off any ability to offer meaningful responses. Seemed to me a lot of responses were built around an image that didnt quite live up to what I gleaned from the description in OP so if clarification if necessary I'd love to hear it as well.

i feel like im about to turn into the kind of responder that I thought hindered solid discussion around topics so the following has some very real and very applicable caveats

1) i'm gonna run a solver (its free and web based so is it ths best? no. plus i have to use a higher margin of error (im gonna say 5-10% for now but will let you know what ultimately i had to go with as far as the solutions attempt to minimize equity differential between the two strategies - if you need me to explain this further i can try my best*) due to RAM limitations on my machine so its "solution" relative to the super expensive solvers would probably have some margin of deviation from them.

2) That said, due the fact that I'm going to simplify the solution and present multiple run outs and node lock action of villain to a bet bet shove line.

3) i'll try to run a few different boards but i'll also run the same limiting villain's A2Cs by some degree (lets say first one would be 100% A2C and then 50% of that.

The purpose and intent of doing this is to calculate a robust optimal solution to the situation above. Im going to say right now, I imagine the "optimal" strategy is going to be stacking off a rather surprisingly ammount of times.

I'lll limit Hero's range to ONLY QQ and if there's interest, we can add more and determine JUST HOW WIDE hero should be playing against villain to still maintain an edge.

Now these results are not IN GAME APPLICABLE necessarily as even a drunk maniac might fold some non zero % of the time. And they might not take A2C's to the river (or past flop). Additionally, any other action made by hero on flop or turn COULD affect maniac's response as well in real life. But if we first establish the baseline, we can then better build a robust strategy that adapts to these real world conditions that diverge from the rigid guidelines implemented in these examples.

*the way a solver arrives at solutions is it basically runs every possible actions against itself - think of it as two computers playing cards. when it runs into a 0 EV advantage for either decision action, it will conclude that brand from future iterations meanwhile continuing to "game out" every possible solution for the x^y number of inflection points and results possible until they too reach the 0 EV. The tolerance range i am speaking to above is one which speeds up the process by saying we dont need to hit 0, we can hit within 5% of 0 and call that 0.

really quickly -

ok so i simplified further so villain pots flop and then shoves the turn.

Any guesses as to what cards represent the most extreme edges of frequency response for hero?

Normally this is a C-bet situation but I depend very highly on my reads.

Your read is he is a maniac. Does his $200 bet indicate hearts or not? You've been watching him play.

As I stated, if I'm not calling the $200, I'm leaving -- unless the $200 means something from this guy.

Good notes on this play and I think I played the hand correctly regardless what anyone says he is a tricky guy that likes to make big bets for one with trash on basically every single preflop hand. So my initial alarm bell went off when he put in this tiny bet at least for him of 15$ and snaps off on my raise. He didn't check his cards at all during the flop didn't even care about the flop and he was drinking his liquor looking very happy to have a customer. Normally people try to hide things this guy wears his hand all over his face. So at least for me its why I expressed a bit of caution also his sizing was huge he may like to swing dick a lot but he's not over betting the pot on any of the previous hands vs anyone else.

There was also a lot of intel I got based on his expressions during big hands that he won bluffing all the way to the river and then just getting there. I didn't just not play a few orbits for nothing. That was basically my table and I had total control so I wanted to make sure this variant didn't get in my way. As for people saying scared money that's a laugh, donate if you want I prefer to keep building my stack.

Lets just say it meant something.

Glad you had been paying attention.

just because you aren't getting playable cards doesn't mean you sit there on your phone man!