Easy thread - tried something different

C) This is a decent adjustment (assuming V could think you are FOS or is enough of a maniac to call you to try to crack you), but it is not new. This is a relatively common adjustment to playing a maniac, though I prefer moving to his right, so you get the chance to see everyone else's reactions to his moves before you have to decide.

I think I posted this HH in the Chat thread, and I'll try to remember it as best I can.

I was in Pittsburgh on bizness and playing as an unknown in Rivers Casino at the 1/3 NL game. I had an 8 game session winning streak going, but tonight I was card dead and down a bit and it looked like the streak was going to end.

The only drunk action guy at the table was hamfistedly attempting to rack up his mountain of chips. Arg. But then he took a beat, seemed a liitle po'ed at that, and began sloppily unracking his chips. Yah!

I then pick up QQ in EP. I limp of course, cuz that's what I do. The action guy makes it $10. A lady calls. So I just LRR ship it all in for $400. $10 to $400 seems reasonable, no? The drunk action guy thinks so, shrugs, and calls. The lady folds.

Ace in the window, King in the door, to a AKxxx runout.

I fastroll my QQ.

He looks at his cards then back at the board, then back at his cards again, then back at the board again. Gives it a long squint, finally taps the table, and mucks. To this day, I still think there is a 25% chance he mucked the best hand.

Cliffs: Standard, imo.

Gi'veneverbeenformallytested,butthere'saprettygoodchancei'mageenyus,imoG

I like the lrr, but the AI seems excessive, unless this maniac is so braindead he'll call your huge overbet rather than fold with hands like 33 or JTs.

You can make more money by raising to 120.

If V checks pre, you re in FML mode.

I agree that raising 120 has the same effect, but puts less of your stack at risk.

If V is really gambly, I like the shove. If not, a "normal" raise size might be better. The shove does look more like A/K A/Q, though, so maybe gets more calls w/ worse.

LRR from blinds/EP is fine with button straddle on, especially if there's a super aggro player you think will reliably raise. You have enough stack depth to make a more normal sized raise (which would be my play), although I reckon the all in is fine as well

Its a bummer to go on a downswing, but one of the advantages is that it often spurns you to have a frank evaluation of your strategy. Its hard to do, because sometimes youll adjust completely wrong (ill tell you right now you are NOT on a downswing cuz youre bluffing too much) It also can encourage you to study, find new strategies, and improve your game. I came out of my downswing playing what seems to me to be by far the best poker of my life.

You know full well that not having a l/rr as part of your strategy is not a leak in your game (im not gonna argue over whether its viable, bur we can agree that its viable and standard to NOT have it).

In my opinion, this is a lazy wish to the poker gods that they stop ****ing you, rather than a genuine effort at improvement. Its just kinda like “well the other stuff im doing aint working, lets SHAKE IT UP.” Dont change your game just for the sake of changing it. Go buy a book or find a new youtube channel or podcast to listen to and think about poker critically.

Im not saying its some huge error, but to me this is the equivalent of testing out a lucky hawaiian shirt.

What do you think the +EV would be for a new Hawaiian shirt?

Seriously, good points. I don’t think it was a “please stop ****ing me” move. My thought was I’ve been getting called in tons of spots pre so if I go $25 as standard I’m going 4 or 5 to the flop OOP with a 3.5 SPR and a strong hand that doesn’t flop well. I also have some meta gamesmanship going on with V where I think he calls every PP, any broadway Ace, probably any suited Broadway cards and a 5% he calls without looking at his cards.

And if it checks through pre I’m in the same spot I would have been had I raised. 4 or 5 ways OOP but with a much higher SPR.

He was super gambly and enough of a thinker that to him a shove might look weaker than $125.

The two hands you mention might be 50% calls from V.

Well then go bigger pre. My thought on preflop sizing is you want to bet the size you think is most likely to get you HU. Sometimes it folds thru, sometimes it goes 4 ways, but whatver goes HU the most. Go $35 or $40 or $50 whatever you think will get called, and do it with your whole range (and tighten your range up the bigger you go)

Not saying dont l/rr, jusr saying this is what id consider a more standard strategy for dealing with extremely call heavy tables.

Shoving pre is certainly less EV than a l/rr to a normal size and playing some postflop poker. It’s a form of scared play imo and not wanting to have to make tough decisions post and just being “satisfied” with the limps + $40 BTN raise.

I like it, QQ is one of the best hands to smash cause we get called by worse pairs assuming we have AK.

The LRR out of the blinds when the BTN straddle is on seems ok if everyone else is passive and V is squeeze happy. But I'd like it better if we made it $140, hoping he'll stick the rest in pre. Jamming doesn't give him the opportunity to make a big mistake with hands like AJs or TT.

How so? We'd much rather these hands call it off preflop before they are able to fold postflop when they whiff / see a couple of overs. And against a postflop maniac OOP, there's an ~ok chance we'll be the ones making the mistake on A/K flops / terrible runouts.

Gcluelesslimp/jammingnoobG

The whole point of preflop, imo, is to put yourself in spots that are good for you.

Your above reasoning is exactly why I have a 0% raising range in the ~HJ-. It puts me in good spots that work for me, and helps avoid spots that don't work well for me.

But others (like Tomark) will find that putting themselves in different spots will work better for them, and so of course that is exactly what they should do.

You'll have to decide for yourself what works best for you. And it has nothing to do with a general consensus of "optimal" or "most EV" or anything like that, because poker (and hardly anything else for that matter) isn't one-size-fits-all. No harm in going down other roads to see how they work out for you.

Ggoodluck!G

Yes, but that's a little bit like chess, starting with 1. B4 because you feel more comfortable with it and know your way around it. There's some merit to it - particularly as a lot of players won't know how to react to the unusual play. But in general there's a reason most people start 1. E4 or 1. D4: they're stronger moves.

I was talking about pre-flop, not post-flop. If we jam pre, he can fold AJ and TT. If we raise to $140, V might 4B us with a worse hand, like AJ or TT.

I agree we'd love it if AJ or TT call off our jam, but I don't think those hands call off a jam nearly as often as they might jam themselves. If we jam, V is probably folding every hand we beat, other than maybe AK. If we 4B to some smaller amount, V might come back over the top with some worse hands.

If we 3B to $140, and V calls, we'll have 1 SPR going to the flop. I'm fine getting it in on most boards. I'd think you'd be, too.

Yes. And ill say that working on your preflop opening sounds great, but the goal ESPECIALLY on a downswing should be to try and research and sound poker. Which, by the way, is AGGRESSIVE. I bring this up because i think downswings cause players to become gunshy which just makes things worse.

I agree with this. Just try to study and play good poker. Doing limp re-raises and other weird complicated stuff is just adding unnecessary complexity to your game in a way that generally isn't going to be winning you the most money anyways. We're losing value in the long run here by not just raising our QQ to a normal size. And then we are probably folding out a ton of villain's range when we jam after limping. If v is just a degen who is isoing extremely wide and a degenerate fish who doesn't fold to a limp re-raise then maybe limp re-raisinf to 100-120 can work. But for the most part, I don't like it. You're giving villain way too much of a chance to get off the hook.

I tend to disagree. Maniacs will often fold post flop when they hit nothing with hands that they will call preflop with, "because you never know," and "you can't push me around." Depends on the maniac, of course, but I recall one hand where maniac raised pre in EP, a bunch of people called because they wanted to be in hands with him, I shoved from the BB and maniac snap called with J6.

I've played with other maniacs who never take their foot off the gas as long as no one shows aggression, but often fold if you push back. With that type, I'd just let him do the betting for us if I had a made hand, but semi-bluff raise when I flopped a draw. It all depends.

Yes, these are rare adjustments, but when you have a maniac flinging money around, get a net.

Based on this, I think the shove is max value.