With what range do you call this maniac?

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ClubArrow77

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I was recently sitting at a table with a poor player who was probably on tilt. Player was preflop shoving nearly ATC unless he was in the BB during which he would check if limped to and shove the flop with TP. Somehow, villain got lucky and built his stack to almost 200BB when he open shoves again UTG.

During this time, I had Aces so I called him easily and won a decent stack but it made me wonder what range of hands would I have called his constant pushes with. Villain had VPIP 85 out of 13 hands and has been shoving pretty much every hand. Some hands he showed down in the past ranged from KTo, K3o, or T9o and he once showed 83o after stealing blinds which makes us think his range is almost ATC.

Although high pps like AA-QQ are instant calls and AK probably is, I was wondering at what range would people call with? Any PP? 77+? AQ+?
 
bgomez89

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Maybe 77+. I used to also call with Ax but idk if that's right. Use poker stove to find the range with decent enough equity to call with against a random hand
 
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Aldito

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77 and AT probbably, but depends how many/who's left to act.
 
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ClubArrow77

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I was in mid position with this hand but the previous times villain did this, the whole table insta folded except for one player who tried to play back by making marginal calls. That player folded before us and we can assume that the rest of the table will fold regardless of our actions.

How much equity do we need to make this call right?
 
Ezekiel162

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Wow. So he's virtually shoving with 4+ cards out of 5? Ordinarily if he was just calling or making fairly standard bets and raises I might try playing any HU hands that rate slightly 50%+ to win. If I remember correctly this would be like Ax, K3+, Q5+, J7+, T9+, 89s and any pp, better yet 33+. Don't fault me too much if i'm off... Seeing that he's shoving all the time though I would attempt to play the following from position.

Early - pps: 99+, unsuited connectors: Ax, AK, AQ, suited connectors: JT+
Middle - pps: Any, unsuited connectors: Ax, Kx, JT+, suited connectors: 87+
Late - pps: Any, unsuited connectors: Ax, Kx, Qx, JT+ to include 1 gappers, suited connectors: 43+ with 1 gappers

This may be off but I think it's at least a good starting defense against this type of player. You may/may not want to go down as far as the 87+ and 43+ ranges against a "shover" but I included them anyway for standard aggressive play. These are standards I have committed to memory from reading and adjusted by playing. PokerStove would be better but once again these are what have worked for me and strictly from memory. Experiment with it and see what happens. The more experienced players would obviously know better...
 
sixpeppers

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early position I think 44 or 55+ is still totally reasonable, i think the Qx is a little loose, but q8s+ seems reasonable

no suited connectors are not a call, you need to have odds to call versus a range that seems to actually have some high card strength. If you run any suited connector versus a range that has at least one high card in it, you will find it is at least a 45% dog and when someone is open shoving 200bbs its the equivalent of basically being even money on a call, and with people left to act I would probably want a 51-55% edge, which means you need high cards. JT is a close one but maybe a fold, qj is probably a call. Definintely not suited connectors, keep trying to determine their range because I bet when they don't show its hands like Axo and small pairs and stuff. With a high level of uncertainty its important to stay a little risk averse in a situation like this.
 
JusSumguy

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These guys are too dangerous for me to lower my open. I'm still waiting for monsters.

I've seen these guys make a pro cry. And laugh at him while calling him a fish. I almost slashed his tires for the poor guy. :)

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TheGenera1

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Im with Jussumguy on this one. I don't feel comfortable opening my all in range just because some idiot is shoving everything. If I am near last to act then I will call with 99+ but never without a paired hand. It leaves too much to chance :p
 
Ezekiel162

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I agree completely with the last posts. I was trying to give ClubArrow77 something to work with position-wise figuring that maybe the villain was actually calling w/ atc. 'Peppers & 'Sumguys advice is definitely more reasonable if you want to protect yourself fully for showdown events like the ones the villain is creating.
 
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sactokid544

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These guys are too dangerous for me to lower my open. I'm still waiting for monsters.

I've seen these guys make a pro cry. And laugh at him while calling him a fish. I almost slashed his tires for the poor guy. :)

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This definitely isn't a "losing" strategy as obviously your calling range is strong. My problem is, monsters don't come around often and villain might not be around then.

Therefore, if I can establish a calling range which is wider than monsters but gives me +EV, I'm going for it.

That being said, I think I call with A9+, KTs+,77+, maybe 44+ and QJ+ as my position improves, if villain is to my right...Althought I'm not too sure. I might tighten up in EP to like 99+, AT+,KQ, etc.

Even then, that might still be too tight. I believe hands like 99 or like ATs still have a decent amount of equity vs top 25%. But this guy is shoving even way more than top 30%...

In fact, I distinctly remember a case like this, a guy did this in a live game. Came into a $300 NL game with $100 and 3bet shipped vs my EP raise pre. Said I didn't have balls to call, so I called and he showed 77 vs my TT. Next couple hands, he shoves everyone folds, then when I'm in the BB, he open shoves again and I snap with 99. He shows me Q7 and I win.
 
TheGenera1

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What I think is an interesting point to raise, is that people talk of +EV in this situation but for a +EV decision to be... welll... + EV... it has to take into account an enormous amount of hands. I have to ask my self when faced with a maniac, how often I actually come across these people. The answer is very very few indeed. Most players are not this crazy.
I see someone shoving with ATC about one session in 20 or w/e.

So my point is this... if you widen your calling range verses a maniac, and you end up v the top of his range, or you lose a flip, then you're going to have to wait another 30-40k hands to potentially gain your stack back. And then the same could happen again.

+EV decisions are crucial when facing every day poker scenarios as they occur every hand and with volume comes + EV results.
However verses a situation that hardly ever occurs, we should tighten our calling range from mere " + EV decisions" because our chances of taking down the maniac increase, while the chance of variance raping us decreases.

Thoughts?
 
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What I think is an interesting point to raise, is that people talk of +EV in this situation but for a +EV decision to be... welll... + EV... it has to take into account an enormous amount of hands.

No it doesn't. A decision is either +EV or -EV, end of story.

I have to ask my self when faced with a maniac, how often I actually come across these people. The answer is very very few indeed. Most players are not this crazy. I see someone shoving with ATC about one session in 20 or w/e.

But this whole discussion is based around the situations where we DO end up again one of these spewtards, so questioning how often this happens is totally irrelevant.

So my point is this... if you widen your calling range verses a maniac, and you end up v the top of his range, or you lose a flip, then you're going to have to wait another 30-40k hands to potentially gain your stack back. And then the same could happen again.

If we run into the top his range so be it. We could just as easily run into the middle or bottom. In cash poker you should purely be thinking "Is this +EV or -EV?", not whether or not you're going to get unlucky and run into this moron's AA or how long it is going to take to recuperate your losses vs him. And so what if it happens again?

+EV decisions are crucial when facing every day poker scenarios as they occur every hand and with volume comes + EV results.
However verses a situation that hardly ever occurs, we should tighten our calling range from mere " + EV decisions" because our chances of taking down the maniac increase, while the chance of variance raping us decreases.

Thoughts?

Variance raping you shouldn't matter in the slightest if you are properly rollled.
 
TheGenera1

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I can tell you're not very bright. Therefore I'm going to pretend you didnt just post that.
 
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there's a lot of good advice here, so i'll just say that i love having a guy like that at the table even though the majority of the time you won't be able to take advantage of it before he gives his chips away to someone else

and, yes, there will be those brutal beats and the times when he turns over KK vs. ur AQ

but over the long haul, players like that will be adding to your bankroll without you having to do much more than stack their chips

finally, as others pointed out, as frustrating as it can be ... you do have to be careful not to expand ur range too far ... you still have to be patient and wait for the opportunity to present itself ... if you try to force it, then you could end up in a spot you would never normally get urself in
 
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the EV of a hand is the EV of the hand. The effect of winning or losing it shouldn't matter in the least except under extreme circumstances. I.e. we should be willing to put in infinite amounts of money with any equity advantage whatsoever.
 
JusSumguy

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I primarily play live poker. I have a ton of casinos to choose from. I go to the casino every night during what I like to call the drunk hours.

I go specifically to be in the very situation we're talking about here. The best time is from about a half hour after they cut their booze off till about an hour and a half after that,

Every night some angry, want's to keep drinking, drunk. Knowing he's gonna hafta leave soon to get a drink starts it. Another term I use, the all in blind fest. Once it starts, it's like some sort of air born drunk infection, because it spreads across the entire room like wildfire.

During this time I tighten up. If I don't hit one or two tonight, I'll hit tomorrow. It doesn't matter, because it happens every night. It's not some elusive thing that I have to get while the gettin's good.

This is why, and the seriously BB's I got figuring this out, I wait for monsters in these situations.


:icon_salu
 
TheGenera1

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Please do explain instead of evading my points with that ridiculous statement.

Firstly, you broke my post down into separate points which is a straw man fallacy on your part. You have to look at it on the whole. You failed to see WHY not getting a maniac very often is relevant to my point. Yes we were talking about a maniac but

sod arguing tbh I cant be arsed. I'm in a bad mood on a totally unrelated issue and I apologise for calling you thick.
 
A

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I primarily play live poker. I have a ton of casinos to choose from. I go to the casino every night during what I like to call the drunk hours.

I go specifically to be in the very situation we're talking about here. The best time is from about a half hour after they cut their booze off till about an hour and a half after that,

Every night some angry, want's to keep drinking, drunk. Knowing he's gonna hafta leave soon to get a drink starts it. Another term I use, the all in blind fest. Once it starts, it's like some sort of air born drunk infection, because it spreads across the entire room like wildfire.

During this time I tighten up. If I don't hit one or two tonight, I'll hit tomorrow. It doesn't matter, because it happens every night. It's not some elusive thing that I have to get while the gettin's good.

This is why, and the seriously BB's I got figuring this out, is why I wait for monsters in these situations.


:icon_salu

It doesn't matter that it happens every night. You shouldn't turn down a 55/45 just because you can get a 60/40 the next night, take both.
 
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Aldito

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Firstly, you broke my post down into separate points which is a straw man fallacy on your part. You have to look at it on the whole. You failed to see WHY not getting a maniac very often is relevant to my point. Yes we were talking about a maniac but

o sod this, I really cant be arsed. In a bad mood, my apologies.

No I really don't. Are you saying that because something doesn't happen very often it's not worth discussing it? Sorry I don't mean to come across as looking for conflict, but I'm genuinely intrigued.
 
JusSumguy

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It doesn't matter that it happens every night. You shouldn't turn down a 55/45 just because you can get a 60/40 the next night, take both.

To me... to me now. Taking a bad beat off an all in blind drunk... isn't worth it. Just too hard to handle. If I'm ever going to tilt, that would be the best opportunity.

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TheGenera1

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It's cool. So basically I was not suggesting that we shouldn't worry about maniacs, we should certainly have a strategy for dealing with every single player type we encounter.

What I was suggesting is that we should have a relatively tight range against them because they don't come along very often. The following explains my reason for this:

Even if we get the money in good, in a marginal +EV situation, Say AT v QJ and we lose the hand, the opportunity to regain the lost BI wont come along for a very long time. We are only a 60ish % favorite to win the hand I believe.
Sure we can make the money back in a few hands against someone else who isn't a maniac, but that is an inefficient way of looking at it imo. We can't slack in our range v a maniac just because we know we're a winning player and can make it back elsewhere. That would be a leak imo

If however we tighten our range, we can ensure that we have a higher EV therefore more chance we win the hand. This is all because winning at poker relies on volume to counter variance. If a situation does not arise very often, then it goes with out saying that we should seek to have as much of an edge in the situation as possible because there will be few chances further down the line to even out the variance of this particular maniac situation.

Anyway that is why I use the 99 or TT+ rule for handling maniacs. Depending on how I'm feeling at the time :p

I really hope this makes sense to you. My argument of course would be invalid if OP encounters lots and lots of maniacs because he would be able to put in a large amount of volume against them, therefore evening out unfavorable variance.
 
A

Aldito

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It's cool. So basically I was not suggesting that we shouldn't worry about maniacs, we should certainly have a strategy for dealing with every single player type we encounter.

What I was suggesting is that we should have a relatively tight range against them because they don't come along very often. The following explains my reason for this:

Even if we get the money in good, in a marginal +EV situation, Say AT v QJ and we lose the hand, the opportunity to regain the lost BI wont come along for a very long time. We are only a 60ish % favorite to win the hand I believe.
Sure we can make the money back in a few hands against someone else who isn't a maniac, but that is an inefficient way of looking at it imo. We can't slack in our range v a maniac just because we know we're a winning player and can make it back elsewhere. That would be a leak imo

If however we tighten our range, we can ensure that we have a higher EV therefore more chance we win the hand. This is all because winning at poker relies on volume to counter variance. If a situation does not arise very often, then it goes with out saying that we should seek to have as much of an edge in the situation as possible because there will be few chances further down the line to even out the variance of this particular maniac situation.

Anyway that is why I use the 99 or TT+ rule for handling maniacs. depending on how I'm feeling at the time :p

I really hope this makes sense to you. My argument of course would be invalid if OP encounters lots and lots of maniacs because he would be able to put in a large amount of volume against them, therefore evening out unfavorable variance.

Yeah I get where you're coming from now but who's to say that the donk will still be there in the next hand?

He might get called by someone else who's willing to stack off light against him. Or he might have felt like going to have some dinner or watch some porn or go to bed.

I understand how you would want to maximise your edge in a marginal allin situation but him being around the next time we pick up a very strong hand is far from certain.

But yeah fair point.
 
S

sactokid544

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It's cool. So basically I was not suggesting that we shouldn't worry about maniacs, we should certainly have a strategy for dealing with every single player type we encounter.

What I was suggesting is that we should have a relatively tight range against them because they don't come along very often. The following explains my reason for this:

Even if we get the money in good, in a marginal +EV situation, Say AT v QJ and we lose the hand, the opportunity to regain the lost BI wont come along for a very long time. We are only a 60ish % favorite to win the hand I believe.
Sure we can make the money back in a few hands against someone else who isn't a maniac, but that is an inefficient way of looking at it imo. We can't slack in our range v a maniac just because we know we're a winning player and can make it back elsewhere. That would be a leak imo

If however we tighten our range, we can ensure that we have a higher EV therefore more chance we win the hand. This is all because winning at poker relies on volume to counter variance. If a situation does not arise very often, then it goes with out saying that we should seek to have as much of an edge in the situation as possible because there will be few chances further down the line to even out the variance of this particular maniac situation.

Anyway that is why I use the 99 or TT+ rule for handling maniacs. Depending on how I'm feeling at the time :p

I really hope this makes sense to you. My argument of course would be invalid if OP encounters lots and lots of maniacs because he would be able to put in a large amount of volume against them, therefore evening out unfavorable variance.

I think Aldito's point is that we don't care about unfavorable variance. It's +EV or -EV. We don't care how long it takes to get it back. The money, winning/losing, etc., doesn't matter at all.

The only thing that matters is that we got out money in with AT and he called with QJ. That is +EV. If we lose (and we will lose 40%) it doesn't matter. In poker, is the decision, not the outcome. With that said, your response is based on the "outcome" which results from variance. But we aren't concerned with that.

Therefore, getting it in with AT vs QJ is good because its a +EV decision.
 
TheGenera1

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Yeah I get where you're coming from now but who's to say that the donk will still be there in the next hand?

He might get called by someone else who's willing to stack off light against him. Or he might have felt like going to have some dinner or watch some porn or go to bed.

I understand how you would want to maximise your edge in a marginal allin situation but him being around the next time we pick up a very strong hand is far from certain.

But yeah fair point.

Haha who's to say he isn't watching porn while gamboooling it up. Your point about him getting stacked or leaving before we get a chance is a fair one. I guess it just comes down to how well one can handle variance and if someone is prepared to take a 50/50 gamble. I have a low tolerance for it, because having come from competitive gaming myself, I despise the fact someone can "win" despite playing worse, it comes with my competitive nature. However I still don't let it affect decisions :p

I think Aldito's point is that we don't care about unfavorable variance. It's +EV or -EV. We don't care how long it takes to get it back. The money, winning/losing, etc., doesn't matter at all.

The only thing that matters is that we got out money in with AT and he called with QJ. That is +EV. If we lose (and we will lose 40%) it doesn't matter. In poker, is the decision, not the outcome. With that said, your response is based on the "outcome" which results from variance. But we aren't concerned with that.

Therefore, getting it in with AT vs QJ is good because its a +EV decision.

Indeed you are right. It's just how can you know your AT is up against QJ before you shove :p If I knew I had AT v his QJ I would be shoving all day long. Fair point none the less.
 
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