$5 NLHE 6-max: missed value on river with KK vs maniac?

This was the 3rd hand of my session and i just wasnt ready for that maniac
do we have to shove river here?


888 Poker - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4


UTG: 96.4 BB (VPIP: 14.00, PFR: 12.00, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, hands: 51)
MP: 175 BB (VPIP: 45.57, PFR: 27.85, 3Bet Preflop: 3.13, Hands: 84)
CO: 100 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 2)
Hero (BTN): 100 BB
SB: 100 BB (VPIP: 11.80, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 366)
BB: 110.2 BB (VPIP: 31.82, PFR: 27.27, 3Bet Preflop: 12.50, Hands: 44)


SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB


Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has K♣ K♥


fold, MP raises to 2 BB, fold, Hero raises to 6 BB, fold, fold, MP calls 4 BB


I know i could 3bet bigger but i rather wanted to keep him in the hand in position, than collect the small pot.


Flop: (13.4 BB, 2 players) 4♣ J♣ 5♣
MP bets 13.4 BB, Hero calls 13.4 BB


Turn: (40.2 BB, 2 players) 9♠
MP bets 26.8 BB, Hero calls 26.8 BB


I decide to not raise as there are not many dangerous cards for me and from my experience this kind of player is very tricky and probably not a fish. they are usually kinda ballanced and are either bluffing or have the nuts.
I put him on any club but no Ace as his range is very wide and Jx, 5x, 4x and 44-TT, or flush.
so if i raise he will fold his bluffs and weak pairs i guess.


River: (93.8 BB, 2 players) 6♥
MP checks, Hero checks


so with his check on the river i just didnt think he would call with worse here and he would have 2 pair at least like 54, 65, J9.
so only hands i could get some value from is like AJ and KJ maybe and i actually didnt think he is so strong.

Preflop, we need to size up versus this kinda player with such a strong hand. He is a 45/27 so he can call ridiculous sizes with ridiculous hands.

He just pots flop, so can have a bunch of stuff from TP to Acxx to complete air. I am okay with a call, i think raising him here wouldn't neccesarily be bad but it might slow him down on later streets. This is still a value spot as far as i am concerned.

Turn he slows down, I don't understand your comment about this player not being a fish/idiot/whatever... this guy is a complete idiot. Min raise pre, pot-donks flop, plays almost half the hands that come his way... everything about him suggests he has no clue at all what he is doing.

River is an easy jam spot. I think this guy calls with all Jx, QQ. Maybe even TT but that could be a tiny bit on the wishful thinking side. If he calls and shows me 2pair, set, maybe a flush then rebuy and be exited to have such a player at your table. This type of play, while it sucks when we take a beat, is very much positive for our bankroll.

i dont know much about that specific player but i had some bad experiences where i thought that kinda player is just a donkey but they were just super tricky and trap me and they never called any value bets.
maybe i was just unlucky and i am too cautious now but preflop was not such a big mistake?
i mean i was aware that i give away some of my equity to be sure i play postflop with him.
so i guess if i play like that i have to shove the river anyway lol

I think you are confusing a "LAG" and a "maniac". LAGs play a lot more hands and raise more often and are super aggresive, but also skillful and tricky. Maniacs are people who just don't grasp the strategy and try to win using sheer intimidation/huge sizings/to many bluffs. This guy looks like the later.

Preflop isn't a huge mistake by any means, you just loose some value. I can completely understand why you don't want to make it huge with KK because you don't want him to fold, but we end up getting much more money if we make it 12BB or so... even if he only calls 2/3 time we have higher profits overall than if he calls 6 95% of the time.

+1 TenJack

For me this player comes out of just clueless, not really a maniac especially noted with 3bet 3.13% too low value for maniac. He probably ‘knows’ that making a pair is rare. I think raising is in order at latest on the turn, he has shown interest and we should comply.

His actual hand fits quite well to this profiling.

Braveslice is correct, I think a raise is in order on the turn. If we plan to check back most rivers anyway, raising the turn is the best option. If he folds, we have still gotten very good value from our hand, if he calls and we see a river we feel good as well. Seems like a win-win.

Im still torn over sizing, we have around 80BB behind so if we do anything above a min-raise we are basically jamming.

Well seems I didn't consider stack sizes at all, it still felt small ott but small 3bet +pot size donk made it large.

Shoving might be too scary looking but maybe not too bad, min raise he will call with anything so that is not that bad, but I'm clueless here about the correct size. If no correct size maybe just calling is better.

I'm not opposed to a raise to 55, then a river all in call/ river jam. Certainly not a line i would want to show to my friends but it will work here versus suspected TP.

A call and a river jam is not bad either i think, just because of the unweildy stack size.

TenJack said:

I think you are confusing a "LAG" and a "maniac"

Click to expand...

gotcha, yeah i was too scared that he is a LAG

At first glance I liked your line a lot but after thinking through it some more and thinking about the other replies here, I agree the river is a jam.

I think we gave villain a little too much credit for balance here based on our past experiences. And that's okay, but as the others in the thread mention, it's important to differentiate this specific player here and realize that he's almost certainly capable of showing up with random Jx here, and I find it unlikely that he gets away from it.

That being said, I really really like playing it how you did up until this point though, because I think when we raise flop or turn we bloat the pot now but kill our action later. Particularly on brick runouts. However if we don't have the Kc in our hand I think this becomes more of a flop raise spot usually.

I think we have to 3bet a little bit more because his stats show that he would have call a bigger raise. So, on the flop he came out fire in to us, this mean he didn't care about our 3bet range which is great for us; we should definitely raise him here on the flop since he might be on flush draw and he might hit his top pair. Raising here is good because we want to build the pot. We could then bet 80% pot on Turn, and possibly go all in on the river. Our K high flush draw might be good when the river hit another club. So, we called on the flop, and we called on the Turn; I don't like this move for 2 reasons: first, we didn't maximize our KK with a re-draw on flush, second, we didn't use our position advantage to the fullest. His check on the river is definitely not a check raise because he knows that with a dangerous board like that, we could not possibly bluff on this river; therefore, we should bet 25% of the pot to pick up our value. Even if he check raise this river, we have to call because our small bet was intended for him to bluff us.