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Poker Video: Limit Hold'Em by DeathDonkey (High Stakes)

Time Link to 00:04:27

Capping is fun.

Time Link to 00:05:01

Assuming the maniac is also a postflop (or at least flop) maniac, what do you think about capping here our entire range, so that SB would check to us, we bet, and the maniac raises with all sorts of hands, and SB will have to fold a lot facing 2 bets? I feel like in a presumably 12SB pot this kind of protection worth a ton. Also most of the time we'll have some weak showdown value type of hands here, and I fear that if we let them have the initiative we'll get raised off the best hand a ton of the times, or will have to be forced to show down A hi or a small PP 3way for lots of bets.

Thanks in advance, great series guys, I'm kind of sad there are just 2 episodes left.

Assuming the maniac is also a postflop (or at least flop) maniac, what do you think about capping here our entire range, so that SB would check to us, we bet, and the maniac raises with all sorts of hands, and SB will have to fold a lot facing 2 bets? I feel like in a presumably 12SB pot this kind of protection worth a ton. Also most of the time we'll have some weak showdown value type of hands here, and I fear that if we let them have the initiative we'll get raised off the best hand a ton of the times, or will have to be forced to show down A hi or a small PP 3way for lots of bets.

Thanks in advance, great series guys, I'm kind of sad there are just 2 episodes left.

I think your idea has a good bit of merit, I think there are some downsides, such as we will tend to make their spewy plays a bit better by further bloating the pot with the weaker parts of our range (if their mistake is putting in too much action we would prefer to have the pot be as small as possible while still getting good value for our hands). We will also end up putting in some flop bets really badly whereas if we go the other route there is no shame in folding the worst parts of our range when we whiff the flop. Finally the good playing SB will still continue when it is correct to do so on the flop I would say the majority of the time, since he errs on the side of optimism and aggression. If the SB were a decent player but slightly weak tight I think I prefer your method because he will often misread our hand and make a large mistake on the flop sometimes.

Time Link to 00:25:54

About 20 seconds before this point you said that if we raise the turn that he's calling down all his 8's for sure but I don't think that's necessarily true given how small the pot is but part of why I don't like the idea of raising is because the cards that actually improve us (apart from the A) are the ones he'll most likely fold to a river bet on with those weak pairs. Q3 though and stuff like that seem like a good candidate.

Also I like what you said about raising the 7 river, it definitely hits our range harder then anybody elses and it may even enable the SB to make a 'good' fold. I wouldn't myself be terribly keen on calling the river though, I'd probably fold if I haven't got the brains and balls to raise it.

About 20 seconds before this point you said that if we raise the turn that he's calling down all his 8's for sure but I don't think that's necessarily true given how small the pot is but part of why I don't like the idea of raising is because the cards that actually improve us (apart from the A) are the ones he'll most likely fold to a river bet on with those weak pairs. Q3 though and stuff like that seem like a good candidate.

Also I like what you said about raising the 7 river, it definitely hits our range harder then anybody elses and it may even enable the SB to make a 'good' fold. I wouldn't myself be terribly keen on calling the river though, I'd probably fold if I haven't got the brains and balls to raise it.

Good points, agree on the Q3hh etc as better candidates

At 5:00 (couldn't figure out how to do the link thing)

What's the problem with check-3betting this flop with any hand that we want to continue with? I don't think any hand that is worth continuing after it's 2 bets back to us is going to be that much of an equity dog against their ranges. This avoids the strange spot of cold calling and facing a 3bet and 4bet and also helps to define SB's range better either on the flop or turn.

It also keeps our range balanced and allows us to ensure we get value on every street when we have the best hand. If it drives out the maniac because he holds random trash, I don't think we were going to trap him for that many bets anyway. It would take a special kind of maniac to put in more than a few bets postflop with absolutely nothing and this type may cap our 3bet anyway. Also, if the maniac folds, it gives us many options playing in position with initiative vs. the SB for the rest of the hand. If the maniac caps behind us, we can probably go into call-down mode and feel like we're making up for any missed value if he has a weak showdownable hand with the times we induce him to barrel off randomly.

I would say the problem is that there are plenty of hands that we should continue with that are simply dogs to their ranges, so we are putting in bets badly and somewhat unnecessarily, though it does disguise our hand to just jam everything we continue with, I don't think its worth it in some cases.

There are clearly a lot of hands that have equity to continue but aren't 33% vs their ranges (our fair share 3 ways). In my experience decent players tend to do what you suggest, but often end up folding hands that should be played because they intuitively know that jamming those hands is bad, if we worked on balancing our call range a bit then we would feel better about continuing when we know we are in somewhat bad shape but have too much to continue (bottom pair + overcard kicker comes to mind)