English
Deutsch
Español
Français
Italiano
Nederlands
Pусский
Svenska
Poker Forum |
Over 1,232,000 Posts! |
|
|
| |
| ||
|---|---|---|
|
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
| LawDude |
|
||
|
I have a number of tools in my toolbox for dealing with maniacs. I will try and get in position against them with hands that crush their range. I will switch between aggression and passivity to confuse them and bleed their chips. I will use 3-bets to isolate them when I think they are FOS pre-flop. But I am absolutely an awful poker player when there are maniacs at my table AND a bunch of gambling fish who just want to stay in every hand and bloat the pot in the hopes of sucking out on the maniacs. EVERY time I get into this scenario, I seem to lose money. Now, in theory, two things are happening at these tables-- the maniacs and the fish are pumping up the implied odds of speculative hands and making hands that play well multi-way and big draws more valuable, and by playing smarter poker than these people, I am getting a big edge because I am less likely to be deeply involved in pots I can't win. But in practice, it all goes to hell. This is all a preface to last night playing 20-40 at Commerce. Seat 2 is the primary maniac. He's drunk off his butt and ends up making $5,000 on the night. He is your classic loose-aggressive. He is also clearly NOT that good-- this isn't the guy who runs 60/50/3.5 and rapes you post-flop-- this is the drunk SOB who runs 95/90/6.0 and gets ridiculously lucky. Next to him in seat 3 is a more canny loose-aggressive. This guy does not play every pot, but he plays a lot of them, and he is often 3-betting pre-flop and raising post-flop when he is in. I am in seat 5. The rest of the table are fishes that could have been plucked from the 2NL tables at PokerStars. Just calling, calling, calling, every street, hoping to suck out on the 2 maniacs and sometimes doing so. When I first realize what is going on at this table I try a couple of isolation plays against the maniacs with decent cards. No dice. It doesn't matter if I cap pre-flop-- EVERYONE calls. So, OK, I start playing hands that get in good multiway. I do have one nice cash-- I flop a set from the small bind calling 4 bets with pocket 9's. I also got a pair of pocket kings on just about the only hand the entire night that seats 2 and 3 both fold. So that paid me nothing. The rest of my night: AQ 3 times. Each time I hit an ace or a queen on the flop. Each time I lose. Once to 87 offsuit from one of the fish. Once to an obvious 4-card flush (at least I got out of that one before it could do maximum damage). And once to maniac in seat 2 who had raised a suited Doyle Brunson, raised the flop with a backdoor flush draw, and then hit runner-runner flush, the river also giving me top 2 pair. And then there was my suited connectors. 9h8h. Turned a flush and lost to one of the fish who had called 4 cold with Th5h. But the worst of all was my pocket jacks. I was resigned, of course, to the fate that my jacks would have to hold up in a 9-way pot. But I got a flop with 2 spades and 3 undercards, and incredibly I got only 2 callers. Plus I had the jack of spades. On the turn, a third spade hits and I get check-raised by seat 3. He does this all the time. Meanwhile, the fish in seat 7, who has been calling everything she can, calls 4 bets pre-flop, calls my c-bet on the flop, and calls the 2 bets on the turn. River is a fourth spade. Seat 3 checks, I bet, seat 7 calls. Seat 3 has a set. I have my jack-high flush. And seat 7 turns over Qs3d to win the hand. Here's the question. Other than trying to ride the variance roller-coaster or switching tables, anyone have any particularly profound thoughts about how to play maniacs IF the rest of table will not allow isolation plays and will call almost everything? Is this just wait for the nuts and bet? |
||
|
|||
Play for FREE and practice your game at...Join the FTR Poker Forum to disable these banners and start posting! | |||
| Chopper |
|
||
|
dude, i read half your post and i would have left the table. if you KNOW it isnt your spot, dont get involved.......thats rule #1. rule #2 is to re-read our thread between you and benny, and to a much lesser degree, me. you have to be willing to take those marginal, not speculative hands, WAY farther than it sounds like you are comfortable doing. your AQs hand is a perfect example. this would be the table that you cap all streets, if possible, and dont look at the results. you just know you played it right, and it is what it is. problem is, at this table last night, you would have likely played 6 hands that required that action. therefore, i get up and leave rather quickly. i don't sit and chase the donkeys along with the fish that are killing me by bloating pots and forcing me to play so tight i get constipated. i just leave and go play another. if you were at commerce, you had other choices. play to your strengths. work on your weaknesses at 50/1 or 25/50c online. that, i think, is the bigger leak in this post. |
||
|
LHE is a game where your skill keeps you breakeven until you hit your rush of random BS.
Nothing beats flopping quads while dropping a duece!
|
|||
| KoRnholio |
|
||
|
3/4 of that was just a bad beat post. Thankfully I read quickly. Anyways, if your 20/40 game is playing like a retarded fishfest 3/6 game, there's really nothing you can do short of finding a new game. You've even got position on the maniacs, which is usually the best play to be. It gives you have the option of raising to give the fishies worst and/or incorrect odds to chase. LHE can be a very high variance game, especially with bloated pots and chasers. Don't expect big pairs/top pair hands to drag many pots. In sessions like this, it's your draws that will make or break you. If you hit them, you're golden, if not, you quit a loser. Change a couple river cards from that session and you could easily have been coming back here to write about how great the game and session were. |
||
|
Some days it feels like I've been standing forever, waiting for the bank teller to return so I can cash in all these Sklansky Bucks.
|
|||
| LawDude |
|
||
|
Thanks for the replies. Chopper, I am perfectly willing to take speculative or marginal hands to showdown against maniacs. I do it all the time. I'm not, however, really interested in calling a 3-bet on the river with middle pair against 3 opponents. Are you? Part of my problem with these tables is that they give me no way to figure out where I am in a hand. In most limit games, you flop TPTK, see a couple of turn raises, and are able to evaluate based on the ranges of the players whether you are looking at a set, or top two, or a big draw, or a bluff. I can also, as I said, handle maniacs when I can isolate them. Then it really doesn't matter that much where I am in the hand; I know how broad the maniac's range is and stay in the hand when I am ahead of it or have odds to draw out on it. But what I can't handle is all the callers. I don't know if they are calling because they are always this fishy or because they figure that the maniacs are making the pots so big that they might as well chase. But when there's 7 people to the flop, 6 to the turn, and 4 to the river, and each street has 2 or 3 or 4 bets on it, I don't know when I am betting for value and when I am betting right into reverse implied odds. So I think Chopper is ultimately right-- I need to avoid these tables because they tilt me. And I also agree with Korn that a few draws hold up and I'm a lot happier about this table. But it's an interesting dynamic that's actually fairly common at live limit tables in these parts, so it's something I need to learn to deal with better. As I said-- it's definitely a leak. |
||
|
|
|||
| Chopper |
|
||
|
you learn to deal with it by avoiding it when there are other games to choose from. these tables tilt me for the same reasons. i can handle the same situations you mention well, too. however, a constant 4way on the river is horrible. and, it makes TPTK look like dogmeat most of the time. at these tables, ALL HANDS ARE DRAWS. your TPTK? it's still a 5outer. but, so is your A5s on a dry board. you play to pot odds and you play your cards. you wait for the few opportunities to isolate from lp or steal a blind from the BTN or SB. and, thats about all you get for the short-handed power poker situations. most of the time you are limping gappers, raising suited broadways, set hunting, and dragging TP to the river and paying off big pots with one additional bet in a 15bb pot. its not fun. but, it is still profitable. you just have to have a really deeeeeep roll to survive this type of poker. however, this is when paying off the river is at most a small mistake, too. you wont have to drag many pots of this type to give yourself a decent session. if you ALWAYS fold here, you will burn off your roll really fast. what you are describing is a rather aggressive "schooling effect" scenario. if you haven't read up on the concept, i would. and, based on earlier discussions, i would go back to SSHE, if you have it, and read all the pages on "pot equity edge." its in the index, and a few of those pages lay out WHY we raise with draws in big pots. |
||
|
LHE is a game where your skill keeps you breakeven until you hit your rush of random BS.
Nothing beats flopping quads while dropping a duece!
|
|||
| LawDude |
|
||
|
Quote:
And there is truth the schooling effect, though bear in mind that its expositors make a couple of big mistakes: 1. There is a countervailing force to the schooling effect, which is the more people that are in the pot, the greater the possibility that your outs are dead or are subject to redraws and that you are simply providing reverse implied odds to your opponents. (By the way, this is a reason I basically play every Ax suited hand on these types of tables. A nut flush draw is HUGE because these tables are the most susceptible to people holding onto a smaller flush.) I haven't fully worked out the math on this, but the most widely disseminated works on the schooling effect ignore it and simply focus on how each caller bloats the pot and gives you odds to call. 2. Even with the schooling effect, you need to be very careful about hands that often make second best hands, because this is a huge problem in these types of pots. With 4 players calling to the river, there will often be issues of kickers or higher straights or higher flushes or pocket pairs. In other words, you can't say to yourself "schooling effect" and start calling or raising with whatever junk you have. I missed a big pot with J2o out of position at this table (the flop came JJ2), and the pot did end up massively multi-way, but I still say that there's no odds calculation in the world that will make calling 4 bets out of position with J2o a +EV play, schooling effect or no. You have to think about what TYPES of hands will benefit most from the schooling effect. I tend to think that it is the same type of hands that play best multiway, small pocket pairs and suited connectors, as well as offsuit and suited broadways. I've stoved this in various scenarios and it appears correct. Another way of putting this point is that the math behind the schooling effect says that in a massive multi-way pot, some of the equity donated by the maniacs and the fish will go not to the person with the best hand but to the person with the second best (and in some instances the third best hand). But that means that there are also hands in the pot that have to be big donators-- that's where the equity comes from! And since you are calling lots of bets, the big donators are even bigger than they would be if we were just talking about some fishy loose-passive multi-way pot at a home game. So you have to be sure you are swimming in the right school of fish before you rely on the schooling effect. |
||
|
|
|||
| Chopper |
|
||
|
i agree completely. i didnt say we should get involved because of the effect. i was merely pointing out that the schooling effect is precisely the reason this game is much, much tougher to beat in the short term. and, those without the stomach to take the swings, such as myself, are better off avoiding such games to begin with. (saves on the Pepto budget) 
|
||
|
LHE is a game where your skill keeps you breakeven until you hit your rush of random BS.
Nothing beats flopping quads while dropping a duece!
|
|||
 |
| Latest Poker News | |
| eugmac |
02-11-2012, 02:29 PM WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open Day 1A: Uri Kadosh Leads
|
| The first day of the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open has ended at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. A total of 125 entrants were on the player's list at the start of the non-t ... | |
«
Previous Thread
|
Next Thread
»
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | |
Linear Mode
|
|
All times are GMT. The time now is 02:02 AM.
|
|
All content © FlopTurnRiver.com |
Advertising |
Partners |
Testimonials |
T&C |
Contact Us |
FTR News & Press |
Site Map |
Search FTR
Full Tilt | Titan Poker | UltimateBet | Poker Stars | Ladbrokes Bonus | Sportsbook | Cake Poker Play Texas Holdem Online, Online Texas Holdem Strategy, & Poker Forum |
 |
| This is not a gambling website. |
