Take a stand?

[bingledork]

Playing a 6-handed $0.10/$0.20 NLHE home game against a maniac. He's been going over the top of me a lot, and I figure I've got to make a stand sometime.

Maniac and I have equal stacks of $35.
I have K /images/graemlins/club.gif Q /images/graemlins/club.gif in the BB.
A few limpers to maniac in the SB. He completes and I raise to $0.70. All call.

Flop ($3) K /images/graemlins/heart.gif 5 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 4 /images/graemlins/club.gif
Maniac bets $1.00, I bump to $4.00. Folded back to the maniac who raises another $10. I put him on a K with a weaker kicker, so I push.

Maniac likes to overbet his top-pair hands. Previously he got his entire stack in with AJ when the flop came AK8. Another time he went all-in with J9 on a flop of 972.

So my question is: What kind of hand do you need here to push? I don't think there's ever a time to call.

Result in white: <font color="white">Maniac shows K4 and takes the pot. </font>

[Prevaricator]

Not a whole lot you can do here. It's not like you can put someone on K4o, calling preflop raises with it. Even if he does flop two pair, you still have a lot of outs with the Q, the board pairing 5's or 2 runners pairing higher than 4's. The reraise $10 might be a signal that your hand is bested, but if you know the guy does stuff like this with any K, I think pushing is the right play.

[BlueBear]

Top pair, o.k. kicker against a heads-up clueless maniac is definitely alright.

[RPatterson]

I'm more intersted in your pre-flop play. Why did you decide to make a small value raise out of position in a multi-way pot?

[bingledork]

I'm still trying to determine a good standard raise for this game. I chose $0.50 raises this night because my $0.80 raises the previous night caused everyone to fold. I'm not sure if I'd rather have everyone fold their garbage hands to an $0.80 raise or have them come along for a $0.50 raise. The manaic would have called either raise.

I'm surprised nobody thought my push was bad. I'm still torn about it. I'm basically playing like a maniac to try to beat the maniac here, and I'm not convinced that's the best way to do it. Of course I don't like getting pushed off decent hands all the time either. I'm wondering if playing passive with him would be more +EV.

[josie_wales]

Hi Lennon,

In my limited read of this player, just from your description, it seems he will push with his good, but vulnerable hands.

When he *did not* push upon the flop OR your raise (he raised $10 --- HOPING for a call) --- I would think you are beat.

Remember, you basically said he pushed on TPanyK.

He didnt push here, but did raise. Careful now!

Josie Wales

[jdl22]

I think a good way to determine your raise amount for the table is to try to get as much money into the pot as possible. So if that means betting $1 and getting one caller then fine. If it's putting in .5 and getting 5 callers that's ok too. This will change based on table conditions and ins't always perfect but seems a good way to do it. So if you see them all folding to your .8 then drop it a notch and see if you get callers. If everyone calls for .5 bump it up a notch to .6 or whatever.