[W. Deranged]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm lost on this hand after the flop.

I guess I understand the turn bet, but I don't know about the river call.

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This hand is ENTIRELY read-based.

The idea is this: The maniac could basically have any two cards. With a bunch of low cards and a paired board, it is much more likely than usual that no one has a pair in his hand yet. So the idea is that my AJ has a lot of showdown value at this point, and I kind of want to show it down in what is a pretty big pot.

One way to accomplish this would be to just go into calldown mode. But that has the bad effect of letting the other players see the river for one bet. If they have weak pairs, hands like KQ, or maybe even better As, I want them to fold. They probably don't realize how crazy the maniac is.

So I bet the turn in the hopes that the maniac will raise and blow away the field. Then I get the hand heads-up with the maniac, and, based on reads, that situation is very favorable.

The turn is a better place to do this than the flop because tons of turn cards hurt my hands (so I want to see a safe turn card) and it will be much easier to protect my hand/push my edge when the big bets come.

I call the river because that's the entire point. The maniac will raise the turn with tons of hands that are worse than mine. I am NOT in a bet/fold unimproved situation. My hand is going to be good pretty often regardless of what the maniac does. I'm HOPING he raises the turn, in fact.

Results: Maniac showed K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and MHIG!