TPTK against thinking maniac?

[Logik]

Live game, heads up. I'm playing my roommate, Pete, for the master bedroom of our new two bedroom apartment.

Starting chips is t1000

t5/t10 blinds, non-escalating

Ryan [Hero]: t1200
Pete [Villian]: t800

Pete is loose aggressive, and knows that I play a more tight aggressive game, but he knows that I will fold big hands to aggression. He has folded top pair with K kicker on a relatively tame board against me before, giving me credit for a bigger hand.

I've played with him a lot, and he's a thinking player who attempts to hone in on situational weakness and uncomfortableness and tries to get people off their hands with trash. Doesn't seem to care what cards he gets delt, he doesn't tend to get to showdown often. However, because of this, he can get paid off on his bigger hands if I don't give him credit for hands.

Pete's philosophy seems to be that he can steal enough pots from me to take the worst of it when I call his all-in with a monster hand. Is this that spot?


I'm on the button and post my t5 small blind, Pete posts his t10 big blind. We play HU that dealer is SB and acts first preflop, but BB acts first post-flop.

I get delt A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and make it t55 to go, tossing in a green t50 chip. Pete re-raises to t175 in total, and I call, knowing that at this point I am probably ahead, and he's making this raise to build a pot for him to take down on a low card flop with a push.

The pot is now t350
Ryan [hero]: t1025
Pete [villian]: t625
Flop comes: 5[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Pete bets t625 and is all in.

Your move?

[AlwaysWrong]

[ QUOTE ]
I get delt A7 and make it t55 to go

[/ QUOTE ]

Why in the world would you raise so much knowing your opponent's strategy? Seems like it can only get you in trouble.

Your strategy here should be to keep the pot small so Pete's gross overbets are bigger mistakes when you pick up a real hand.

[ QUOTE ]
Pete re-raises to t175 in total, and I call, knowing that at this point I am probably ahead, and he's making this raise to build a pot for him to take down on a low card flop with a push.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you hit, and what you expected to happen did. What's the problem? This is an automatic call.

[Logik]

[ QUOTE ]

Why in the world would you raise so much knowing your opponent's strategy? Seems like it can only get you in trouble.

Your strategy here should be to keep the pot small so Pete's gross overbets are bigger mistakes when you pick up a real hand.


[/ QUOTE ]

Its my standard opening 5BB raise when I think I'm ahead. I'm trying to build a pot here too, so his bluffs are bigger. Basically I'm trying to get a 10BB pot on the flop so when he takes a stab at it, it'll be a 7-8BB stab instead of a 1-2BB stab if it was call-check preflop. I wasn't expecting a 62.5BB bet. I've seen him do this before, and it can mean anything.

[ QUOTE ]
So you hit, and what you expected to happen did. What's the problem? This is an automatic call.

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you think his range of hands are? I really thought that he connected, but the question is did he connect as in 2-pair connect, straight connect, or just barely hit the flop? He told me once if I brought it in for a raise he'd rather play me with 75s instead of AJo because he'd probably be dominated if I had an ace or only have one overcard if I had a pocket.

[w_alloy]

I think your play here should be dictated by what exactly you mean by "probably" and how likely he is to go all in this type of a bluff.

[ QUOTE ]
Pete re-raises to t175 in total, and I call, knowing that at this point I am probably ahead, and he's making this raise to build a pot for him to take down on a low card flop with a push.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are in a much much better situation to answer this than any of us.

Its often hard to come up with standard plays against lags because there are so many different types. If he is as you described and you think he is likely bluffing pre flop and on the flop here, than this is a very very easy call. I would say the odds have to be about 40% hes bluffing here for you to call, obviously this changes with the chances that he's semibluffing as opposed to straight bluffing or the chances he has an overpair as opposed to the straight.

On a side note, im no expert on NL hu play, but i think a 5Xbb standard raise is a bit large. It seems raising 3xbb with more marginal hands would be a better plan. If it isnt i would be interested to here why.

[Logik]

[ QUOTE ]
On a side note, im no expert on NL hu play, but i think a 5Xbb standard raise is a bit large. It seems raising 3xbb with more marginal hands would be a better plan. If it isnt i would be interested to here why.

[/ QUOTE ]

With our stacks (100BB), 5BB is only 1/20th of my stack. This percentage (5%, of course) allows me to build a larger pot when I'm ahead (on all streets), and still easily dump the hand if I feel I'm behind. 3BB would make only a 6BB pot and make a pot-sized bet relatively small. I want to make it 10BB and that basically sets up future streets for an all-in push on the turn or river.

Also if I bet 3BB with marginal hands, I cannot extract the most out of my larger hands, because I cannot make a larger raise as effectively. If I raise 5BB with AA and 5BB with A7s then it keeps it hard to read.


That said, I'm a horrible HU player; I'm a full table specialist. This makes this decision so much harder, because I'd probably just fold preflop ten handed.

[Logik]

Results: <font color="white">I call. Pete shows 52o.</font>

[Cerril]

Well, that was very generous of you to call him a 'thinking' maniac.

[Logik]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, that was very generous of you to call him a 'thinking' maniac.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, his thoughts were that my calling range for his push is top pair top kicker or better, which is pretty accurate. He was just looking for a way to pick up a quick t350, and I cought him. I just wasn't sure how much to play your TPTK heads up against a LAG. As I said I'm far from a HU specialist.