Heads Up vs a Maniac with Ace High

[cartman]

[ QUOTE ]
I know it feels like spewing, but against this opponent check-raise, check-raise, check-call unimproved seems like the best plan with ace high.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is great. One of these days I will grab some balls and extract some real value from these guys like you suggest. Against an essentially random hand, you are right. I should probably be willing to go all in on the flop with Ace high.

Cartman

[sweetjazz]

How bad is this? Villain has literally been betting and raising at every opportunity for several dozen hands since sitting down.

It's killer for variance, but is this play (barely) +EV?

Party Poker (6 max, 6 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is SB with 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">4 folds</font>. Hero completes, Villain raises, Hero calls.

Flop: 8[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], Q[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
Hero checks, Villain bets, Hero calls.

Turn: 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
Hero checks, Villain bets, Hero calls.

River: A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
Hero checks, Villain bets, Hero calls.

Final Pot: 7 BB

[Jeff W]

[ QUOTE ]
Villain has literally been betting and raising at every opportunity for several dozen hands since sitting down. It's killer for variance, but is this play (barely) +EV?

[/ QUOTE ]

Raise/Cap pre flop. Post flop is perfect.

[sweetjazz]

Same set up as previous hand. Folded to you in SB. BB is a maniac who bets and raises any two. If you complete, he will raise. You are dealt xx. Given that you will have to put in 2.5 BB minimum to see a showdown but that you will likely be able to put in many more, up to 10 BB, if you so desire, what are the worst hands you are playing here?

How much does your answer change if we assume maniac always caps flop, raises turn once, but calls down unless he has top pair or better, or a pair + gutshot draw or better. He'll cap the turn with these hands, and he'll cap the river with top pair or better (just calling river with unimproved one pair + draw).

It seems like, variance aside, we should be playing a lot of hands here.

[cartman]

[ QUOTE ]

It seems like, variance aside, we should be playing a lot of hands here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know, but I would think we should open complete with any two that we don't raise. The implied odds are tremendous.

Cartman

[sweetjazz]

I think I could throw away the bottom 10 - 20% of hands, utter trash like 32o through stuff like 84o or 92o. With these hands, even when we flop a pair, we'll still lose a fair amount of the time. So we lose 1.5 BB when we miss the flop and I'm not sure we can extract enough after the flop.

Against the theoretical raise-everything model, we probably can eke out a tiny profit (at a great expense to us), but it's not easy. Certainly if we had references to equity simulations at our fingertips we'd be in better shape. If we have 3h 2c and the board is 9d 8d 6s 3c by the turn, what is our equity against a random hand? Is it bigger than 50%? What if the river is the Jh, do we keep raising? Or the Td? Or the As? Having to make a decision at the table, I'd be at a loss.

The sad ending to my maniac story is that he only lasted about 50 hands at 10/20. He sat down with 25 BB and lost all of them. Unfortunately, I ended the session down 12 BB. In the K4 hand I posted, wouldn't you know he had A4? But that was back in my running bad days and I've been running so good the last two days, I can't complain. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]