NL 400 6 max, AK sooooted

[Go_Blue88]

I played this hand a few nights ago, but I can't decide if my play was smart...so let's see what you guys think...

NL 400, I have ~600, Maniac Villian has me covered.

I raise to 16 UTG with AK sooooted, 1 fold, average Villian who I have covered reraises to 50, Maniac Villian reraises to 150, I Push.

I'm playing much tighter than usual and thus, my hand range for raising UTG should be pretty obvious to a perceptive opponent.

I suppose I should share my thought process later, but if you need any more info. than this, lemme know...

[Rooger]

Villain shows strenght, maniac tries to isolate one of you HU, representing AA/KK - you figure villain doesn't have AA with your AK, so you push to get villain to fold, and take it down against maniac?

I don't like it - with a 3 and 4-bet, I'm folding this. You can't flat call maniac's raise with villain still in the pot, but I'm not gonna play this deep a stack on what's a coinflip at best, and perhaps WB.

[Rooger]

In other words, it's a gutsy move, that could probably work, but not one I would pull with this deep a stack.

Villain's reraise could look like QQ trying to know if your raise was KK/AA. You know villain could make this move with almost any two, tryin to squeeze you.
Your push shows so much strenght with the betting after your PF raise, that villain can only put you on AA - he folds. Maniac figures his move didn't succed, and folds.

[Go_Blue88]

It seems to me that the deeper stacks make this move work better...I don't see why the deeper stacks make you less inclined to do this.

[ajmargarine]

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It seems to me that the deeper stacks make this move work better...I don't see why the deeper stacks make you less inclined to do this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was wondering if your stack was deep enough to do this myself?!? I don't want to take a coinflip vs something like QQ here for $600 against a maniac who I can probably outplay, and who probably can't lay down a hand after he committed 25% of his effective stack already. I think $700 might be the minimum I would try this with, but that might be nitpicking. I agree with you, I am more inclined to do this with a deeper stack, as you have more FE.

But, I think you are really pushing the envelope here. You are assuming that neither villian holds AA or KK, which is entirely possible. And that maniac can lay his hand down. (Plus, sqeezed villian may have AK or Ax himself, and that would suck alot if you are called by maniac and he has a pp). I'm folding to the 3-bet and waiting for a better spot.

[Go_Blue88]

Well, I guess there's no point in getting into explaining my analysis since no one was that interested in the hand. But the results: They both folded.

[Malachii]

I very much dislike, so please elaborate on your thought process.

Edit: I see why you did it. You put a lot of pressure on the reraiser, and you probably have the maniac beat. Still, even a maniac has to have pretty tight reraising standards, and there's a good chance the original reraiser has AA or KK here and is insta calling. His range for this reraise is probably AA-QQ and AK, yes?

[Go_Blue88]

[ QUOTE ]
I very much dislike, so please elaborate on your thought process.

Edit: I see why you did it. You put a lot of pressure on the reraiser, and you probably have the maniac beat. Still, even a maniac has to have pretty tight reraising standards, and there's a good chance the original reraiser has AA or KK here and is insta calling. His range for this reraise is probably AA-QQ and AK, yes?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I was trying to use my image to my advantage. I as playing very TAG, and only raised a few times in the session from UTG. I thought that the average villian's hand range could be 1010+ and AK. I realize that this sounds sort of contradictory because why would he re-raise me if he could define my hand range as JJ+ and AK, AQ. Well, I thought that he might want to keep the maniac out of the hand, or at least reduce his implied odds. When maniac re-raised I thought he might have a pocket pair <99 or AK,AQ. So, now the action is back to me. I obviously can't just call b/c if I miss the flop, or the original reraiser pushes, I'm going to be in bad shape. As mentioned, my hand range should be pretty obvious, and so I felt that by pushing the average Villian would put me on AA. Thus, I felt he'd fold everything in his hand range except for AA (obviously) and he might even fold KK. So, at the time I thought his fold equity would be very high.

However, what bothers me now is the fact that he might not give the maniac any credit and thus think that I could 4-bet all-in with a wider range than I'm representing. In other words, he might think that I think that I can represent AA here so that he lays down KK and below. For this reason, he could even call with QQ. Thoughts on this?

Anyways, I figured that if I could get the original raiser to fold that I'd be in good shape against the maniac's extensive hand range. And more importantly, I thought that he'd fold everything except for AK and 1010+. So, I had a lot of fold equity given his probable hand range, and if he happened to call I'd still be a coinflip.

However, maniacs pick up strong hands just like the rest of us. So, perhaps I should give him more credit for the 3-bet since this is only the second time I've seen him do this (normally he just re-raises). Thoughts on this?

Edited to add: another thing I've been considering is if average villian does fold AK or possibly KK, then I'm in bad shape if maniac calls me w/ a middle pp.

[xorbie]

You really think average villain is raising anything but QQ/KK/AA? I dunno. I think you have great FE against QQ/JJ and a ton of dead money, but I think it's still -EV by a bit. Not horrible, a good image move, but -EV.

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You really think average villain is raising anything but QQ/KK/AA? I dunno. I think you have great FE against QQ/JJ and a ton of dead money, but I think it's still -EV by a bit. Not horrible, a good image move, but -EV.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes Juster, he is correct. The thing that makes it close is you have may have decent FE here. I still think it can easily be JJ/QQ/AK which may all be folded and even if called, you are not in bad shape.