Playing against a LAG/maniac

[minSim]

(note: I made some assumptions in my post that mostly view the adjustments I think should be made. Feel free to completely neglect them and post your own thoughts)

If you're playing someone that is playing like 40/30/6 over 30-50 hands (just very LAG/maniacal, double barrels a lot etc.), what adjustments do you start to make?

> As a start, do you 3bet more hands for value ? (note: you don't know much about how he deals with 3bets).
To around how much? Like 1/2 of his positionally adjusted PFR or something?
Does having position influence this a lot?
Or do you start 3betting more, but polarized, just to find out how he's dealing with it?

> If you do open your 3bet range with value hands, naturally your cold calling range shrinks. Do you widen it by coldcolling more speculative hands?

> Do you still play marginal hands against his raises (i.e. SC's, SC+1's,Axs's)? More or less compared to a standard TAG open?
Do you have a very different postflop plan with it?

> Any other adjustments to start with?

[minSim]

Hmm...not interesting enough? Or is my post just too hard to read?

[JL]

Defintely start 3-betting more.
Once I find out how he is reacting to 3-bets, I adjust my range.
If he is rarely folding to my 3bets, then I will stop 3betting low cards such as small PPs and SCs, but I will start 3betting high cards such as any broadway and KXs etc...
If he is folding to a lot of my 3bets, then I will 3bet him a ton, but it will be with a much more polarized range.

I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this as well. Adjusting to different opponents is always an interesting topic.

[griffey24]

If he's folding to a lot of 3-bets, or calling 3bets but folding flops then I'll start 3betting more and cont betting more in 3bet pots with more marginal hands.

If he's just barreling madness (but folding pre to 3-bets) then I'll start calling pre with big hands or hands that can hit decently strong flops vs his range (KQ,AQ etc) and just call down when I pair and let him barrel off to me.

[minSim]

JL, thanks...that seems like a good start.

If he's folding to a lot of 3-bets, or calling 3bets but folding flops then I'll start 3betting more and cont betting more in 3bet pots with more marginal hands.

If he's just barreling madness (but folding pre to 3-bets) then I'll start calling pre with big hands or hands that can hit decently strong flops vs his range (KQ,AQ etc) and just call down when I pair and let him barrel off to me.

Griffey, seems like both these are about villain folding to a lot of 3bets/in 3bet pots.

If villain isn't folding that often to 3bets/in 3bet pots, we're going to 3bet more of the decent hands (AQ, KQ, TT). Is it profitable to start calling the marginal (SC's, SC's+1, Axs?) ones again? Or do we just have a very thin calling range against that type of villain?

[griffey24]

The problem with hands like suited connectors and stuff, is that we'll have a hard time getting to showdown easily with our one pair hands like 67 on some 972 board or something. Cause these maniacs will barrel us hard.

I'd still play these hands though and hope to hit pretty big. But I might not go too far with more marginal flops.

[bjsaust]

SCs have just got me into trouble against these kinds of guys. I like to play them like Griffey suggests, basically the same range as I'd isolate a CS with but let them do all the betting.

[minSim]

Thanks all, I used to nit it up against these guys often, which was perfect for them as long as they aren't spewing too much postflop.
I already played more aggressive against them for a few sessions and it's definately working.


If our 3bets are getting called preflop for like 50% or maybe a bit more and villain isn't folding extremely wide to a cbet, should we be 3betting Axs/Kxs more or not?