5/10 Against maniac

The good old shot take and get stacked by whale , tap the table, say nice hand to the whale, reload and move on to the next hand.

yes, we always get stacked. But at some point we do have to put the whale on some 6x hands and start playing defensive. I don't mind the river jam, btn can put hero on AK and call with Qx. Also, playing AQ the same way. If we had KQ, I would probably only go for two streets of value, Bet/flop, c/turn, bet/river. AA, KK, AQ are also good check raise hands on the flop.
The question is, will the btn call 3 streets with enough weak Q4o hands? If not, don't get greedy and pick two streets to get value on.

We get stacked. The real question is whether it’s better to get stacked by shoving river or check-calling river.

Never mind. Thought there was a FD on the flop. The most likely natural bluff got there.

Oof! I know the feeling flopped a straight last weekend jammed for 1.2k guy had a set... snap called and turned quads.

Grunch:

When we say "whale", I take that to mean a really big fish, someone who's playing VERY loose, but also VERY passive. This is different than a "maniac", who's also VERY loose, but instead of being very passive he's VERY aggro. The two are not the same, and how we play against each is different.

Not saying his BTN open makes him less of a whale, but if he has a limping range on the BTN, I'd think his opening range has to be somewhat stronger, FWIW.

PRE - Given V's whale status, and the fact he opened for a raise pre, I'd 3B bigger from OOP, when he apparently has a hand he likes, and clearly hates folding. I might make it $350, or even $400, praying he wants to play for stacks. I think we benefit from lowering the SPR going to the flop, when we're OOP.

FLOP - So...my usual default setting is to just check range from OOP as the PFR in a HU pot. But I don't hate c-betting with an over-pair on a Q-high and otherwise dry board, especially if we think V isn't folding much, and could have a ton of Qx here.

Our normal c-bet would be 1/3 pot, but, again, facing a stationy whale, I might size up to 1/2 or even 2/3 pot. Maybe even full pot, if we think he's really sticky.

TURN - Ugh, I already saw the reveal, so I can't be sure how objective I'm being, but... when he calls our flop bet, maybe he's floating wide, but floating wide includes some 6x, so it's possible he's made trips.

Not saying I'd be "scared", but it's worth pausing long enough to consider what theory says about this spot - the BTN caller has way more 6x in his range than we do as the BB 3B'er. If he's a true whale, he's going to have even more.

We're supposed to check here, almost always, and against a whale who snaps the 1/2 pot c-bet, we might want to at least consider slowing down and checking for pot control (flame suit on).

That said, if we barrel instead of checking, I'd like to think I might find a "split the baby" solution here, by barreling small, to cap V at a hand that doesn't beat ours. But it's hard to go smaller than 1/2 pot, like you did, so I can't criticize that sizing. The only way to "fix" this is to not c-bet as large on the flop, and we already made that decision.

RIVER - Yeah, with 0.5 SPR, I don't see how we avoid going broke when we get here the way we did. If he's got us beat, we're just toast.

Knowing the reveal makes me want to go back to the flop, and change the line to either check or c-bet small.

The reasoning is he's a whale and we have AA - he's calling way too wide, so there's no need to worry he's going to fold if we go bet-bet-bet, but we do sort of need to worry about value-owning ourselves when we're OOP against a guy whose range is almost ATC.

With him on the BTN and us in the BB, we'll have position on him more often than not, and will have plenty of opportunities to get his money when we're IP. When we're OOP to V's like this, I really want to have super-nutted hands that can cooler them, rather than super-strong starting hands that might get coolered.

Like, obviously we could have QQ here, but we could also have 66, 55, or 65s. If we show up with 65, we know he's never folding AQ or KQ.

Of course, if we have QQ, he probably rolls over 66, because that's how cruel the poker gods can be.

I think against this player with this particular disgusting setup we get stacked, but it's close because you're getting deep. I don't play for stacks with overpairs 300+BB deep even against whales. These types will show up with 23s or 78o, random 2 pair, etc. enough to make you go two streets at max with a pair and esp. against stronger players you just don't want to go broke with a single pair that deep. Having said all that I'm going broke in this particular hand for sure.

Bigger preflop.

Bet-bet-bet against this opponent. Played fine, we get stacked. We remember it because it hurts; we don't remember the ones where he calls down, or maybe folds river with his weakest Queens.

Against this villain with spr 4 you're never folding postflop. Your flop bet gives him like 9:1 for a chance at the pot+ remaining stack so you could bet closer to pot and live more easily with the results

Im probably checking flop or turn but its as a trap. Happy to GII every time.