No limit Texas hold em: shall we talk about going all in?

Hmm… I’m not sure if I should give my secrets away. Some of the people I play poker with are fellow jellies.

@mowens an excellent opportunity to lie ;)

If your question is serious it lacks too many variables to get any decent answers really. Are you playing cash or a tourney? Buy in, blind level, number of players remaining all have an influence on card selection.

If you are talking about early on in a low buy in tourney then a fair argument can be made for only calling with Aces or Kings. If you call his AI and win you certainly don’t earn double your money in equity, but if you call and lose you lose all your equity.

Late on on the bubble of a tourney you should be shoving pretty much everything AI pre flop first in but calling very little as, when you call, the other players gain in equity when someone busts and that equity comes from you.

In a deep stacked cash game you should only ever be AI pf with aces unless the other player really is a maniac, then you can loosen up. As long as you estimate you have over a 50% chance to win, you gain money in the long run.

@mowens Do people on here play together then? :)

@simplicity well, this is selected as a discussion rather than a question, but for sake of argument. lets say…

we are online, cash game $2—$5 blinds. your bank roll is about $2000 to $5000 minimum buy in is $100 highest is $500. we have 3 to 5 people at the table at any given time from a maximum of 9. you have a guy who is literally going all in every single hand to the right of you and winning out of sheer luck with 7 duce and stuff, and a guy to your left who is feeding him chips by occasionally calling, another guy to your left who is also folding all the time trying to snipe the donker and one or two randoms.

You tell them that if they want to gamble they should go play Blackjack.

@gggritso i normally ask them if they would like to play heads or tails. but yea lol, good one.

@simplicity completely agree. Way too many variables.

Do I call them? I just call ‘em assholes.

Its not worth the risk.

I’ve had both positive and negative outcomes from deciding to call to hopefully stop their streak.

I’d never raise under the gun if you know he’s going to act. With Aces you want to wait to get other players in. With anything else and deep stacks, probably best to fold if anyone else calls – depending of course on what you think they’ll go in on.

If you know you are going to be against only the maniac, you have to assess your willingness to absorb risk. If this is your entire backroll, you should just move to the next table. If you have an endless supply, you want to call with anything better than average – say J10 or better – as @mownens said. Because you want to maximize your chance go catch his money before someone else does. If he’s going to do this forever, then you can sit back. If he’s got one more hand, it’s a much tougher decision.

An intermediate rule might be jacks or better, or AK, AQs. That should give you a 60%%+ chance to win.

But it’s just about how much risk you can handle and how much money he has to give away.