Best Strategy against a good maniac

[maddogmike]

Hi Nick,

I'll have to check out your book next time I'm at the bookstore

I’ve found a good maniac in my online 6 Hnded 0.25/0.50 and 0.50/1.00 cash game, and would like to know what kind of strategy would be best to exploit him.

I Googled his name, and found his blog on another Poker Website. He’s also one of the moderators. He likes Tournaments and Sit and Goes. He’s read Harrington and Skalnasky’s Theory of poker many times. He’s been playing at least several years. He multitables 4 tables at a time. Typically his stack is greater than the max buy in. I believe he is killing these games based on my observations even I though I think his strategy is exploitable.

I’ve got about 700 hands on him: his stats are 38/30/2.5. His flop and turn aggression are fairly high, but his River aggression is around 0.9. After Raising preflop his first action is bets the flop 50% of the time, calls about 20%, folds about 15% of the time, the other times he’s checking, raising or check raising.

After he raises preflop, he almost always either calls or 4 bets when he gets 3 bet. He calls a 3 bet after raising preflop with junk like 97s or 76o. I’ve seen him go all in preflop twice with 88 and AK. I’ve rarely seen him fold preflop after he has put in the pot.

Post flop, I’ve seen him semi-bluff raise all-in twice about 5 x pot with a flush draw or OESD. I’ve also seen him do this with an overpair. He also doesn’t seem to like letting go after hitting the flop, even with a mid pair, or if the flop bets are relatively small.

He’s obviously stealing a lot of pots, most of which are medium-high sized pots since they are raised preflop and many times go to the Turn before being folded. This is how he’s making his money. After observing him see the flop about 280 times, he’s gone to showdown only about 40 times.

What kind of strategy should I employ pre-flop and post flop?

[NickChristenson]

Playing against a maniac is difficult. Playing against one who is actually pretty skilled can be a nightmare. But, I do have a couple of suggestions.

First, if he's really playing as many hands and as aggressively as you indicate, then you need to take a stand against him, and with less strong holdings than you would against other players. When playing deep, we advocate being careful with a hand such as top pair/best kicker. Against this player, that figures to rate as much better than what he's playing. This is now a hand that you've got to go with.

Here's a simple strategy that works pretty well against maniacs. Play only premium cards (pairs and big aces). Just call before the flop except with your biggest pairs, where you shove pre-flop. On the flop, if you have top pair/strong kicker or better, either shove or check and call on each betting round, whichever you feel is most appropriate. Fold everything else.

Here's a sample hand. You're in early position, the maniac is in the small blind. You are dealt AQoff. UTG folds, you just call, it's folded around to the button who calls, the maniac raises, the big blind folds, you call, but button calls. If the flop comes without A or Q, you check-and-fold. If the flop comes with an A or Q and the BB checks, you either call or shove. I'd probably call here, as I'm still worried about what the BB might have. If he raises, I'm worried, otherwise I'm going to a showdown with this hand.

The other question is how much to buy in for. I recommend buying in relatively short. You want a shove on your part to be a reasonable bet. You'd also like to be able to keep playing after you double through once. One thing you do NOT want to do is to play deep against this guy. If you're deep, your counter-strategy becomes easily exploitable itself, and it sounds like this player is good enough to do this. Once your stack starts to get big enough so that shoving becomes a drastic overbet, it's time to get up. You can always get in line to come back to the game.

One more thing, at a full table, I think you can play in the half of the table that acts after him. At a 6-handed table, if I couldn't sit in the two positions to his left, I'm going to get up.

Yet one more thing. If you get good at this strategy, and you want to piss this guy off, start following him from table to table doing this, doubling or tripling up, getting up, and coming back to do it again and again. I guarantee, it won't take too long for him to make his feelings about your doing this known.

[MacTaiga]

I think you've done the important first part and studied the guys game, we get the odd maniac at the full ring tables I play at and some of them are winning players over several thousand hands.

I've seen tables adjust almost as a single entity when their play becomes clear and suddenly everyone is playing premium hands and getting out early if they miss, this tends to mean the maniac gets bled dry. If the table doesn't adjust then often the maniac runs over the table.

IME, how they make their money (and I've bordered on the maniac sometimes) is people too frequently throwing away hands that are ahead (there is a secondary benefit in that a maniac tends to get called down if they hit a monster if there oppo catches an ok hand, but I think that's less frequent).

One way to take them on is to make sure you're only getting involved with strong hands so you're advantage here outweighs the edge you give up folding the marginal hands. Bluffing is less effective and it's more about getting value from premium hands.

I'm not sure about the adjustments you may need to take one on at 6-max though.

[maddogmike]

Thanks Nick. I'll give it a try, but I don't want to piss him off too much. I think I want to become his parasite and feed off of him. He's a lot better at getting Nit money than me, so I see him as my path for getting the Nit money. I like the buy in short idea. That way I can't be bluffed if I'm always shoving.

A couple nights ago one of the nits started railing against him for his play, and a second nit types in the chat box "quiet, ATM".

[Radford]

I consider myself to be a complete maniac in ring games. But tighter in tourneys in the early stages. I don't know why this is though. I've found that to hold off complete maniacs is to simply play back at them. This may seem silly or too aggressive. But if you're playing against a complete maniac in a ring game and you're constantly re-raising or check-raising him, he'll soon back off no matter how aggressive he is. I have the opposite view to Nick. I will play back at him and send him the message that he just doesn't want to mess with me.

[NickChristenson]

[jeffnc]

Here are a few tips (nothing comprehensive at all.)

You can learn how he plays by playing very tightly, only getting in with solid value. When you get a strong hand that you have no fear playing against him, play it very aggressively. Watch how he responds. What is his response to your preflop 3-bets? Turn raises?

How he responds will tell you how to proceed. If he folds, then remember how you played your strong hands, and play your next blank hand that way. For example when you get KK preflop, 3-bet him. If he folds, then do that every time you get a hand like 97s. (Don't do it with AT or KQ, and don't do it with garbage.) You will either get a fold, or possibly flop a surprising hand against him.

You've now established a tight image against him, and he'll recognize if he's good. You also know how often he'll fold to you. Now steal from him. (You are just doing it a lot less often than he is, so it works.)

Another option is to simply get passive against him. Most of the time, he will not force you into difficult river decisions (because of his river passivity.) Get a halfway decent hand, then check and call it to the river. After you win a couple pots like that, he'll tend to look for softer meat elsewhere.

[jeffnc]

By the way, another way to deal with a maniac at a full, loose game, is to sit to his right instead of his left. If you are on his left, you have position on him but you have no idea what kind of pot you'll be playing. So you'll either be playing a maniac heads up (granted with position), or you'll be playing multiway but no idea how multiway or if there will be raises after you (by players who are going to push their genuinely strong hands against the maniac's mediocre ones.)

By sitting on his right, you can limp, watch him raise, and then decide to do based on how many callers there are. You can play or not play depending on the type of hand you have. This allows you to play some of the hands you want to play and take some of the maniac's strength away (he can't steal very well from 5 loose players) but you still have the advantage of him getting overly aggressive from time to time which is nice when you hit a big hand in a multiway pot. Imagine flop a set, checking from early position, the maniac bets, and the loose players are used to calling him with middle pair because he bets with such weak hands, and you are the vacuum cleaner.