Starting hands against a bunch of maniacs

[maddogmike]

Matthew,

Your book is great. I truly believe it has improved my game, but my results don't show it.

Playing on tables with a bunch of maniacs who always cap the betting preflop, always see the flop, and call to the River 1/3 of the time, I got better results before reading your book playing anything suited, connected or with a face card. I'd fold on the flop if I didn't hit anything. After reading your book, I started playing right (I think) by tightening up my play but now my bank roll is stagnant. I'm not sure if I was just lucky before or not applying your book right.

What is your philosophy for this kind of game? Should one play tighter, looser or follow your book closely (especially tables on starting hands) against a bunch of maniacs?

[maddogmike]

Well, I went back to my old ways last night and got creamed!

I'm on board for good using the charts, although I feel I should use the late position chart for for both early and late positions (since I can always count on a lot of callers!)

[mchilger]

Maddog, if you read the Advanced Concepts chapter, it says you can start to play a few additional hands from early position. For example, in a wild game, I would play pairs from early position and a few more suited connectors. But you don't need to get too carried away from this. In actuality, you could play very tight and show a great profit in these types of games. My book doesn't have charts for late position which say Call 7 . You could also add a few more hands in these cases.

Matthew

[Dooper3]

I think the danger of playing with maniacs is that one can be tempted to catch their craziness. Resist temptation, play relatively tight, and when your hand hits, take their money. You won't be in many hands, but you will have a better than usual chance of winning when you are. And when you aren't playing, enjoy the entertainment. These tables can get too funny, if you refuse to be intimidated.

But, dang, it gets expensive to play on a table like this. Probably, my best suggestion would be move to another table.

Matthew, you feel we might loosen up a tad? I can see how loosening up to more suited connectors, etc, might be useful.

[gfunk]

I'm currently playing on.25/.50c tables and have been told and read that finding the high'st %plyrs flop is the best place to be, but i find myself being taken to the river all the time only to lose my A's that I raised pre flop with and all the way to the river, just to get beat by J4o when the guy hit the J on the river to make 2 pair...

I have found that I seem to do best between 40% plyrs avg flop and 50%, anything above is just to crazy and feels hard to really put all of the stratsinto practice.

Anyway dont know what got me started on that perhaps a little off topic