Villian is a white male in his 30s wearing a stocking cap and is nonchalant in the way that he talks about everything at the poker table (so he is obviously experienced). Rarely limping or folding, he's raising 85-90% of hands. The whole table has caught on and people are regularly limping big hands and often limp/raising.

Some relevant HHs:
I limp jammed AQo UTG for $300 after he iso'd to $20 and got 3 callers. Any decent raise commits 1/2 my stack anyway, and the only hand I was worried about anyone having that would call me would be AK, so I YOLO'd and took it down and showed my hand.

I also 3 bet AQo vs his $20 UTG raise and 2 callers and took it down.

I think I also limp/rr w/ AQo earlier and took it down.


General strategy against this player:
I guess my first question is, with this dynamic are you raising anything or just playing the limp/raise or limp/call game. With him being 3 seats to my left I decided it's probably best to just limp my whole range. I was thinking limp all PP (due to implied odds since his often gets multiple callers), AQo+, ATs+, suited broadways. I would LRR AQ+, TT+, and call the rest. Is this a good strat?

On to the hands: (# in parenthesis is stack behind)
H1. I decided to limp A4s UTG, planning on LRR the maniac, maybe even if he gets multiple callers. He goes to $20 ($300), tight player in SB calls ($400), looser player in BB calls ($300) and it's up to me ($500). I folded, but looking back on it I should've bumped it up to $80-100 and I probably would've taken it down 60-80% of the time. FWIW he showed down 42s at showdown.

H2. I limp UTG w/ 22, planning on set mining in a multiway pot since his raises have been getting a lot of action. He predictably raises to $20 ($200) and it somehow folds to me. So calling is out of the question here, the only question is jam or fold?

H3. We're both sitting ~200BBs deep and he opens to $20 UTG and I'm on the BU w/ ATs. Obviously we're playing, but call or 3bet? I decided to call because I want some aces in my cold call range and he's probably not calling out of position with too many dominated hands and I want to keep the SPR high. Thoughts?

H4. Tight old man limps UTG w/~$100 and he goes $20 in EP, I'm in the BB w/A7s and fold fearing the limp shove from the old man which he does. If he wasn't in the hand, we should be calling yes?

It's hard to give a simple strategy here because there are a lot of factors.

How does maniac react when somebody else has opened the pot? If he is maniac reraises then don't limp/raise as much, just open your strong value and shove over top when he reraises. If he suddenly has a fold button when somebody else opens the pot then raise some of your good but not good enough to limp/raise hands and open a couple of the you would limp/raise.

Does the maniac's range vary by position? Is he raising 80% from any position or is 60% from EP and 100% from LP? If his EP range is tighter then you need to respect it more.

Does the main villain (and others to a certain extent) have fold buttons? If the maniac raiser doesn't have a fold button when raised you can limp/raise wider for value but no bluffs. If he does have a fold button then consider mixing in a few bluffs, particularly if the rest of the table is folding all but monsters to limp/raises.

How much and what sort of ranges are other players limp/calling and limp/raising with? If the other players are limp/raising a lot then tighten up your range and don't limp/call much because you won't get the odds to see many flops. If they are limp/calling then do more set mining and possibly some other drawing hands.

What are stack sizes/raise sizes? You need to consider how villain's raise sizes play against effective stacks and how many other opponents are calling. If he is raising big (10% of stacks or more) then limp/shove with a strong range. As the ratio of his bets to stack sizes gets smaller and more other players limp/call you can mix in some set mining and eventually even some other drawing hands.

H1. How much you can bluff in this sort of situation varies a lot. There are situations where it isn't worth having any. But if you are going to bluff you need to plan to bluff multiple players and have the conviction to carry through. If you find yourself giving up very often because the situation got to bad then don't try bluffs.

H2. 22 is a fold but you don't need much better before it's slightly profitable against his range. Even something like 55 is probably going to be slightly +EV against his range. You will probably be small -EV when he calls but take down enough without a call to make it profitable. Unless you can handle a lot of variance I would go with 88+ or so.

H3. Mix between them but favor a raise. You are well ahead of his range. Against a maniac you don't need to worry about ace coverage, his range is so wide it doesn't matter.

H4. I fold this. Against a maniac you will have enough opportunities that you don't need to jump on marginal ones. You are ahead of his range but your OOP and your hand will not play well post flop most of the time.

I think in general our plan is fine (especially not coming in for a raise with any hand and simply evaluating whether to limp/reraise versus limp/call).

However, I think we have to tighten up a bit. Coming in OOP with suited broadways (not including the ATs+) is a little borderline, imo. Ditto for coming in with small pairs, especially if kinda short relative to the raise sizes (such as 22 with just a $200 stack facing what will no doubt be a $20 raise which is a huge 10% of our stack). Ditto for coming in with non-large Axs (and I don't think it's worth the risk limp/reraising and running into either his or someone else's dominating Ax). I'd be playing much tighter OOP, but admittedly I'm a super nit.

I also wouldn't be showing any hands. When we limp/shove AQo preflop (like you did in your first example, very nice, imo), a huge part of the profitability is it's FE; we mostly want people to think we have AA every time we do this (especially since AA only makes up a very small percentage of the range of hands we're limp/reraising with).

So with that in mind:

H1 and H2: I'd fold preflop both times.

H3: I also prefer just calling. We'll most likely end up HU anyways, and even if the blinds come along it isn't the end of the world with this hand on the Button. Let's play some postflop poker.

H4: Also folding in this spot thanks to the old man shortstack limper. But even without him involved, folding is still fine unless stacks are quite short (where we're more cool getting them in ASAP since the money already in the pot becomes more significant).

The final consideration you have to take into account is how you deal with wild swings mentally. The looser you start opening your get-it-in-preflop-with-him range, the more huge swings you'll encounter. Most underestimate the mental toll this can take (especially in cases where you run into the top of his range and then you realize you just punted 200bbs vs his AKs cuz "I haz A7s"). The math guys will probably draw a line in the sand somewhere which supposedly shows an +EV vs -EV versus his 85% preflop range, but that simply doesn't factor in mental health and long term affects of how it affects your game moving forward. It really is ok to nit it up here and avoid all the mediocre spots.

Gcluelesslimp/reraisingnoobG