Basic story is - manic sits down at table straddling / raising pre with out looking at his hand.

Clearly is going to be broke by the end of the night but you don't have long before he leaves your table - maybe 30 hands tops.

Hands I played

1. He straddles $15
5 callers
I see AK and raise to $150 with $200 behind - he calls /rest fold and I jam a flop of QT7

2. I get KJ and he blind raises a UTG to $60 - I raise to $180 / he calls / rest fold and jam I flop of 864 with $160 behind.

3. I get 88 and he makes it $25 - I raise to $150 /$150 behind - and just bet
$60 on a flop of AK7

4. I get 77 and he makes it $30 - I make it $100 with $100 behind and jam a flop of 36J all spades with red 7's.


His range is ATC so i'm pretty happy with my play but is this too loose? I know the AK is good - but the other hands are sketchy at best. I kinda had to force action with these other hands because if I didn't he was gonna leave - bouncing around from table to table and through out the night I think he said he was down like $3,000.

Results incase you are wondering - but I don't really think they mater

You don't say how many people are left to act in each scenario. I imagine you are making quite the image for yourself now as well!! Hand 1. I think is ok. I know he's leaving but you are getting into a lot of close equity spots pre and forcing yourself to just dump your stack into any flop! I would prefer to play post flop and get money in when we know we are good and can get huge value, we can make flop/turn bets with with more behind where we at least have some f/e and hero call when we think our hand is usually best. Early street play is probably the worst place to get massive value against these guys and your edge is diminished from playing this way IMO

Your right - Table is about 9 handed - but it was mostly all folded to me til I made the play with maybe 1 or 2 people left to act. Even though they all folded I guess I should of added that.

ya problem is you can't really wait for a hand - or someone else will grab his chips. He ended up dumping a 1k stack on a 953 board where someone called his $55 pre flop bet with TT and than called his jam on the flop of 953. I was furious LOL.

Alan Schoonmaker has a good article this month in Cardplayer that talks about playing a maniac. His point is that for many players, they are in a -EV situation and should be exiting the game. Since you haven't given your position relative to the maniac or what position you had during each hand, it suggests that you didn't realize the importance of those factors. You haven't run any analysis of what flops to jam your stack in with your hand (hint: you're a 41:59 underdog in hand 2 against a random hand on the flop).

Like everything else in poker, it looks easy if you don't know anything about it. This isn't an area I've given much thought to until recently. Just another thing to work out.

This is true. But I didn't think my position matered that much in these hands as they were all go and gos. Would it better to play these hands more passively?

It was pretty much the maniac was utg most hands and I was last to act but had like 1 or 2 to act after me most hands pre flop. He usually check dark. I could check behind but I had put so much in pre I pretty need to shove any flop. Seems profitable though

The big positional concern with trying to iso a maniac is the people who haven't acted yet, since they can all wake up with a big hand and all of a sudden you're all-in with KJ against a premium hand. It doesn't happen often, but if you're trying to push a small edge, it can eat up any +ev quickly. The only decision in these hands is whether to make a big raise preflop, and for most of them it depends on how many people are left to act.

EDIT: If you're closing the action, I think these are all fine.

In situations where your stack size will force you to move all in on any flop, move all in preflop. Waiting for the flop just gives the maniac a chance to fold if he has air. All of these hands except hand 1 have this problem. In hand 1 you are so deep that moving in preflop would be bad unless the maniac will never fold preflop.

Hand 2 really isn't strong enough to play against this sort of maniac. It isn't that far ahead of an ATC range preflop and behind two random cards post if you miss. Coin flipping with the maniac is playing into his game. When you factor in the risk that somebody else in the hand will get involved this is clearly -EV.

Hand 3 suggests this is the type who will fold his air on the flop but won't fold if he has any part of the board. Against this type you can make small probe bets and see how he reacts. If he is consistent about this you can save some money when you missed the flop entirely, but most maniacs will pick up on this and start shoving over small bets.

Ehhh. Sometimes when a spewtard is in the game you still have to exercise patience. No idea what your position relative to others was in any of these hands but your 3b sizing seems really bad. If you're 3betting from 15 to 150 for instance w 200 behind you should just jam. 3betting hands like 88 to 150 from 25 is just asking to get picked off....

I like this line of thought.

There are different types of maniacs. This one seems to play pretty reasonably postflop, given that he made big mistakes preflop. If stack sizes are such that you're getting 1/2 stack in pre, and jamming any flop, and his strategy seems to be check/call if and only if he catches a piece, then you have to adjust to that. I'm curious to know how he plays postflop when people just flat his raise.

I like Hand 1 a lot; hands 3 and 4 are fine; don't like Hand 2.

I would think that if you read up on HU tourney strategy, you will find that how to play in this situation has been well explored.

Problem is that you aren't guarenteed to be heads up. At a full table, someone is going to catch KK and stack you both. With exception of AK hand, your play seems pretty tilted.

It depends on your tiltometer, whether playing like this is EV. I play a LAG/maniac style but maniacs in the game draw me into shipping battles with A9 type hands, but at the mental expense of high variance, which can become -ev when I tilt or quit. Imagine he straddles all in on BTN it folds to you in the BB. Mathematically it might be right to make that call all day with K9, but can you mentally emotionally and bankroll wise handle it

I don't like Hand 1. I think shoving is pretty bad.

He's a maniac, and you have nut no pair and a nut draw.

You should check post-flop and let him do the shoving.

am i ever folding? I have half my stack in there already.

Also my shove could of got him to fold his 78

if he checks and i miss my equity goes out the window.

As played I had good equity on that flop

No man. You're never, ever folding.

Let him shove wide, and snap him off with nut no pair + nut draw.

Shoving yourself in Hand 1 is not the way you exploit the maniac.

You need to give him some rope.

Saying he might have folded 87 is totally the wrong way to look at it. You're playing a highly volatile game, but you're doing it wrong. You should not be thinking about how to exert fold equity vs a maniac in Hand 1... you should be giving the maniac an opportunity to try to wield fold equity himself.

And no, if you check and miss, you still have nut no pair, 2 over cards, and a nut draw. If villain is continuing pre-flop with horrible hands like 87, then he's going to have a ton of worse unmade hands. Nut no pair is like the nuts. You absolutely must do some checking and allow him to shove post-flop. Yes, it's volatile and yes it's possible he binks an out, but it's absolutely and by far the most +EV play. Shoving into him basically has it backwards.

Now what you're doing in Hand 1 is similar in some ways to a go-and-go... you put in the raise pre-flop, then you ship the flop, and the result is that V only gets to see 3 cards and he doesn't get to realize a good % of his equity. That should not be your goal here. That might be fine and well vs. this V in certain situations... but not when you have AK in this spot. When you have AK in this spot, you usually have the best hand, you always have good equity vs. his range, you can probably induce villain to shove way worse into you, you probably cannot get villain to fold a better hand, you probably cannot get villain to call with a worse hand, and when you shove yourself, he mostly folds out air that he would have been thrilled to shove into you on turns.

That's all to say, I do not like Hand 1.

We don't even know who acts first from the HH. But if villain is checking to hero, I think the shove is clearly best, with half the stacks already in there, we aren't folding and villain may call with a dominated draw (AT, KT, T9 etc).

After hand 2, the maniac may see OP as the maniac.

Yeah, I don't really care who acts first. I would check in or out of position.

Villain can have such illustrious hands as:

96o
85s
A2s
A4o
65o
43s
K2s

I mean, I could go on for a while. He has a huge amount of air. We have the nuts. Sometimes he got lucky or will get lucky and will bink. Mostly not. It's more +EV to take that risk and allow the maniac the opportunity to shove himself than for us to shove the flop ourselves.

Nut no pair is such a monster hand vs. his range because we dominate so many of his hands, we mostly have the best hand already, when we make our draw or a pair, he can bink all sorts of worse hands, etc. The last thing we should be doing is jamming the flop and getting him to fold his weakest hands, of which a) there are a TON and b) he will be encouraged to shove himself unimproved. Because he's a maniac. And that's what maniacs do. And that's how we exploit them in Hand 1.

no one saw my hand - just mucked LOL

Grunch

I'm not sure this is even relevant. If a play has value then it has value regardless of how long he plans on staying.

When making plays like the ones you just mentioned, I'd like to know how the rest of the table plays and how they have been reacting to him.

You also never said almost anything about position with the exception of the AK hand. If you're raising huge with pocket pairs in EP then I don't like it. LP or in the blinds after everybody else acted is a different story.

no i had position on every hand - he check darked every flop. I could of taken a free turn card on pretty much all of these hands.