Once upon a time, there sat a big fish
To be at his left, every player's wish.
Before him, a might-y mountain of cash
In his pocket, an even larger stash.

It seemed every hand he raised 20x
This aggressive play left the others vexed.
I saw an old man tank and fold ace king
I thought to myself, what are you thinking?

I witnessed a hand, and it left me stunned.
He called all in with second pair and won!
There weren't any cards that this man would fold.
A chair beside him, worth its weight in gold

Having seen all this, I sought out the floor.
Got his attention, said "put me on 4"
He was a donkey, I could plainly see.
He's giving it 'way, may as well to me!

Money was no object to him, it was clear.
He played huge pots with no trace of fear.
It was just absurd how much he would bet.
Sticking in hundreds of big blinds no sweat.

I got my seat, I'm salivating
For this moment I had long been waiting.
It's not every day you play such a whale
Tonight I'll make thousands! Chip porn, without fail!

But before I'd blinked, I was down 1k
Calling and missing, every flop six-way.
Curses! Tarnation! And all words profane!
Could I make a hand in this stupid game?

Limped to me, MP, of course I limp too.
I just have to hit, I'll call any two.
Like clockwork he raised ninety from the cutoff.
I sneakily called with eight seven off.

After hours of wait, my chance at last came.
Flop five seven eight, top two! Easy game!
He bet, I check-raised, praying for a call,
positively delighted when he shoved them all!

Right away I called, not a second thought.
Although three thousand was a little odd.
There was only four hundred in the pot.
But he plays all junk, so he must have naught.

Already spending it inside of my head,
my joyous daydreams quickly turned to dread.
He showed six nine and my heart sank like lead.
The turn was a brick, drawing nearly dead.

The river a deuce, and that was my day
I'm sick of poker, can it be this way?
How's it possible that I run this bad
When there's so much donkey cash to be had?

What are the chances? I don't understand
why this just happens when I make a hand.
I'll play you heads up, stakes of your choosing!
You're all terrible, why am I losing?

Damn this horrid game, I detest it all!
How do I lose to one who always calls?
Poker is so unfair, a great injustice
He's just gonna give it to the other fish!



It's like a party when you have a maniac at the table. Everyone's excited. Everyone's looking forward to the money they're going to get off this guy. Even the guy that's usually the spot! Nobody really thinks about how that's going to happen though. They're just like “well, he's bad, so I'm gonna make money” but that's not how poker works. In fact, some of the mannerisms of a maniac are actually correct against typical low-stakes players, and their edge is made even greater when the regs adjust pretty much the opposite of how they should. The same people snidely commenting on everything the whale is doing wrong are often the first ones to hit the felt. If you've ever wondered how it can be possible that such a bad player can run up such a huge stack and last for so long, it's part luck of course but it's also because he's not the worst player at the table.


Here are some bad habits of a maniac that end up being not so bad (or even good!) because most of their opponents respond incorrectly.


Bad Habit #1: Makes huge preflop raises far too wide
Why it's not bad: Nobody ever 3bets.
How bad players adjust: They call wider hoping to hit. Most of the time, they will miss the flop and fold. Most of the rest of the time, they will end up clueless in a large multi-way pot with a marginal hand.

Bad Habit #2: Calls too often
Why it's not bad: People don't valuebet nearly enough, and also bluff too often.
Yea--huh? Really, people love to try and bluff loose players and calling stations. Now the odd thing is that this isn't actually a horrible idea. After all, if such players called down any size bet with any pair they would quickly go broke in any game. Generally loose players will peel flops really lightly, but might fold weak made hands to a turn bet. But since nobody ever fires that turn barrel, they're essentially making a correct pot odds call on the flop and taking their 40% equity against a villain's range to showdown. They can have implied odds too, in the common case where a player is scared to make another value bet in a ballooning pot with top pair but will not fold to a bet. Most maniacs will take advantage and bet huge for value when they back into some random two pair/trips.
How bad players adjust: Play completely passively against him with all their hands. "I can't bluff him, he never folds!" But also "I'll just let him bet, I don't want him to fold." Eventually they may give in and run a big bluff, but usually pick just about the worst spot to do it in. "I thought he'd fold his ace, there was a straight and a flush on the board."

Bad Habit #3: Doesn't valuebet wide enough
(Note: This applies to all players. In fact, ignoring the huge preflop raises and automatic cbets, you'll often find that aggressive players value bet in much the same way as any other player. They will slow down with one pair because the pot is big.)
Why it's not bad: Because other players are folding too much. It actually would be incorrect to bet 50bb on the turn with TPMK if everything worse folds. Even if that's only a half-pot bet because there was a 10bb raise preflop and a PSB on the flop. So most of the hands he's making huge bets with will be bluffs, because it's hard to make a very strong hand.
How bad players adjust: Wait for a big hand to call him down. (In the meantime, continue to call the flop with any pair because he's obviously cbetting anything, and continue to pray he doesn't bet a lot on the turn, and when he does bet a lot on the turn continue to fold and wait for a better spot.)

Bad Habit #4: Doesn't care about money?
Why it's not bad: Being scared money causes you to make "safe" decisions instead of maximally +EV ones. His opponents are scared money.
How bad players adjust: Just have to hit, just have to hit, oh here you can have my 12bb, I'm waiting for a better spot... Since players are getting involved in lots of pots trying to win the maniac's stack, these hands where they call a large preflop raise and sometimes a flop bet only to get cold feet and fold to the next bet will quickly add up.




Now the great thing about all this is that, if you adjust correctly, you're a lot more likely to be the guy taking his money. Nobody else has any idea how to exploit the incredibly exploitable things he is doing. Not only that but they're probably fattening him up for you! So here's what you do.


1. Grab your cojones (and wallet)
You're playing one stake up tonight. If this is a 1/2 table, you're going to experience the swings of 2/5. If you're a 2/5 player, make it 5/10. If you're not thinking “this could be a big pot” every hand you play, you are probably playing suboptimally. Now, if you only brought one buyin, or you have a firm stoploss, or the ATM doesn't work for you, my condolences. Skip to the wuss section at the bottom (I'm not joking, there really is a wuss section.)


2. PAY ATTENTION
“v1 utg+1 $700 drunk idiot hero btn covers so v1 raises and i”

I think every poker player ever would do a lot better if they just removed labels from their poker vocabulary. Labels are supposed to be helpful. They are supposed to be a shortcut. Labels are supposed to condense at least a paragraph of reads down to a single word. People don't use them that way. If someone's good they are a TAG. If someone is crazy they are a LAG. That's not what those things mean. If you see a player do something dumb and you label them a “fish” and you're done watching you are losing so much value. Bad players are the ones you should pay the most attention to because they are the ones you will (hopefully) make the most money off of and you have to work for it! You have to exploit them, and in order to know how to exploit them you need to know how they play. How many LLSNL threads have you seen that start like “help this guy sucks but I'm in this weird spot now and I don't know what to do????” They got into a tough spot because they fixated on his perceived lack of skill and not on what specifically he does poorly and how specifically they will exploit it.


3. Pay attention to important things
“lol this idiot stacked off to the biggest nit at the table. obviously he has the nuts. man what a fish.”

This is usually what attracts people to a maniac's table, with dollar signs in their eyes and drool dripping from their mouths, and it's utterly useless information unless their plan is to hit the nuts (note: this is hard.) How often does he raise preflop? How often does he cbet? What hands does he bet, what hands does he call, what hands does he pile a ton of money in with? What lines does he take with monsters, what lines does he take with bluffs, how does he play his draws? There are so many different ways to be “bad” at poker. You need to know which one it is.

That seems like a lot to digest, and it is. Against most players, gathering that information would be very difficult. You just wouldn't have enough data without playing a lot of hours with them. Luckily, the thing about maniacs is that they play several times as many hands as an ordinary player. It shouldn't take very long at all to have an idea of his preflop range and postflop tendencies. Especially when you are focusing all your attention on him.


4. Get position
Position is the most important thing in poker, and it comes in #4 because we have to first find out what kind of position we want. If he's loose/passive and just limp/calls any raise, we want him on our right. If he's maniacally aggressive and bets and raises all the time, we want him on our left. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking “he's a fish so I want him on my right” when he always raises preflop. No no no! If you know what he's going to do in advance, you want to act after everyone who is a mystery. Especially think of preflop. If he's raising all limped pots and then a bunch of people are limp/calling super wide because they want the fish's money, think of that dead money! Squeezy squeezy!

Here's a COTM that goes into this concept (Absolute vs. Relative position) in further detail.


5. He ALWAYS raises? ALWAYS cbets? Hmm?
This is where part 1 comes into play. If crazy maniac raises preflop a third of the time, or bets the flop 3/4 of the time... we must exploit that. You know how to exploit that. He's taking these lines with a super wide range and you just counter that with a tighter range. The problem is people are scared to. They hate the idea of putting a bunch of money in and having no idea where they're at. He could have anything! Well, yeah, exactly, that's the point. We're 3betting because he could be raising with anything. We're calling flop with 3rd pair because he could be betting with anything. Our hand has good equity against “anything.”

This is also where part 2 and 3 come in. Great, you know what he always does. That's useful (really, it is.) But where people get in trouble is they don't know what villain does sometimes. OK so villain bet the flop because he always cbets and you called and turn was a brick and he bet again, what does it mean? You tell me. You've been watching, right? How often does this guy double barrel? Have you seen the hands he barrels with? If he's polarized when he bets the turn (say he either has TPGK+ or a bluff) any pair looks pretty good. And that's where the bad nits spew. They call preflop with their middle pocket because pocket pairs are good. Then they call flop with their middle pocket because he always bets. Then on the turn they're like “oh man that's a big bet and I don't have the nuts, this is scary, I want out.” They're getting outplayed by the maniac! And they still think he's the table idiot!

By the way, seriously pay attention to what he's valuebetting on later streets and the sizing. Often his value range will be just as narrow as a regular player's -- he correctly deduces that people won't call a huge bet with weak pairs, but unlike a regular player correctly bluffs significantly more often because of that. If you know he doesn't bomb the river with anything between TPGK and ace-high, any pair whatsoever becomes a fist-pump call. If he makes wimpy bets with weak top pair/second pair, raise them for value. Or, if he folds those when you raise for value, it means you should then turn your weaker SDV into bluffs and raise his wimpy suck bets. No, seriously, think about it. If you can never get any value in a particular spot, it means...

You should always consider the implications of villain folding to valuebets too often. People get into this sort of quantum impotence mindset where they expect a loose villain will always do the thing they don't want. He'll call when I'm bluffing, he'll fold when I'm valuebetting. Unless he can see your cards, it really can't be both. Usually we're underestimating how often villains are calling, which is why good players harp so much about valuebetting thinly. But, pay attention. It just might be the opposite. You can, and sometimes should, bluff loose players.


6. He's scared too
He looks like he doesn't care about the money because he's raising every hand. But that's because he thinks he's in control. He opens to 10x the big blind and everyone just calls. Nobody dares raise without a monster. He looks like he has nothing to worry about and that's because he doesn't -- nobody's putting him to a tough decision for his stack with a marginal hand. Here's a hypothetical: Drunk villain is on your left with 300bb effective and is raising limped pots 90% of the time. 3 people limp to you in the HJ, you limp as well with AQ, villain raises 10bb, 2 people call (yeah one guy limp/folded, he was very optimistic about seeing a flop cheap.) You might think “ugh let me just see a flop i don't want to raise huge and bloat the pot* and not know what to do postflop when I miss.” Well, think about the possible scenarios if you raise.

1.You 3bet and villain calls 3bets wide. You get called by worse hands. Value!
- - 1a. Villain folds to a bet when he doesn't hit TP+: cbet all the time!
- - 1b. Villain calls with any piece of the board: obviously valuebet big when you hit, when you miss bluff good boards, check bad ones (if you're not sure what a good board to cbet is, see this COTW. It's pretty important stuff.)
- - - - 1b i. Villain usually bluffs when checked to: c/c with ace high! Gambool!
- - - - 1b ii. Villain usually checks back air: c/f! Easy!
2.You 3bet and villain doesn't call 3bets wide: Free money!!

Wow, those all look so good! The problem is you don't know which pattern villain follows because nobody else has the courage to 3bet this guy any wider than their typical {QQ+}. That's why you bring multiple buy-ins. You're going to guess and you may be wrong. But if you've been paying attention, you ought to have some idea of how he plays big pots even if the circumstances are a bit different.

*This term is one of my pet peeves and you really need to throw it out the window in these games. If you don't want someone to call your value bet then it's not a value bet (and you need to ask yourself why you made that bet in the first place.) But if you do want your bet to be called then it doesn't matter how darn big the pot is! The reason you don't see anybody getting 100bb of value with TPNK is because nobody has tried.


Summary:
1.get reads (relevant reads, not useless and meaningless ones!)
2.use your smart poker brain to figure out how to take advantage of those reads
3.exploit villain in ways nobody else imagined possible



Wuss Section
So you realize, you're actually a wuss. You like the idea of a bad player giving you money but you hate the idea of actually *gasp* GAMBLING for it. That's OK! This is still the best table for you to be at. You can play like a good nit and still have an above normal expectation.

DO: Attack dead money like a tournament
Drunk opens to $20 like he does 90% of the time, 3 people call, you're sitting on $200, what's your shoving range? It should be anything you'd consider calling the $20 with. Actually let me rephrase that. Don't call anything. Shove or fold. “I thought we weren't gambling!!” Yeah but we're not setting $20 on fire either. We're not deep enough to setmine even getting those 4:1 direct odds. This is where the bad nits get in trouble. They've got like JT here and they think “4:1? I just have to hit and this idiot will give me a lot of money” and then the flop comes KT4 and they're like “oh man an overcard what do I do.” You kiss that $20 goodbye is what. Fold that crap. If you shove your 88 and get called and you lose and have to go home because you're busto, hey, you probably made like fifty galfond bucks there. Can't really ask for a better spot.

DO: Wait. Not too much, but a little
If you l/c every hand you play hoping to hit tp+.... your stack is not going to last very long. It's easy to spew a lot quickly when you're playing every hand for a raise and giving up. Playing one bullet means waiting for your chance and this means the fish might die before you get it. That's what you get for being a wuss. You're going to have to play a tighter preflop range than you want to. So...

DON'T: Get impatient or entitled
Nothing stings more than seeing some idiot get the fish's money (in other words, any other player, because you're obviously the best poker player at the table.) If you're low on cash and have to play like a wuss, this is probably going to happen. Deal with it. If you can't, that's a leak. If you're actually upset that other people are winning and not you, you're tilting and probably about to do something stupid and you should take a moment to cool off. Nine times out of ten, the dumbest play I've seen all night at a table with a maniac, wasn't by the maniac.



Hopefully this gave you some new insight on dealing with such players. They're tricky because the way we naturally want to adjust is just about the worst way possible. You have to fight that urge, think it through logically, and not be afraid to get splashy with them. To most players, someone correctly adjusting to a maniac will look like a little crazy themselves. Only you will understand what's really going on.

A timely COTM for me. Last night, I was lucky enough to sit two seats to the right of the biggest maniac/aggrofish I've ever seen. I'm talking 90% PFR from $20-$30, c-betting nearly every board when checked to (mostly overbets) and double-barreling quite frequently. He burned through at least 10 buyins over 3 hours, and I'd say that's an accomplishment given his style of play.

I have to say, though, and this is repeated time and time again...

PEOPLE SUCK REALLY BAD AT ADJUSTING.

Reading this, I felt like you were watching the action with me last night (don't worry, you weren't). Specifically,

and

There's so much dead money in these games, mostly preflop, because so many people just call, knowing that the maniac is super wide, then get MUBSY when he overbets the flop and they're sitting there with middle pair in a $100 pot. I can't tell you how many times I watched people fit/fold. It was alarming.

Regarding position: getting on the aggro villain's right is a must when the table over-correction goes into call mode. I think DK mentioned this, but sacking up and l/rr a slightly wider range than you might think (depending on table dynamics, obviously) is going to make you so much money.

DK, thanks for taking the time to write this. I'll make sure to re-read it when I find myself in this situation again.

This is a great COTM.
And at it's heart, it is all about adjustment. We could eventually profile all types of players like this, make a COTM about them but for some reason no one talks about how to beat TAGs and no one talks about how to beat semi-bad LAGish villains.

And what no one talks about is how to beat your average slightly losing/slightly winning, better than the fish, not a pro, semi rec 30 year old player who doesn't do this for a living but still manages to eek out 1 - 3bb/hour.

In the mean time though, a few pieces of gold here that people should pay attention to:

Relative position!
You can turn a huge profit here with just a few small hands that do not even need to go to showdown.
In this case, if we 3bet and everyone folds, we just picked up $60. If we get the maniac to fold, hopefully we have been paying enough attention to know what we need to do post flop (ck/cl, ck/fd, bet/fd whatever) and we can win a bigger pot.

And the times that we can make an even bigger profit are when we get the maniac on our left raising 90% of the time, but he is folding 90% of his range to a 3bet, and so is everyone else we can limp/3bet them to death. Taking 10bb from 2 - 5 people once every other orbit (or nore is table conditions allow and no one is lol adjusting) and we will be netting a massive 30bb+ per hour in free money. Let alone if actually get a hand and get it to show down and pick up another 100bb+ pot.

Oh yeah, and fantastic poem.
Nice work.

While this COTM has some decent analysis of how bad LLSNL players adapt badly to a typical maniac's strategy, I disagree with a good deal of the conclusions that DK Barrel suggests.

In certain cases, DK Barrel is generalizing too much. For example, DK Barrel contends that "sitting to the right of a maniac" is the best position on the table because you get to see how everyone else reacts to the maniac first. This is only true against certain maniacs in certain situations. I have played in deep-stacked games against certain maniacs where sitting to his direct right would be the "seat of death." Obviously, in relatively shallow games where a stereotypical maniac raises 50% of preflop hands dealt to him regardless of limpers ahead of him and cbets 75% of flops regardless of number of players in the hand...then sitting to his direct right is a good play. With that said, I think that DK Barrel is really making a bad generalization when he says that "being to the right of a maniac is the best position on the table." It really isn't that simple.

In other cases, DK Barrel is simply wrong. DK Barrel says that a maniac raising very big preflop isn't making that big of a mistake because people never 3bet him. That is not the reason. If DK Barrel's statement was true (which it isn't), then that means that we should always be 3betting maniacs. Over the last year, I played over 100 hours with a legendary drunk maniac who bomb-raised an extremely wide range, 3bet a wide range of bluffs/tweeners/occasional premiums and would also shove/get it in really lightly for stacks with 40% of his range (trash or otherwise) against a 3bet/4bet. Did I 3bet him a lot? Yes. Did I 3bet him with all of my top 20% hands? NO. Did I flat him a lot? Yes. Why? Well, because flatting him with certain hands was often a more +EV strategy than simply getting in stacks preflop. While it is true that many bad LLSNL players fail to 3bet maniacs in good spots, 3betting maniacs with 100% (or even 80%) of your top 20%/30% of starting hands isn't necessarily the most +EV strategy. It all just depends on the particular maniac and the particular situation and the particular position and the particular hole cards...

Bad Habit #2 is mostly rubbish. Maniacs don't necessarily call way too much. And when a particular maniac does call too much, it is almost always a bad thing at LLSNL unless his skill level is higher than other players (then his overly loose preflop and flop play is justified because he plays future streets better)

It would also be good if DK Barrel talked more about maniacs who open-raise a very high percentage of hands preflop...but for a normalish sizing. DK Barrel seems a little pre-occupied with the maniacs who 10x open-raise with 50% of their preflop range, but the maniacs who 3x/4x open-raise 50% of their preflop range are much more common.

This COTM is so money that my first response was "damn, now people might stop trading seats with me to 'stop having the maniac in position on them.'" It's silly how grateful people are when I offer to take the seat to the maniac's right because "I can't see very well down here," or whatever silly excuse I give them.

If you're new to this type of adjusting, be prepared for huge swings. The second most BBs I ever won were at such a table. The most BBs lost would also have been, if I hadn't come back up after going past my usual stop-loss. Same maniac, same table, one week apart from each other.

You could talk about that. The OP in a COTM is not supposed to answer every possible question about the concept. It is supposed to give people a grounding and get the conversation started. Go for it.

Sorry, I don't feel like writing COTM articles. Just wanted to point out that DK Barrel's COTM article (despite being decent) has some big holes in it.

FWIW, I think everyone in this thread is way too much in love with the "sit to the direct right of the maniac and print money limp/re-raising" strategy. That will be the best strategy versus 35%-50% of maniacs, but that's not the best way to skin every maniac (especially the maniacs who know that you guys are setting up limp/re-raise traps)

I'm not saying "write a COTM." I'm saying "if you think there's a hole in this one, fill the hole." That's what the discussion thread is for.

And FWIW, we're talking drunk-maniac here, not clever SLAG who thinks at a deep level. Those are rarely found below 5/10, whereas "total spewtard that feels like a real man when he makes people fold" are pretty common at 1/2, especially working class guys at bonus time. Even at 2/5, I see them much more rarely.

Great points. Especially on 3betting.

I didn't mean to generalize and say "always do this", but rather "if it's like this, maybe think about doing this."

Positionally speaking I often want a very loose player directly across from me rather than to my direct left or right. Since the value of having relative position UTG is much lower than the value of having relative position on the button/cutoff/so on, giving up relative position in your EP hands for other advantages can be worthwhile. For example if there is a skilled player three seats to the left of a maniac I would much prefer to sit at the skilled player's left than the maniac's left.

This is true as well. Although wouldn't explaining how to exploit the latter players basically be explaining how to play full-stack poker? (In other words, very long and outside the scope of a COTM.) The short version is "figure out ranges and then figure out the best way to exploit those ranges" and that applies to everything. It'd just be easier in this case because a maniac is even more unbalanced than an ordinary player.

The biggest adjustment people should make but never do is 3betting more. If he's raising often (no matter what the size) then running some 3b bluffs will absolutely work, and if he's calling 3bets a fair amount of the time then widening your 3b value range will work too. I think everyone has some idea of barreling when his range is weak & he can fold. And they definitely know about calling down because he bluffs too often.

Anyone know if there's a LLSNL post on 3betting? I don't want to give the idea that people should then go and 3bet 76o but good wide 3betting isn't something that can be covered in one paragraph.

The main mistake that maniacs make is betting too much. You want them to keep making that mistake. The right adjustment isn't necessarily to call with a wider range (although hands like AT that run it into kicker problems when you flop top pair against regular players become more playable). One usually correct adjustment is to turn hands you would normally value-bet with into bluff-catchers. Be more willing to check and risk giving a free card with good but vulnerable hands (since he is more likely to be anyways or to interpret your check as weakness and bluff on a future street). Be more willing to bluff-catch when a scare card falls.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they don't plan ahead on the flop against a maniac whose turn action is fairly predictable. If I call a maniac on the flop, I already know which cards I am calling/raising/folding on the turn. I usually have that in my head against opponents, but more so against a maniac.

Since lots of people like to call and try to get lucky against maniacs, you often find yourself with the opportunity to play in a lot of raised multi-way pots. I happen to be pretty comfortable at tables where that is the case and you almost always have to show down a hand to win. Many players are bad in those situations.

There's several good 3betting COTW in the micro forum. It comes up much less often live because so few people are raising light. If someone wants to take a shot at it, I'd be happy to read it. However, I'd like to see something better than what is already available.

I'll note that 76s is pretty much near the top of my 3 betting light range.

Also that live effectively plays a lot shallower because raises are larger and more people are limping and calling.

Online it might go fold, fold, 2.5bb, fold, 7bb.

Live it might go limp, limp, 7bb, call, 28bb. Effectively making live stacks a quarter as deep.

So I don't know how much online 3betting strategy would apply to live.

Literally just used this strategy (which I've never done before today) w/ a maniac and it was an epic fail. Lost big. Personally too much variance for my taste.

There is no low variance strategy for playing against a maniac. Therefore, choose one that has a positive expectation, or get a table change.

Nice cotm. Especially interesting imo because it's such a rare and highly profitable situation. Also it's pretty much a unique situation to live games, online you would always want to the left as stacks will be deeper compared to spr due to the other players not calling pre. There's anther good cotm discussing this difference about absolute and relative position.

Wish I could get one of these guys at every one of my tables.

I might come back and post more later, but for now, here's this link:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...poker-1171438/

Also, this is a really good OP and it is worth pointing out that the shiniest gold in it is actually hidden in some small subtle quotes (which I'm not going to quote--read the whole thing and look for them!).

Waiting for very good hands probably has a positive expectation if the maniac gives significant action after his initial preflop raise, it just doesn't have anywhere close to maximum EV.

I think the OP is really well-written.

You've provided no info at all about what you did.

One of the items in the OP is to pay attention to what the Villain did so you can see ways to profit. Tell us how you did that, and why it didn't work.

That's great advice because usually you need to watch everyone at the table. But when there's a maniac there's only one person that you need to focus on.

p.s. The last time (Saturday) I played with a maniac after he left he'd bankrupted about half the table. Me and a couple other made a ton, and one of the other winners muttered under his breath, "Good Bye ATM" as the maniac left the table.

One of the Big Losers called a 5-bet 300bb shove with AQ when the maniac had aces. The maniac was opening QJ suited, and he was calling 3-bets with it, but he wasn't 5-bet shoving it.

Literally half the table was spazzing out to him and whining that they couldn't play their draws profitably.

The Villain's big mistake was that he was frequently was over-aggressive when he got a somewhat hidden strong hand. He had Q9 when the flop was T9x and the turn was a nine. He shoved into my T9 boat.

This is a tangentially related concept, but I find myself struggling at the 1/2/20 bingo tables where people call with *ANY* piece of the flop and most hands go to showdown, meaning you have to have a hand at showdown.

I've had three recent sessions at these tables and my results were -$500, -$300, -$350. Now, granted, I was completely dog**** card dead in each of those sessions which had a lot to do with it, but it's ridiculous seeing the hands some people play and win with and I am struggling to win one pot every two hours.

This is probably more ranting but sitting at those bingo tables sucks balls when you can't make a hand and know you would get paid if you just could.

Nice post.

Playing against maniacs has always driven me nuts and right now my preferred strategy is to change tables. Maniac tends to set the pace and until (if) I get comfortable playing against them there's lower-hanging fruit elsewhere.

That said, I've been experimenting with a LAGgy playing style recently and that has given me some insight into how loose aggressive players think.

First of all, all that splashing around is a cost of doing business. The profit comes from winning big pots. The strategy is to build up a big pot so that, on the turn, one's opponent is facing a ginormous bet that could either be a monster hand or a bluff. People tend to make big mistakes in big pots, as is well documented in DK's epistle. There's money to be had there, although variance is high and margins are thin.

The easiest way to shut me down is to 3bet. Primarily because it drives up the cost of doing business.

I tend to come in for a small pfr and so against me, that's an inexpensive strategy and you can 3bet a wide range of hands. Against someone who comes in large, it's important to remember that you are effectively playing short-stacked. You might think you're playing 1/2 with a mountain of chips; but if the standard opening bet is $40, then in fact you are playing 5-10, and you're actually a short-stackin' nit. So DK's point is well taken: against the type of maniac described in his post, bring your short-stack game and be thinking about gii with any hand you're willing to play pre.

DKBarrel, 100bb what hands would you shove against a bad loose/aggro that raises 50%
preflop? When should you 3bet and when should you shove?

Also, against someone who can 3barrelbluff, would you call down all the streets with any pair or just the flop and turn?

1. depends on effective stack size and dead money in the pot. Being the 4th person to overcall $20 with a $200 stack is a mistake. If your hand is decent enough to raise then just get it in with that overlay. And if it's not, calling is likely unprofitable.

I also didn't mean to give the impression that 3betting is the only option. As ATsai said calling is often the best move. But most people already know how to call. 3betting is new and exciting.

2. depends on the board and his frequencies (especially preflop.) If you've played around with pokerstove at all you should be able to extrapolate a range just from an estimation of how often he raises or calls preflop. As much as we'd like to just call down all the time, we still need to have a sufficiently large range of hands we beat. For example a loose/aggressive player may raise preflop 25% and limp/call preflop another 25%. If he had raised and the board ran out KQ996 and he bet all three streets, it's a lot harder for him to have air than if he had raised and the board ran out 83255.

But if villain isn't valuebetting remotely thinly, as is often the case, you can eliminate a ton of hands that beat you when he bets the turn or river. For example a board of 953QA with our same villain who had raised preflop. If we had 88 and villain was raising 25%, he is going to have 88 beat more often than not. But if villain isn't going to bet the turn with 9x (or only make a small bet), and isn't going to bet the river with Qx (or only make a small bet), then if he fires a third huge barrel you can eliminate most of his better hands from his range making it a very clear call (he might not even bomb river with ace-rag!)

And if he's raising preflop even more than that he'll be even more unbalanced.

But calling preflop with weak pocket pairs just to hero down isn't going to be profitable. I'm only talking about hands you should be playing in this first place. Playing a bunch of weak hands to try and outplay this guy is how everyone else is burning money.