I agree with this perspective, but want to play devil's advocate. Take any major casino that offers high-stakes house games like blackjack or roulette. The house will always win, but will win more at higher stakes. However, even the house has a limit as to how high they'll take someone's wager because they do not want to take the loss of a $10 million black-jack hand. (I forget the name for this, but my HS Stats class covered this). I think it all comes back to risk of ruin. If you know you'll be in a 60/40 situation twice per hour versus a maniac for 100bb+ each time, your risk of ruin is much greater than than a 60/40 situation every 2 hours for 50bb. If you have the roll for it, it's silly not to take the bet, but if your BR is small, it actually makes sense to avoid these situations, same as a tourney player folding TT pf for their entire stack even if they know they're up against AK.

GG, if you're properly rolled, I recommend playing with maniacs as frequently as possible. If not, do not play. On the "mental health" side, if you're a rec player who will lose the fun in the game due to higher variance, then I'd recommend obtaining from situations that make you miserable. To offer an extreme, it's probably very profitable to be a hit-man, but consider all of the stresses & moral ambiguity that comes with being an assassin. Might make more sense to push paper in some cubicle.

There was a guy there last week playing 2/5 who ran his stack up to $4K and lost it all. Then bought back in and ran it up to $4K and lost it all again. I wasn't in the game but I watched some of it.

He did everything from going all in blind to shoving $2K into a $25 pot. He shoved something like $1K into a $50 pot on a KK6 flop and his 87 beat a guys AK. He got all in preflop with QT vs AA and KK and busted them both. Half the table was on tilt and two other guys started shoving blind out of frustration..

The IRS are real nits about professional tax deductions as well.

I've run into this dilemma too when my BR was smaller. If your BR can support it, I would say just take a shot. If you're not playing for a living, you can definitely ride the variance train with a maniac. You may learn a thing or two for next time you run into a maniac again.

Heh, the variance, and therefore the swings, are greater in Limit than in NL. The fact that you can limit your loss per hand just adds to this illusion that it is less swingy.

+1 to all my fellow corporate sellouts. I would add that the steady stream of income makes the swings of poker easier. This should make you more comfortable in high variance, high EV spots.

This is a great thread (minus the page 3 derail, ty iraise for killing it), and thanks to GG for opening up.

I'm going to take a different tack, even though I agree with lots of what has been said above. Back to some of GG's anxiety that prompted this thread in the first place, I'll venture that many of us in this forum are serious recs, not pros, and that many of us are unintentionally wrong (or just lying to ourselves) about why we play LLSNL poker.

We often say in this forum that our goal to make +EV decisions, and that results are not important, as long as we make the correct play. This sounds like the Platonic ideal of a poker player, and it may even be the thing we should strive toward. (This is also my goal...most of the time.) But I'll venture that this ideal isn't the honest reason many of us have for playing poker. What we really want, our actual goal, is to be “a winner”, which we measure via the giraffe we all have/think we should have in our personal database.

Most of the time, the overlap between these two ideas is close to 100%, so that making the correct EV play will move us closer to our actual goal of being a winner. But there are times where the +EV play just isn't worth it for us. It's been said here and in plenty of other spots that this is a mental leak; I will argue that it is only a leak if you think the goal is to be the Platonic ideal poker player. But if we decide that our actual goal is to be a winner/think of ourselves as a winner (which for almost 100% of us itt will be measured by our results), then the choices that some will call leaks (such as leaving a session 30 min early to book a win), I would argue actually allow us to achieve our (subconscious but actual) goal.

I think most of us play poker for some combination of money and ego. If this is the case, then we should measure our choices acknowledging that these two goals are sometimes in conflict, and that it is OK to make a decision that might be -$EV but +egoEV.

I am actually a gambler, and I love the action, although poker is the only gambling I do regularly. Winning is important to me, but so is action, so I am more struggling with making sure I actually DO have the equity edge, no matter how small.

I LOVE THIS GUY! If I could, I would love to be in a game like this all the time (I do manage it most of the time).

I think the A8o hand is perfectly fine BTW, I'm guessing GG underestimates his "nit" image, I find it unlikely that the blinds would call as wide as TT-QQ/AK, and they might fold even KK.

Damn, I wish I didn't but I can definitely relate to this thread. Somehow, no matter what, I almost always lose to these super-donks. It's unreal, and the annoying thing is once they get my money, they donk it off to someone else, busting out. So frustrating!

It's not a matter of skill in these cases obviously but trying to figure out how to be luckier than the donks.

Then pass on the 60/40s. This guy is willing to do the 70/30s and 80/20s with you 100% of the time so just wait for those opportunities. Sure it's not as profitable, but it's still a lot more profitable than your normal game. Just bring a book, or in your case you can bring something and write your own.

This is perfect. Sure you can lose 5 BIs against a maniac in a single session if you lose all of your flippy spots during the course of the night, but you could also lose 5 BIs in a 10-session downswing if you lose a bunch of flippy spots in a row. It's the exact same thing. The only difference is that playing against a maniac gets you more flippy spots for big money in a short period of time, and your edge is probably quite a bit higher on those "flips."

The problem is that if you are not rolled for 100BB 60/40s you are not rolled for regular games either. The RoR for even a small 10BI roll is insignificant for a rec player, and may be higher in regular games depending on your playstyle.

This is partly my point, in that I'll see this guy so rarely. For example, this particular uber maniac I think I've played with 4 times in 4 years for maybe a total of 8 hours.

However...


This really appeals to the logical side of my brain, especially when you consider that there might be a time where this occurs two or three times in an hour. And of course I'll have the same amount of stress in this situation all the while sitting at this "normal" easy peasy table.

Papa mentioned something very similar in the chat thread. My guess is that this post is probably the winner, and now I just have to convince the stoopid part of my brain. Ignorance truly is bliss.

My weak counterargument might be something along the lines of sitting at an easy peasy "normal" table value betting fish in a relaxed fun filled mostly low stress environment for 98% of my time there is still simply more enjoyable for me, and I'm perfectly willing to give up on the extra EV in order to do so.

GgoddamnitIRTM,justwhenIthinkI'mout,youreelmebacki n!G

I have seen calculated players employ this method of play when they sit down to get the image of a donk maniac, then the rest of the table adjusts to their play and they eventually stack you when they tighten their range and show up wit a real hand as the rest of the table has gone full maniac. This is an art form to say the least.

And FWIW I disagree that 72 off is the same % as 2 overcards. The overcards will always have the % edge regardless how you cut it. Even 83 off has the advantage 63/27 over 72 off....

We can only go in the reads were provided. GG seems to have a solid read on V. You're welcome to question it, but I'm gonna go with GGs read

Wtf are you talking about?!? I'm talking about A8o vs a range of hands (a random hand in this scenario). For some reason you seem to think 83o vs 72o is relevant

Someone was saying 72 off had the same odds pre flop as A8 off I dont know if that was an attempt at sarcasm,but thats far from correct.

A8 vs a 100% range(random hand) is 60/40 against an 80% range still 60/40 it starts to move at a 50% PF range, but its far from the same odds. 60/40 is a big +EV difference in poker.

If they were insinuating that a 7 or 2 had the same odds of flopping as an A or 8 then perhaps that would hold true. But not true when it comes to EV.

Last time I played with a maniac like that I was down $1200 in 30 minutes (2/3 $300 BI) - AJ < 49o blind all-in. 88<K5, flopped set <runner-runner straight. Went to the ATM got 1k more, lost 2 more BI's and then starting winning it back. Ended up profiting ~$1200 that night. Was ridiculous. Maniac just kept going to play baccarat, winning, then coming to the poker table to dump it.


Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.