Posted by Johnnymac 5:36 PM
Three Different Kinds of Maniacs

Now's time for a quick post about the maniacs I encountered briefly in New Orleans last week. I encountered three, specifically, and each one was a different type of maniac with different approaches to the game.

Our story begins about 3 hours into a session at the 6-12 table. I had been running over the game since I sat down in it - I flopped a set of aces on my second hand in the game and didn't look back as I worked my profits up to about $400. One of the best feelings in the world is to control a poker table - to be the best player at the table and know that everyone is hinging their decisions on what you do yourself. One of the best pieces of advice in Sklansky's holdem book is to almost always raise if you have a playable hand (Group 6 or better) if are the first one into a pot before the flop. This accomplishes two things: 1.) It drives out a lot of limpers and 2.) It disguises the strength of your hand, which is especially effective in weak games whenever pre-flop raises are automatically assumed to be big pairs or A-face.

Now, just reading the preceding paragraph, one could make the case that I would be playing dangerously and giving off the image of a maniac, and to some extent is true. When I able to play this way and dominate a game many more astute players will start to notice that I am winning pots with hands like queens up or one card teeny straights and they will begin to make comments like, "I saw you raise last time with Jack Four" or "You'll play any two cards, won't you?" In turn, this will begin to frustrate them and I am able to get very good reads on their own cards when they play back at me or otherwise try to keep me "honest" by not allowing me to play aggressively. While I do appear to be playing recklessly, what they don't usually notice is that my raises are only done in very specific circumstances and with very specific cards and that even after a pre-flop raise I will fold unless I hit a part of the flop. As far as these players are concerned, I am a maniac and I am playing wild and randomly. And this is the way I want it to be... until I show a nut flush or large pair at the end and completely blindside their honesty-keeping middle pair or little flush. I know what I am doing, even when it doesn't appear so.

And then their are true maniacs.

Like I said, I was sitting in the 6-12 game on Sunday when an open seat directly to my right was filled by an older man named Rene. Rene was a true cajun poker player with his thin white hair and gold jewelry and his thick thick swamp accent. He announced to the table that he was tired of the 1-4-8-8 Omaha Hi game because he had been unlucky and thus he "wanted to gamble" in the 6-12 holdem game. Nonetheless, he player tight for about one orbit of the table until he came to his big blind and was raised by another player. He immediately reraised back and after much raising and cursing on the flop and end cards he lost a rather large pot when he pocket 66 was beaten by a pocket KK. After that hand he was off and running and capping every pot before the flop. It only emboldened him further when he won a few of these pots and soon he was bragging about how large his stack was and how bad the other players were playing because they did not want to call his raises.

At one point he even capped a pot pre-flop AT and won the hand with trip tens on the river and beating pocket AA and QQ. After this he turned to me and said,

"I gotta fren' who be a real good pokuh playuh and he tell me that Ace Ten is the wuhst hand you can play. Now they say that Ace King is a bettah hand but I always win with Ace Ten so I gotta believe that Ace Ten is just bettuh."

I knew that Rene was probably going to be very profitable to the game in the long run, but after seeing him play that hand and hearing that crazy speech, I also knew that he had assumed my role of crazy maniac and that I was going to have to gear down and just play a more patient Lee Jones style of poker.

After about thirty minutes of Rene, the seat to Rene's right opened up and an older woman wearing a "Marine Mom" sweatshirt sat down to play. She pulled a crisp $100 bill from her fanny pack and immediately posted her out-of-sequence blind and raised right away when the action came back to her. This seriously pissed off Rene, who proceeded to reraise her. She reraised, he capped it, and she was all in her $100 by the end of the hand, which was subsequently won by a player at the end of the table who had flopped a broadway straight against Rene and Marine Mom's respective bottom and middle pairs. This was a huge pot and I could not believe that I had seen. She pulled out another $100 bill and on the very next hand she and Rene did it again, generating another very large pot that was subsequently won by a third player. All this time I was sitting and praying for good cards to play hoping that neither would go broke until I managed to get a share of the free money.

This lasted for for another 15 minutes - Marine Mom pulling out $100 bills and Rene rapidly blowing through his chips - until I realized that all of my profitability in the game had evaporated with the addition of the dueling maniacs. I was no longer able to play aggressively and wittily like before and instead I was reduced back to a low gear style of play. This was no fun! I then noticed that I was sufficienly staked to go try my hand at the 10-20 table, so I got up and found a seat in the bigger game.

As I was beginning to get established in the bigger game and had won a couple of hands a seat opened up and to my horror, Marine Mom sat down. This time she bought in for $300 and while she was not quite as quick to raise as she had been in the 6-12 game, she was quite willing to call everything that came her way until she could see the river card and the culmination of her hand. At that point she sometimes folded and sometimes showed, but it clear she wasn't craving action as much as she was just hoping to get lucky and win in the end.

Eventually, a seat opened at the table and a strange looking beatnik type man in a skullcap and a dyed soul patch beard sat down. Like Marine Mom in the game before he kept raising pots early and often and would always call down to the river and show any two face cards. This gentleman was also a maniac, but he was a rich maniac and played not so much from aggression as perhaps from a bullying personality or just an urge to make the game more fun by making more action.

Being a 10-20 game, the pots were proportionately larger than in the smaller 6-12 game. This wasn't a particularly tough game to beat though, but one had to have cards in the end because it was a rare pot that wasn't shown down. The maniacs contributed to this - first by always calling to the end and second because good players held on to marginal hands longer because they knew they were more likely winners against the poorer competition.

The most memorable hand of the night occurred shortly before I left. Soul Patch and Marine Mom capped the pot before the flop along with three other players and after much raising and calling they arrived at the showdown with one other (very solid) player there and a near $1000 pot between them all. The board was raggedy with both a straight and a flush showing but no face cards. Soul Patch and the solid player both showed AKo in hopes of winning with high cards. Marine Mom held on to her cards for a couple of seconds and once she realized that neither of the other players had paired up she began to scream, "Two Nothings! Two Nothings! You mean all youse gots is a pair of two nothings! Aye Aye! Whoo hoo!" at which point she turned over her own 3-4 of spades which had made bottom pair on the flop. She giggle with glee and scooped the large pot back to her seat with huge smile on her face.

I saw all of this and figured it unexplainably insane and then it hit me - she was playing to make a score! This woman was not interested in playing good poker, nor was she necessarily interested in being a winning player necessarily. Rather, she was playing in the hopes of hitting a jackpot and stuffing a wad of cash in her pockets. This is why she was so happy at winning the huge pot - because she got lucky and won! Most of us who play poker seriously and won a very large pot with nothing but an underpair would probably feel sheepish at "stealing" such a pot and maybe even a little embarassed to even be contesting at the end with a weak hand and two opponents. I personally would probably also feel a little relieved to have survived such a debacle in spite of my poor play, too, but I damn sure wouldn't shriek and smile as if winning the big pot was the best thing to ever happen to me and the only goal of my playing poker. But that's what this woman did because she was playing poker like a big slot machine. She wasn't playing for the competition, she wasn't playing for the strategy, and she wasn't playing in the hopes of just "playing well" and honing her game. No, she was playing because she wanted to win a lot of money. And in retrospect, this explained her style of play, too. All of her crazy raises and rebuys were not because she was interested in generating any action or because she was ignorant about proper play. In fact, I would venture to guess that she played that way in spite of knowing better, specifically because she wanted to win money and the only way to win big pots is to help create big pots. It was written all over her face. She knew she was lucky to have won that pot and that was the whole point.

So now, looking back on those three players, I think it's safe to say that all three had very different mindsets that contributed to each playing in such a maniacal way. Rene felt he was a good poker player and was due to win with his Ace Ten against the book-smart but inexperienced younger players at the table. He fought raises with reraises because he didn't want to be pushed around. He wasn't a bully but he also was not going to let himself be bullied. Rene was a loose maniac - he felt he could outplay the rest of the table and wanted to prove it.

Soul Patch on the other hand wanted to gamble and to control the table. He wasn't necessarily interested in what other players did or even in winning any pots - he was more interested in bending the game to his will and making the other players uncomfortable with his constant raises and reraises. Soul Patch was definitely a bully who hoped to win through intimidation - he was an aggressive maniac who loved action.

Marine Mom was completely different from the other two in that she was a passive maniac who played along in the knowledge that one can't win pots if one's cards are in the muck.

Three different maniacs.

So what's my point? My point quite simply is that playing with one maniac is actually fairly straightforward and profitable: loosen up a little bit and take advantage of the extra calls and raises, and where possible, try and isolate against the maniac. But when you are playing against more than one maniac, things get tough. I could have beaten Rene by himself because I could outplay him and fold when he had the best of it and let him pay me off when he did. I could have beaten soul patch by himself because I would have just let him bet my hand for me in his hopes of pushing me around. And I could have beaten Marine Mom because of her preference for calling everything to the river, even if she had the worst possble hand on the board.

Together, though, it was a different story. In a sense, two maniacs butting heads is much the same effect as fish in a low limit game - implicit collusion gone wild. It's fairly easy to beat one, but beating two might get really expensive.

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