Posted by Dr Fro 12:38 PM
Maniacs
Do you play every hand and raise every street? If you do this, you just might be a maniac.

A lot of people take a very common approach to maniacs: wait for a really good hand and then kick him in the nuts. I strongly disagree with this strategy. If you think about it, it really isn’t much of a strategy. I mean, isn’t kicking people in the nuts with really good hands already in the playbook regardless of your opponent?

I think that the goal is to end up heads-up with the maniac as often as possible. Here’s why:

1) If he plays every hand, and you are at all selective (for argument’s sake, let’s say you play 80% of all hands against him), then more often than not, you stand to be ahead pre-flop. So, when he raises, as he always does, pop him back for 2x more his raise with K8. You will get others to fold and now you are heads-up against a guy that is as likely to be playing 72o as he is AA. In the long run, you will have better starting hands more often than he does.

2) You have extra EV against this guy, because you know you will get paid off if you make a hand. Thus, lowering your starting hand requirements is justified. A perfect example from the other night was playing 57s, which hit 2-pair on the flop. Against an excellent player, I would have made $0 on that hand, as they would have tossed 2 overcards on the flop. Not Maniac. He gladly put all his chips into my rack. A factor in deciding how valuable starting hands are is the odds of getting paid off. This is what makes AK so beautiful: AQ AJ, etc will pay you a lot of money when the Ace hits. Now imagine getting 100% of your opponent’s chips every time you hit a hand. Kinda easy to make an argument to play more hands!

3) Similar to point 2, position becomes less relevant. If you are last to act, you obviously have a valuable seat. But if you are first to act, who cares? You check, maniac will bet.

So get heads-up and all-in as much as possible. Imagine a coin flip each time, but you get heads (hee hee) 55-60% of the time. He’ll win some, sure, but soon you will get ahead and once you have more chips than he does (and he will just keep on buying in), it gets even easier, because you can afford tails to hit a few times in a row.

When I was little, my mom told me what all moms tell little boys, “bullies bully you because they are actually scared of you.” It didn’t make a lot of sense then, but neither did my parent’s story about birds and bees. However, all their adages, anecdotes and other bits of wisdom make perfect sense to me now. Maniacs rarely like the flop and they will bet it to bully you out of the pot. My favorite move against a bully to call on every street and re-raise the bejeezus out of him on the river. Out bully the bully. Even the bully get scared will back down then.

Another problem with sitting around waiting for a good hand is that even the bully will notice when you finally play, and he will not pay you off (or at least he is much less likely to pay you off than if you dance with him on most hands.)

All of the above holds true with a shorthanded table, but becomes less true with each additional player you add to the table.

I played perfectly against Maniac on Sunday until I made two crucial mistakes:

#1 After he had busted out, rebought, busted out rebought, busted out, rebought, busted out, rebought, busted out, rebought, busted out, I dediced to spot him his next rebuy. That was greedy. I figured I would bust him for more, but he finally hit some hands and got back in the game. I’ve said before that many NL home games play like tournaments in that people eventually bust out and leave, narrowing the field to fight over found money. Thus, certain aspects of tournament poker strategy should be implemented in the home NL game. In a tournament, you would never let a guy buy back that had been eliminated, so why would you in a home cash game if you could guarantee that he would stay on the rail and watch everyone fight over his losings?

#2 We play “dealers choice” which usually translates into NLHE and Omaha only. He actually called low Chicago, a game I haven’t really played in quite a while. It was smart on his part; he was way outclassed in the normal games. So why not level the playing field? Greed made me twice play the 3s and 4s, both times losing a small fortune.

That is what I could come up with on my maniac strategy. I am certain that not all will agree with me, but I have a lot of experience playing with maniacs (mainly in college and shortly post-college) and the strategy has worked for me.

Laters

2 Comment(s):

Posted by  Dr Fro, at 6:20 PM, December 18, 2005  

true...I wouldn't say that it doesn't matter: it always matters. But it matters less than it does usually.

fro

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Posted by  Padilla, at 12:47 PM, December 19, 2005  

...and if you want to get REALLY technical, I still want better than 60% on my uneven "coinflips". Getting his money in the pot isn't a problem, but getting mine in still requires some sort of advantage. I can get a coinflip whenever I want one. It's the likelyhood of being ahead 4:1 that teases you into 'play any 2' against a maniac. But I'm with you, good strategy.

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