baffled with position against LAG/maniac

[greg nice]

sitting at 50nl tonight directly to the left of this LAG whos got 55 PFR and 75 VPIP. he would raise hands as weak as 65o and Q7s for 4-5xBB. on the occasion he would have AQo he would show his hand.

on the flop and turn hes often firing half to pot sized bets. a few times i raised him big on these rounds and he folded. a few times he called my bluff calling his bluff and took the pot.

overall im just completely at a loss on how to play this guy. do i just have to sit back and wait for premium hands? doing that seems like im losing lots of value on my marginal hands like KJ etc. way too often is he showing down top pair garbage kicker, but obviously he'll catch two pairs and straights as well.

[greg nice]

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (6 max, 5 handed)

UTG ($50)
MP ($221.85)
Button ($251.65)
Hero ($110.9)
BB ($49.75)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J/images/graemlins/club.gif, J/images/graemlins/heart.gif. UTG posts a blind of $0.5. MP posts a blind of $1.
<font color="CC3333">Button raises to $5</font>, Hero calls $5, BB folds, UTG (poster) folds, MP (poster) folds.

Flop: ($11.50) Q/images/graemlins/club.gif, 3/images/graemlins/spade.gif, 6/images/graemlins/spade.gif <font color="blue">(2 players)</font>
<font color="CC3333">Button bets $7</font>, <font color="CC3333">Hero raises to $15</font>, <font color="CC3333">Button raises to $35</font>, Hero folds.

Final Pot: $61.50


is this just too weak tight vs this guy? i mean christ.. he could be raising with Q2, Q6, AQ

[PoBoy321]

Doyle Brunson says in Super System that when you're playing against a maniac, "you're reduced to using your pail and shovel." When you're up against this guy, you've got to play only premium hands, Hope to hit your flops hard and take him for EVERYTHING on one hand when you know you've got him. It's that simple. If he's a maniac, he'll commit a lot of his chips on bluffs and very modest hands and you can punish him for it. Luckily he was on your right so you had position on him, but you've got to be a lot more aggressive against him before the flop and hope to pick up more pots there. I realize that he's firing at 90% of the flops, so your reraise after his bet makes good sense, and your fold even more since he's been folding to your reraises when he's got nothing. You said that you're losing a lot of value on marginal hands, but that's better than losing a lot of money on them.

[greg nice]

he did his standard 4xBB i called with K4s flopped a K and called pot bets down to the river where he finally checked and showed Q2s