Do you try to profit from someone who goes on tilt?

[Buck72]

I saw a player tilt last night (Party .5/1) and was wondering if I should loosen my starting hands to try and take some of his money. He busted out of about $40 in less than an hour and in that time I only got to one showdown with him. Do you think it's worth trying to isolate him and showdown with just top pair or second pair?

Another guy at our table seemed to be doing just that and took a lot of money off the tilter.

[RockLobster]

[sam h]

Of course you try to profit off of him.

What strategy that entails depends on what kind of tilty actions he's taking - ie raising any two preflop, just calling every hand, raising with nothing postflop, etc - and how the rest of the table is responding. If the other players aren't changing their play much and you are on the tilters left and he is raising a lot, then you need to start threebetting to isolate with hands like A8o and 55. If the other players are aware enough to realize this and call three cold, then you can't be that loose. If you're on the tilter's right, then a lot of your strategy depends on whether he will tilt threebet with any two cards. If so, then start raising with the same type of isolating cards. If he'll just call, you probably won't have the same success trying to isolate although you should still be openraising more hands than you normally would. You should also be limping all your legitimate big hands with the assumption that the tilter will raise, get a bunch of callers, and allow you to threebet, trapping many players for multiple bets when you have them badly behind.

[Robk]

Adjusting your strategy to a maniac can be tricky- there are no quick rules you can learn. If you own HPFAP, there is a section about adjusting your play to a maniac. ITPM by John Feeney has a more complete strategy that includes information about postflop play, if you want to read more.