[TeeVeeDude]

I've been playing the .02/.04 tables at PokerStars for a couple of months now. Friday I saw something that I'd never seen before.

I'm at a table that's unusually tight for this limit, with a lot of hands being won without a showdown. A new guy joins the table, two seats to the left of me. He stands out before he plays his first hand, because the normal buy-in here is 40 cents and he buys in for $100.00.

He posts a blind, there are a few folds and a couple of callers, he raises, everybody folds.

Next hand he raises, everybody folds.

Next hand he raises, gets two callers. He raises the flop, one fold one call. On the turn he raises, gets re-raised, they cap the turn and the river. He shows down with a 9-3 offsuit that didn't match anything on the board, and loses to a pair of 7's.

Next hand I get a pair of jacks, the maniac and I cap every round of the betting, and he shows another rag hand -- I think this time he caught a piece of the flop and ended up with something like a pair of 4's.

Most of the folks as the table are still folding to his raises, so I loosen up my standards and start betting any ace, any two broadway, any two suited, etc. The maniac stays for about two orbits and when he leaves I'm up almost $5 -- over 100 BB's.

The really weird thing is that a couple of hours later, at a different table, a DIFFERENT maniac sits in. This one brings $4,000 to a .02/.04 table, and starts raising every hand. He didn't stick around as long as the first one, but he did make a nice contribution to may bankroll before he went.

And both of these guys were real loudmouths, berating the other players for poor play, trying to get the phone numbers of the female players, and just generally being obnoxious.

The most interesting thing is the reaction of the rest of the table to the maniacs. Most of the fish fall into one of two categories:

1) They fear the maniacs constant raising and fold with decent hands, or

2) They become maniacs themselves.

I haven't encountered these kinds of maniacs before, but working from general principles here's what I figured out:

Many players think that you must play tight at a loose table. But SSHE says that it is correct to play slightly tighter than the table, not overly tight.

So when a maniac will raise with any two cards, it is correct to play back at him with ALMOST any two cards. I was playing him with, as I said, any pocket pair, any ace, any two suited cards, any two connected cards. If the flop missed me I'd fold (but not with the pocket pairs since a pair of deuces was often good). If the flop hit me I'd play back at the maniac, capping every round of betting.

I'm not sure if this is optimum strategy against a maniac, but it seemed to work. I'd appreciate comments from those with more experience.