Dealing with a maniac

[frankg]

Recently, a friend of mine who I play home games with totally changed his playing style. He used to be a tight player, sort of in the middle between aggressive and passive. Now all of a sudden he became a loose aggressive player, and he's winning our $10 NL tourneys 80% of the time! What bothers me is that for the past two weeks he has been getting really lucky. He's making his straights, boats, and two pair on 5th street. He's betting big with mediocre hands that turn into monsters on 4th and 5th St. His run of luck is scaring people out whenever he bets big, which is about 85% of the time.

Obviously, his luck has to run out sometime. And I'm not one that is willing to be intimidated with his betting style. According to Sklansky, to deal with a maniac I must become even tighter and play only high cards and mid - high pocket pairs and try to isolate him in order to go heads up. I should stay away from drawing hands, which lose their value in this situation. If I'm on his left I should re-raise, and if i'm on his right I should check-raise, only with big hands. This sounds good to me, but is there something that I'm missing? I want to fully understand what I have to do in order to keep this guy in control and turn the tides.

[RED_RAIN]

I had a similar situation in a ring game Saturday.

Played with a new player. He had played before so I knew he knew his stuff at least above a basic level.

He would raise an insane amount preflop, if the pot was small on the flop, he would bet large on top pairs, and call large on draws.

The 3 other players were all horrible players, calling the huge raise with Q5o and such.

What I did was just wait for huge hands AJ and above or pocket pairs Ts and above. I would often reraise preflop, not going for a lot of check/raising if the pot was large as he was likely to check since if I was in the pot he usually slowed down.

He would sometimes make very large bets when I was in the pot, and I only needed to call when I knew I was likley ahead, and with him doing it so much, he was bound to go against me when I had a monster hand.

In the beginning he took a quick lead and had 3 buy-in worths of people's money. At the end of the night I had everyone's money except for one person who was one of the horrible players who I would have gotten it if it weren't for an all-in by him with the maniac when I had Qs, don't know what the maniac had, and lost to Js who rivered a set.

[Arnie]

You pretty much answered your own question..one thing i enjoy doing is putting the maniac all in before he has a chance to bet, or bet anyone out. This will make him think twice betting it to you. If you have the heat, make enormous re-raises to make it look like your buying the pot, if he folds thats great...it will tighten him up, if he calls...all the better [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Just do your best to get him out of his comfort zone, he feels like he owns the table now, put him on his heels

[GuidoSarducci]

It looks like you're on the right path with how to deal with this guy. The key to beating a maniac is isolating him. In no limit, if he's truely a maniac, he'll either go away fast or become a chip monster fast. Either way, it's to your advantage. If he's gone, obviously, you can get back to your game. If he's the monster, he'll likely become even more reckless with his chips and you can punish him mercilessly for it. I especially love a maniac to my left because when you're holding the absolute nuts you don't need to finesse at all; he does all the betting for you.

Maniacs are scary because they put everyone to a decision, and a maniac that catches cards is <s>Phil Hellmuth</s> incredibly hard to beat.

I wonder too... Given that a "maniac" is one who raises every hand and every card regardless of if it helped him or not, are we looking at a true "maniac" or has he just becomes incredibly aggressive? Maniacs you beat with cards. Ultra-aggressive guys you beat with aggressiveness.

Have fun!