[sweetjazz]

Raising 2 out of 50 hands preflop is an indication that he is passive preflop. It's not a huge sample size, but it's worth making an inference based on. His range obviously could be wider than 4% of hands, but it's really unlikely to be very wide.

HOWEVER, I don't think the fact that he raises about 5% of the time preflop necessarily means he raises with the BEST 5% of his hands. He might slowplay big pairs and be raising with suited nonsense or the such here. It would be very helpful to have seen which two hands villain showed down when he raised preflop earlier, or at least one of them. (Also noteworthy would be if he folded by the river, which he almost certainly wouldn't do with a big PP or even big overcards.)

Also, a better read on the TAG would help. Has he been isolating the maniacs limps so far. Has he been at the table with you and the maniac for a while? Even so, he might be isolating with a weak hand here. If the TAG has been folding a lot since the maniac sat down, then I might consider folding, as it is less likely he is isolating with a weak hand.

I do think you have to cap here PF with TT without a better read, but it's close. It might be right to fold 99 here and it's probably right to fold 88 here. And I would certainly fold TT here if I had good reason to believe the maniacs PF raise standards were JJ -- AA and AK. But I think there's enough reason to doubt this, even though he hasn't raised much preflop, to play on. Or if I knew the TAG didn't know how to adjust to the maniac.

Also, as a general comment on post-flop play, I don't recommend raising at any point postflop in order to get information, because you basically can't fold preflop unless the TAG keeps raising to knock you out. You should raise for value based on your reads, and at a certain point you're probably just looking to see a showdown if the maniac keeps playing back at you. Obviously, aggression from the TAG is much more problematic and might cause you to lay down your hand.