Re: How to play the worst maniac I\'ve seen?
If everyone else at the table is loosening up, you simply cannot. You must play your solid hands but expect to have high variance. I'm not folding AJo ever preflop in a situation like this, but if everyone else is NOT adjusting to the maniac, I'm threebetting A6o. With everyone else making proper or somewhat proper adjustments, A6o is an easy muck.
Whether to loosen up or not depends on the other players in the game. If you do loosen up, it should always be with a preflop reraise of the maniac. If people are letting you isolate, you want to be on the maniac's left and do a lot of threebetting to get the pot heads up, with the intention of seeing the showdown with any hand that you're threebetting. If the rest of the table is loosening up, you want to be on the maniac's right so that you can checkraise the field after the maniac bets.
-Michael
|