Hyper aggressive

[PokerFoo]

forgive the bump. I just needed to vent.

Happened to me again just now at UB. Sit N Go. half the table appears to be maniac. Watched the first 3 rounds without playing a hand. Every time there is a pre flop raise same 3 players I have tagged as insane call. 2 of them are way up, one is about out. The man to my left I target as the guy I want to double up through. I get Kings and make a 150 chip raise. Slightly higher than a pot sized raise because the pot sized raises seem to be encouraging calls instead of thinning the field. Sure enough the man to my left calls and we picked up one in the back. Flop 10 5 2 rainbow. I bet slightly more than half the size of the pot and get reraised all in by the man on my left. Button folds. I call knowing theres a HUGE chance he is weak. He has 10 8 offsuit. Turn is another blank, I start grinning then BAM he catches the 8 on the river. IM out.

These players are so frustrating.

[golFUR]

Expanding upon the solid maniac vs. the ridiculous maniac... You ran into a very bad player there. Put a note under his name and hope to run into him again, he is going to pay you off a lot more often than not...

UB's Bet Pot button is a curse, I hate hate hate it. It was good to hear that you were betting slightly off amounts, I've had much better results with those as well. It lets people know that you thought about your bet rather than relying on UBs thinking.

Some further details on playing w/ these freaks.

So, KK in middle position with a maniac behind you? Betting a bit less than pot also seems about right. A lot of times a pot bet seems like overkill to me. What I want is something about two and a half times, rounded to convenient round number, of the BB or whatever is the most someone has come in for so far (You are looking at a single picture with 9 ppl in it, but they are making decisions still one at a time.) On that flop however you let the maniac influence you a bit too much and may have invited his response. Granted it should have worked for you, but if you are worried more about continued existence than getting all in on a single good odds situation... I'd have lead out about 180-200 or so. I have a strong overpair on a pretty safe flop. A set would be trouble but they would tell you they had one in their reraise. So you bet out an amount that is appropriate to a strong hand but doesn't look overly defensive, it looks like, maybe, could it be? yup, he wants a call. A smart maniac will likely reraise you w/ his top pair just to verify what you are on or to get more info, he might even call, guessing he is behind, to see another card and go for the suckout. A stupid maniac will do something stupid... bet pot, go all in, whatever. You can safely call that, they can't always suck out. (It just seems like it.)

I had a big problem with suck outs as well. Getting tossed out of a SnG by cheese would rile me for an hour. As a defense I began betting my monster pockets much more heavily, trying to tell everyone at the table to go away, it's mine. This didn't seem to help. Stupid people you can't do anything for, bad maniacs take big bets as personal attacks on their egos and anyone who wants to play you ends up being pot committed and increases your chances of hitting a rotten river.

So, I tried getting a bit more subtle and relying on the math a bit more. I'd bet amounts on solid hands that would encourage a call or a testing reraise. I'd wait for turn to really dump the chips on em, or as soon as they showed too much interest in the hand.

I'm sure this line can be argued against easily but it is what has worked for me.

Weigh your desire to continue in the SnG vs. your desire to go all the way on a certain pocket, figure out your % to win on the flop and same question. Rough math says he had 1 in 7 to beat you after the flop? Go for the smaller raise, let him call along w/ his pair, get ready to walk away if he catches that 1 in 7 but otherwise don't expect to go all in until turn or even better until river.

And again, this is based on how I play, not a specific book or necessarily good math. If an experienced poster or players sees a flaw here, please point it out immediately, as I could use the advice as well.

[PokerFoo]

Hmm, So perhaps keeping the pots small and only continuing with a set or better against these types is appropriat. Had I limped or made a smaller raise I most certainly would have been in with 4 or 5 callers instead of 2 though. And because these types are so willing to shove all-in it may not have mattered after the flop anyway.

I'm not sure sitting around waiting for a monster after the flop is correct either though. That seems a little weak tight.

My stack was about 875 at the start of the hand vs the 3k+ the maniac had. Avoiding him was not an option because he was in every hand.

This seems to be the norm for sit-n-go's though. More often than not I see at least 3 or 4 of these types at the table and one or 2 of them get lucky up front to create a big enough stack to be scary for the rest of the game. And why I find them to be THE most frustrating to play against.

I can't see how calling a large raise pre flop with 10 8 offsuit and then re-raising all-in on the flop with top pair and a kicker smaller than the board would indicate a solid maniac though. I'll keep him labled as kookie in my notes.

BTW, this guy made first. And must have seen 97% of the flops.