Beating the maniac

[PuertoKid]

I've generally had problems figuring out how to deal with a maniac or overaggro player. I think I figured it out 2 days ago in a 1/2 6-max session with a player two to my left who raised every hand and bet/raised every flop, frequently capping.

This guy got on a lucky run and his stack went from 50 to over 150 and everyboyd at the table was frustrated.

The way that worked for me was to play semi-tight, super aggressive poker. Since he was 2 to my left and I knew he would always raise, I could use him as a multiplier effect. Whenever I got a playable hand I always raised. The person between me and maniac knew it would be reraised, so he folded unless he had something good. Everybody else would face 3 cold and they learned from experience I was probably going to reraise again, and they were aware enough to know I wasn't playing crap. This allowed me to frequently isolate the maniac on my good holdings.

I certainly had some ups and downs in that session, but ended up +50BB when he finally busted out 2 hours later.

Last night I played against a very aggressive person who wasn't quite as maniac, but who frequently raised marginal holdings and always bet out when checked to him. He too got lucky and tripled his stack. I decided to follow a similar strategy against him. He was to my right, so when he raised I had a way to try to isolate him. In this case I lost my entire stack and faced frequent taunting, insults, and mockery from him. But I knew he was just getting lucky so I rebought and kept up the strategy. At the end of the session 1.5 hours later I was able to bounce back and take most of his stack before he abruptly left. I ended up +24BB in that session. (interesting side point is that other players would come and leave pretty quickly amid the hyper aggression)

In either of those sessions I could have lost more if either of these players continued to get lucky. But I believe that I have found the right way to deal with these situations. They can be frustrating, but they are tremendously +EV situations. Of course, the risk is also high if the board goes against you.

Against the maniac or over aggro: semi-tight, super aggressive. Isolate, isolate, isolate.

Now I need to figure out how to deal with this situation in the NL games. The varaiance there could potentially be huge in employing this strategy. Played a little $25 6-max at PP yesterday against another over aggro but was afraid to do the same thing because of the potential super high negative variance. I guess that means I should stay away from NL.

Any folks have suggestions for this situation in NL?

[bottomset]

maniacs are great to have at the table if you can isolate them, and they aren't on insane rushes of cards ... but you can lose a lot if they are connecting

correction 1 maniac is good to have, 2(or more) gets too crazy