Ran into a true maniac (low content)

[ckessel]

On PP last night, 2/4 table and ran into my first true maniac. I've seen aggressive, and call everything types. But this guy played about 80% of the pots and raised almost every single preflop, flop, and turn. Dropped 400 in about 2 hours I think.

Some interesting things. He was on my left. Not where you usually want a maniac, but in this case I was able to use his aggression by raising hands I'd normally just call from early position (ATo) banking on the fact he'd reraise and drive out a lot of hands or drag people along that would wither if their 88 didn't hit a set on the flop.

The other amazing thing was the shark effect. Blood in the water... The table started with me and mostly VPIP > 30 people. By the end of the 2 hours, it was the maniac, one other loose player, and 8 VPIP<22 folks.

Soon as the maniac busted out, the table instantly, I mean in one hand, dissolved.

[QTip]

Playing against a maniac is an art. An art I'm not good at yet. I've read the maniac section of HEPAP several times, but I've only had about 2 sessions with a true maniac, and I didn't do well. There are advantages to being on the left or the right. The nice thing is that you're almost always the button in the hand.

One thing I have noticed is that you can expect larger swings either way when you're trying to exploit a maniac.

A couple of months ago, the craziest maniac I've ever seen came into a party 2/4 game and it really got wild. The player sitting to the right of her won $500 in about 1 1/2 hours.

For me, it's tough to adjust. I ran into 1 a couple of weeks ago, and just found another game...I'm just not ready yet to exploit the maniac with expert play.