[lucky_mf]

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I was facing a 9 handed table with 6 players left of me, varying from weak/tight to semi-aggressive/tight. Next to them sat a maniac who seemed to hit all the time, raising a lot PF, floating and reraising, and dominating the table. After him was a solid TAG player who didn’t seem to catch playable hands. I had big trouble adjusting my game here. My PF raises only made everyone without monster hands fold, and the super LAG player seemed to get the best of me all the time, pushing me into a weak-tight game I normally never play. Most of the time, he had position on me, and I never quite knew where I stood with my holdings (no physical tells).

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If he is sitting 7 spaces to your left in a 9-handed game he should not have position on you often unless you are playing your BB against his button.

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How would you guys handle this situation? I know I should consider better table selection, but I want to be able to beat this kind of game too.

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I typically tighten up and try to play hands when I have a positional advantage. For example, I would not be calling in the BB just because he is loose on the button.

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Should I shift to LAG play in this situation? Can anybody give me some good pointers or point me to a place to begin studying some LAG play against a weak tight table? (since I’m not use to play like this).

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This is probably the worst thing you can do. Although a LAG approach works best against weak tight opponents, it is probably not the best approach versus a super LAG.

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Should I start making stands against the maniac with weaker holdings like J9o? How do I crack his game on this table? Or should I just get out of his way?

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Play tight and punish him when he gets out of line and you actually have a pat hand (like top pair decent kicker). There are different kinds of laggy players and maniacs. I actually think it is pretty pointless trying to bluff a pure maniac. His mistake is playing too many hands, too aggressively. The way to exploit this is to make a hand get paid off - either by value betting and having him call you down light or by letting him bluff his chips off to you. You should observe his play and see which strategy is likely to work better.

If he can fold a hand, then you may try to bluff him. You just have to be careful to come up with a realistic line as he is probably pretty accustomed to people trying to bluff him.

Lucky