Playing Against The Maniacs (Old Hand Dissertation)

[RemyXO]

Boys and girls, I want talk to you about maniacs today. There are several flavors of loose-aggressive players, and I want to address the true LAGtards. They are the ones you mother and David Sklansky warned you about. They are 75/49/5.5. They always raise and reraise regardless of their holdings. They can fold to a bet on the river after capping the turn. They are not playing poker, they are playing lottery. They are like a monkey with a grenade – you never know which way it’s gonna throw it.

Why do people hate playing against maniacs?

(1) When a maniac sits down, the table dynamics change dramatically. The center or gravity shifts to the maniac.
(2) Other opponents, who seem to have been playing decent poker, start playing seemingly crazy and unpredictably.
(3) You are losing your reads on other players, and it’s tough to get a read on the maniac.
(4) You can’t put the maniac on a hand, he seems to have absolutely random holdings all the time.
(5) Almost every pot becomes raised and reraised preflop, making it expensive to enter and more expensive to continue.
(6) You go to showdown and lose big pots with hands that you would have mucked on the flop in a regular game.
(7) You go to showdown and lose big pots with great holdings that were rivered by the unlikeliest of hands.
(8) You start experiencing big swings in your stack.
(9) As a cumulative effect of all of the above, you start losing faith in your game and go on tilt.

To play a maniac, first of all you need to get yourself mentally ready to play with new conditions:

(1) You must have good position on the maniac to play profitably. The best seat is immediately to his left. Personally, I find it optimal to be one seat off on his left. He’ll be raising his garbage on the button and I will pay only 1 small bet from the BB to look him up. Plus dead money from the player in between will be trapped on a lot of hands. If you don’t have position on the maniac, get up and go to another table or wait for a better seat to open. One exception is when the maniac reraises most of the hands preflop, then it’s good to be sitting to his immediate right in order for isolation play to work. It is very hard to play profitably if a maniac or two are across the table. Try it. It sucks.

(2) Maniacs are great friends to your bankroll, if you play them properly. They are disastrous if you don’t adjust. All maniacs will lose their money eventually, you need to make sure that money joins your stack.

(3) Tell yourself the truth – the game has changed. You can no longer play your usual style of poker and expect to win. Just the fact that you are better player won’t make you win against the maniac, you have to change your usual TAG strategy.

(4) Get mentally ready for huge swings in your stack. Realize that most pots will be very large and losing/winning just one of them will often make 20BB difference. If you are not prepared for it, leave the table.

(5) Don’t let your ego get in the way of rational poker thinking. Acknowledge that the maniac is now the table captain, and he will be running all over everyone at the table. He will take down a lot of pots when everyone folds preflop and when everyone misses the flop. Don’t try to play the same maniacal aggressive game that he is – he’s definitely better at it than you are! Let others try to put the maniac “in his place” – he will become and intermediary pipe, tunneling their money to you! Make him play YOUR game, don’t try to play HIS.

Okey, the Hero got into a good seat relative to the LAGtard and the cards are in the air! The next step is to observe the maniac’s actions closely whether you are in or out of the hand. Believe it or not, there is usually some kind of logic behind his actions. Try to decipher what the voices are telling him to do, so that you will be in position to extract more profits or save some bets.

Patterns in the maniac's play to look for:

- Preflop standards (if you can call them that). Some will raise any two cards, some will raise any face card with deuce kicker. Some will raise any pair, Ax, Kx, Qx and limp otherwise. What does he 3-bet with? What would he cold-call with? How does he react to being 3-bet? This will help to narrow down his hand postflop, possibly. Note that a maniac is almost never positionally aware.

- Flop aggression patterns. How does he play his TPNK? Does he bet/3bet with bottom pair no kicker? Does he jam his draws? If he ever slows down – why?

- Reaction to counter-aggression. Some maniacs will keep betting or raising no matter what. Some will hit the brakes after being reraised and call to showdown with any junk, but keep reraising on the turn with good holdings. Does the maniac cease the initiative after being 3-bet preflop? If not, what is he likely to be donking with?

- Slowplaying. A lot of LAGtards like playing backwards-ass poker. They jam with air and slowplay premium hands till they are blue in the face (copyright MrWookie). Watch out for slowplaying patterns where you can safely fold you’re A-high.


Here’s what needs to be adjusted in your typical TAG/SLAG strategy:

<font color="blue">Isolation Raising</font>

This is your biggest bazooka in the arsenal against the maniac. You want to always get into the pot heads up. This is why seating is very important. Iso raise here is partially for value, but mostly to get the pot HU against a weak player and have the rest of the field facing three bets cold. Of course, you don’t want to be iso-raising too many hands and turn into a LAGtard yourself – the idea is to get into HU pot with a much better hand on average! You would muck A9o against a rock raising in EP, but you must 3-bet it against a maniac! But if you iso-raise too much and show down subpar hands, other opponents will pick up on this and start playing back at you now.

<font color="blue">Loosen Up Your Preflop Play</font>

This goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph – when the maniac opens the pot, you should be willing to 3-bet with much wider range of hands than usual. Primarily, hands that have showdown value UI – A9+, KT+, QJ, 77+ (maybe more, depending on his raising standards). Low suited connectors and bottom pairs go down in value HU as you usually won’t have the odds to continue. Also be very wary of entering the pot if another player besides the maniac is already in, you’ll need a very good hand to withstand postflop action – tighten up in those situations.

<font color="blue">Loosen up Your Postflop Play</font>

Loosening up postflop is critical. You will start will better hands (on average) that villain, but oftentimes both of you won’t flop much of a hand. If you routinely muck you’re A-high or bottom pair to his c-bets, he’ll be taking down a lot of pots and you’ll be losing value. I know it’s very frustrating when you throw away a weak middle pair, and villain shows down and wins with K-high. Conversely, when you have a good hand and build a big pot, he shows down a monster. This is normal, it’s just the nature of the beast.
Hopefully you can decipher some of the villain’s betting patterns to help you decide when to call down with a middle pair or A-high. Maybe he’s weak when he only bet/calls the flop? Maybe he’s superstrong when check-raises the turn versus donking?
But you need to start calling down when you have a semblance of a good hand. I read people say “I don’t want to turn into a calling station” – well, that’s the right strategy here! That’s smart poker! Remember – your hands are actually better than they look! Middle pair/top kicker heads up is a very good hand! Top pair is a monster!

<font color="blue"> When to Jam For Value </font>
Obviously, you would do it when you flop a monster – two pair of better. Don’t try to slowplay a maniac, he’s willing to call and raise you anyway! He’s here to gamb00l, so your exquisite traps will only result in lost value bets. An exception would be a LAG that is somewhat rational postflop and can slow down or fold to aggression – then you can sit back and let him fire his chips at you. Get some extra racks ready, it’s a payday!

You should also often bet and raise for value lesser holdings. This becomes more dependent on the villain’s patterns – if he is willing to 3-bet the flop with any pair or a draw, go ahead and cap it with TPTK and lead the turn! Just don’t forget – a maniac is entitled to his share of great hands. If you suspect he’s got you – hit the breaks.

<font color="blue"> The Other Nine People At The Table </font>

W00t?? They are still here?? They will also be reacting to the presence of the maniac. Some decent players will turn into LAGs themselves! Some decent players will be trying iso-raises themselves, maybe 3-betting YOU this time! Some solid players will lose a couple of big pots to the maniac and go on tilt! Usually, their game will change in one way or another and you need to take a careful note of their adjustments. You will end up playing with others in a hand, and this information will be very handy. Most of the time, however, you should be playing your typical solid poker, if the maniac is not involved.

Sometimes you will find yourself in a multiway pot. Sitting to the left of the LAG is very key here, since you can knock people out with raises on the flop. However, if the other opponent indicates that he’s got a hand, you will need a very strong holding to continue, since you are in essence squeezed in the middle of raising warfare! Time to let go of your middle pair or A-high!

Lastly, you should also use the same strategies against donkeys who are stacking off. They can't wait to give their money away. You can't wait to take it. The above tells you how.

In the next edition, I will post some actual hands to illustrate some of the concepts. Happy LAG hunting [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

And yeah … when the LAGtard berates you in the chatbox for calling down with AJo UI and taking down the pot, send him this (courtesy of Befolder):

[MrWookie]

I've just skimmed this because I'm going to bed, but this is a good post.

[ciro bonano]

[ QUOTE ]
I've just skimmed this because I just woke up, but this is a good post.

[/ QUOTE ]

[LegendLength]

Good post. I will add that one of the things that used to ruin my own play against maniacs was lack of patience. I would start loosening up way too much because I was scared that they would bust or leave early and I wouldn't get any part of it. I lost a few stacks that way and after becoming more patient found that it made a huge difference to profits.

[Guitierez]

Awesome post! Thanks for putting it together.

Hope to see more of your +EV contributions.

[Bona]

I agree that I seem to be seeing a few more LAG and semiLAG players. I agree they are very hard to read. But I'm not sure I can agree that a general loosening up to exploit them is the way forward. I remain convinced that, over time, in a FR limit format cash game with a standard blind structure, LAGS and Semi LAGS cannot exploit sound, tight aggressive play.

IMHO there is a big difference between expert play and choosing an optimal default style. (I have neither but I have an opinion [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) Likely the TAG style is optimum against a truly unknown player but since an expert player will rather quickly get accurate reads and adapt his style to the individual players in the hand, perhaps some expert players are misread as LAGS or semiLAG.

I think SLAG may be a must learn style if you want to play SH, HU, or play in an increasing blinds format. I suspect it deserves a lot of thought and learning for use against specific players situationally. I think, by definition though, an expert player makes good reads and plays what appears to be LAG, SLAG, or TAG situationally based on their reads.

So I believe the way forward is working on getting accurate reads of individual players and using them with confidence. Just like it always has been. And that will require me to learn to play the same hands differently against different players. But not to loosen up or tighten up in general. I think over a hundred thousand hands an expert player will have similar VPIP stats as mine and many other similar stats; but with a higher win rate. While a "non expert" LAG or SLAG will not have a win rate.

I don't know if I said anything understandable here or not but I tried. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Befolder]

I will go as far as to day this is a "great" post and not just good. Well thought out and presented.

I would like to add one thing that I didn't see mentioned, though I started skimming towards the end due to length.

Something I've noticed about playing these guys HU, there is really no value in semi-bluffing since we are very very likely to be reraised and part of the value of semi-bluffing is the fold equity we have. Most of these guys would rather have a nice plate of cow tripe than fold.

So, if you have a draw, play it more passively until you get something worth putting extra money in the pot with.

Of course if it's some sort of monster straight flush draw w/ overcards, then go nuts because you're probably the favorite.
[img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[RemyXO]

[ QUOTE ]
I will go as far as to day this is a "great" post and not just good. Well thought out and presented.

[/ QUOTE ]

I love you too, princess [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]

I would like to add one thing that I didn't see mentioned, though I started skimming towards the end due to length.

Something I've noticed about playing these guys HU, there is really no value in semi-bluffing since we are very very likely to be reraised and part of the value of semi-bluffing is the fold equity we have. Most of these guys would rather have a nice plate of cow tripe than fold.

So, if you have a draw, play it more passively until you get something worth putting extra money in the pot with.

Of course if it's some sort of monster straight flush draw w/ overcards, then go nuts because you're probably the favorite.
[img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Very good points, something I forgot to mention.
I talked about slowplaying only, but it should be generalized to say that DECEPTIVE PLAYS IN GENERAL (bluffing, semi-bluffing, slowplaying, etc) will be completely lost on the maniacs. Don't even bother. Stick to the straight value plays and take it to the bank.

[RemyXO]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree that I seem to be seeing a few more LAG and semiLAG players. I agree they are very hard to read. But I'm not sure I can agree that a general loosening up to exploit them is the way forward. I remain convinced that, over time, in a FR limit format cash game with a standard blind structure, LAGS and Semi LAGS cannot exploit sound, tight aggressive play ...

[/ QUOTE ]

Bona, my post is not about LAGs or SLAGs. My post is about MANIACS. Guys with 75/49/3.0. Guys with voices in their heads. Or really really drunk ones. Smart SLAGs with 25/14/3.5 FR stats are a different beast and I wasn't trying to address playing against them here.

[cmcneilly]

[ QUOTE ]
(5) Don’t let your ego get in the way of rational poker thinking. Acknowledge that the maniac is now the table captain, and he will be running all over everyone at the table. He will take down a lot of pots when everyone folds preflop and when everyone misses the flop. Don’t try to play the same maniacal aggressive game that he is – he’s definitely better at it than you are! Let others try to put the maniac “in his place” – he will become and intermediary pipe, tunneling their money to you! Make him play YOUR game, don’t try to play HIS.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what helped me the most when playing LAGTards. I kept seeing them steal blinds and win a ton of small pots and got pissed, which made me play badly. Once I started thinking of them as simply collecting everybody else's money into a new pot (their bankroll) and that it makes it much, much easier for me to get at, than I looked forward to money moving into their stack. I want this guy to be the 2nd biggest winner at the table after me. Those chips are one step closer if they are in his stack.