Playing like a maniac

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Last week I sat down at a 6 max NL $25 table at UB. I soon recognized there was a maniac at the table. He raised and reraised almost every pot. After watching this for some orbits, me and another player started playing back at him. After some more orbits he left. I guess because he realized that 2 players started to play back at him. I put a note on him and a day later, I met him again. This time, I played several hundreds of hands with him, but he played normal, nothing really unusual happend.

Sometimes I wonder whether a maniac is a "true maniac" or whether someone from an upper level is running a test at a lower level for whatever reason, maybe to impove his skills or to test typical reactions of other players at this level where it is cheap to run that test.

Now, here's my question:
Did You ever try such an approach and what were Your experiences? Did You loose or win money temporarily turning into a manic at Your normal or at a lower level? Did You improve Your skills by trying that a few times, maybe to become more comfortable in reraised pots or to improve Your reads on other played in expensive pots?

It's rare, but sometimes over months it happens that a maniac-like player sits down at a table, only to play a few orbits, takes a few reraised pots without having to go to a showdown and then disappears before other players start to adapt their playing styles and call him down. I wonder anytime I see this - it is rare but it happens maybe once in a month - whether these kind of players are true maniacs, whether these are tryouts from better players or whether there is some kind of strategy behind it.

[manwithhex]

Heh. You make it sound like theres an evil masterplan to create an army of zombiemaniacs to take over the smaller limits..

I play NL4, and mostly this way. Though I raise like only 70% of pots sometimes calming down to almost 30%. But when opponents fold to cb's and play really passivelly, we can get them to tighten down and play really, really predictably and weak by playing selectively maniac ourselves.

PS. My first post. Its pretty unorganized..

EDIT: Its possible to play long sessions this way in my NL4. I guess that in bigger limits some people adjust to the "smarter" maniacs; hence the shorter sessions. Hope I make sense. My native language isn't English.

[carnivalhobo]

moving down several levels and playing super LAG is fun, i buddylisted a 10/20NL+ reg who was just blowing off steam at one of my tables one day.

[Dave I]

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Heh. You make it sound like theres an evil masterplan to create an army of zombiemaniacs to take over the smaller limits..

I play NL4, and mostly this way. Though I raise like only 70% of pots sometimes calming down to almost 30%. But when opponents fold to cb's and play really passivelly, we can get them to tighten down and play really, really predictably and weak by playing selectively maniac ourselves.

PS. My first post. Its pretty unorganized..

EDIT: Its possible to play long sessions this way in my NL4. I guess that in bigger limits some people adjust to the "smarter" maniacs; hence the shorter sessions. Hope I make sense. My native language isn't English.

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All non-americans play every limit this way. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

FWIW - I guess this works for the most part but I personally love maniacs. You won't be able to easily do this at higher limits as it's trivial to adjust.

[deception5]

It's also possible he was drunk.

[Shaddux]

Yeah I played with a drunk 2+2er the other day. He went AI almost every hand and was happy when I stacked him lol.

[Masterplan]

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Heh. You make it sound like theres an evil masterplan to create an army of zombiemaniacs to take over the smaller limits.

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you rang?

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All non-americans play every limit this way. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]


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we certainly do not

[Bowlboy]

I've done this a few times. I didnt drop down though, but I only play $10 6max on stars with .05 BB. This is the ideal limit for this because 1) Your opponents are usually very weak passive and dumb. 2) The stacks are quite deep.

People at lower limits dont really know how to play back properly. They will get annoyed with all your raising and eventually start playing back at you or leave. The probelme is, they are weak, and not very smart. They want to play back at you with hands like ATs or medium pocket pairs, but they are especially afraid of you outplaying them after the flop. So they often will push PF. Yes they will. You can almost break even or better playing this style by getting some players to fold flops to cbets and getting a little luck on flops with your junk hands.
This will cause at least a couple of players to tilt. If you can pull this off for a good number of hands, sooner or later you are being dealt AA, KK, QQ and getting hands like JJ down to reraise your "junk raise" all-in. You also get players to push against you on drawy boards where they have tptk or 2pair when you hold a set. They think that because you are so aggressive you will take a worse hand to the felt with them. They also feel that this is the only way they can protect their hand.