Having a maniac on the PLO table results in different responses on its occupants – some players will enjoy their aggressiveness, others will feel threatened making them play poorly. It may sound strange to you but a lot of poker players don’t enjoy having a maniac on their table, they are not ready to be on a war of raises heads-up against a maniac unless they have an AAxx hand. They protest having this kind of action player in their midst instead of welcoming the change.

In the subsequent instances, we will be using this maniac profile: A player who always raises first on the initial round of the game and have the guts to re-raise 95% in one hand. This maniac personality tries to get the pot before the flop opens.

Familiarizing yourself in having a maniac in your game is not an easy task – you need to do it strategically like what you do in all your poker base decisions. You are required to dump all your assumptions about everything including isolation, loosening up and maniac adjustments. You need to look at it at different sides so you can see the bigger picture.

Here are the three things that needs to undergone some changes:

Your position relative to the maniac
The adjustment of other players
How you deal with large swings

Your position relative to the maniac and the adjustment of other players on the situation go together and need to be analyzed together.

You have position against the maniac and the other players loosened their play.

Whenever you’re sitting to the maniac’s left side then the way of thinking would be to isolate everyone by re-raising the pot. The problem would be – if the players knew what you’re doing then you need to make developments on your game to hide your true purpose. This is due to the fact that if they knew that you’re isolating them; they will start repotting and you will find yourself into an impossible situation to contend with.

Just be careful in your isolation attempts especially if all the other players have loosened up. You’ll never know that you and the maniac are the ones being isolated until it’s too late.

You have position relative to the maniac but the other players has not adapted to his presence

If the other players don’t mind that you and the maniac go head to head then it’s the right moment for you to raise and re-raise as you like it.

But always be careful especially if there’s a player who will smooth call or re-raise you. He might have a powerhouse and they are just letting the maniac do the betting to admit additional players.
The maniac has position and the other players have loosened up

In order to best the maniac who has position on you is to let him do the betting – which essentially can trap others into the pot. This is one of the best moments you’ll have while others would argue that having position over a maniac can help in isolation – this is a better alternative – limping-in and let the maniac do the raising. This will get you a number of callers and at the right moment you can gamble a big raise to isolate the maniac with a large pot sitting on the table.

The maniac has position on you and the table has not loosened up

If the players have not adjusted due to the maniac’s attendance then it’s up to you to raise and just hope that the maniac will re-raise which should isolate most of the field. Then if you have a powerhouse hand, you can go all in or take a flop with enough amounts of chips behind.

In Pot Limit games it’s better to keep your raises and re-raises lower most especially in the subsequent circumstances: You don’t want to flipping against a maniac with no AAxx of KK/QQ in hand. It will be better if you established a considerable pot then get the best of it after the flop. In this instance, you won’t be regretting if you have to fold your hand when the flop is not favorable.

For example, you’re playing $2/$4 stakes in PLO where the buy-in would $400. The usual raise on this stake would $14. What you should do is to open up with $8-$10 or you can re-raise the minimum amount so that you won’t be betting too many chips before the flop is shown.

If the maniac opens with $14, re-raise it to $28 – this move can give you a breather to fold your hand when a locksmith re-raise after you. You can also call the maniac’s 3-bet which would be $90 heads-up or $118 with another caller in tow. With this, you’ll be left approximately $300 – then you can re-raise it to $276 and then to $300 – effectively making the push.

However, if you have to re-pot the initial raise of the maniac for $48 – it would be giving away more than 10% of your chips. You will certainly fold if it happens that a locksmith re-raises and calling out the maniac’s 3-bet will be giving away $150 a very huge part of your stack.

There are a lot of ways to deal with a maniac in the PLO table but bear in mind that not all maniacs should be treated this way because there are different levels of a maniac to contend with.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 6:58 am and is filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.