For some reason I often find myself having a rough ride against loose aggressive players, when playing 6-handed. Yesterday I ran into a guy who proved particularly tricky, and I would like some inputs on how to play this guy.
He sees the flop 80% and raise it in half of those times. On the flop he calls appr. 60% of the times, raising on the flop half of those times. When he doesn't raise on the flop he will always raise or reraise on the turn. And no matter what you do from there he will call you down.
Pretty mechanic, but he doesn't exactly give away a lot of information on where he's at by this strategy, and he makes sure it's bloody expensive for you to find out.
How would you play such a guy?
If you insist on playing against him then it's more a battle of the player then the cards. Loose players in my experience are playing this way in order to disguise their good hands and aren't trying to win their bad hands necessarily. In most cases they want you to call and beat them with their junk so when their good hand comes you will be more likely to challenge. They keep the pots high in order to get their opponents comfortable with those amounts.
I call these guys the bully and recently posted a thread about it. Last thing I want to do however is put this guy on alert that I am on to him. It will simply make him play better and I don't want that at all. You need to grow some nads to play these people that's for sure because your paired 3's are often enough to beat them if you just have the nerve to call. You simply have to ask yourself how many good hands can this guy possibly have and go after him stealthily.
If you'd rather be blunt, then simply come over the top of him on everything and start pushing back. This could be far more costly for a few rounds, but you should shut him up. Only problem, as I mentioned before, he will start to play better and that's not necessarily a good thing.
Those players are really tough to crack, at least at short handed tables where you cannot afford to wait for a premium hand. When such a player is present, I play a little tighter and much more aggressive. Winning 60-70% of the showdowns against the maniac is usually enough to extract profit from him, but the real problem I have is beating the maniac but losing to another player. Therefore, I'd suggest sitting to the maniacs right if possible; having positional advantage to the maniac doesn't really matter, because he isn't giving away any information and this way you will have position to the rest of the table.
If you can tolerate him without tilting for some pretty long time, you have to play with him - such guys are source of income. The key, however, is to have him on your right, play tighter than usual and never or almost never chase him in multiway pots. The best two moves you do after his action are raise or fold and you do have to raise the hands that you would normally just call with. The most mental difficulty here is folding
your hands after his raises but that is what you should be able to do easy. But when a time come he will build the pots for you and you will actually manipulate him driving the betting pattern and taking the nice pots.
Really, which side of the maniac is it better to be on here. I'd prefer to be on his right and always checking (betting only if I want to 3 bet his raise) to him effectively getting last action on every round. Sitting on his left you can re-raise for isolation, but that ploy will only work as long as your opponents don't catch on and that won't really last too long if you have decent opponents. As bilo said, you have the position on the rest of the table and you're not giving up anything to him since he's going to bet anyway. I think you're looking to drag in the few monster pots and give up most of your marginal hands, but playing a few marginal hands to give him a false sense of confidence for when you do bring down the hammer.
I definatley want this guy on my right. When he raises I am 3 betting anything remotely reasonable. Once I notice he is raising way too often I have no problem 3 betting with QTo preflop. Assuming the rest of the field folds (tough for them to call 3 bets cold with hands like KQ, KJ, or pocket 8s) you are heads up with what is in all likelyhood a better hand and you have position.
In this situation I adjust my starting hands for the hands the maniac is going to play (another reason I need him on my right). Low to mid poockets are mucked along with low and mid suited connectors. High cards become gods and get 3 bet preflop. Most of the people I ran into like this when I played a lot of 6 handed would either bet out or check raise the flop. Not very often will they check/fold the flop after 3 bets preflop. Their preflop aggression just continues throughout the hand. Once you determine what kind of hand he bets out with and what hands he check raises you will have a pretty good idea where your at. Generally though against this type of player, any peice of the flop is worth a trip to the river.
I think referring to players who play like this as morons is a bit insulting. At low stakes NL I play tight, but once you move up to a higher blind level the players become tighter, and I find the best way to take advantage of this is to play super aggresive and pretty loose preflop. Just because I might raise 3 or 4 times the blind with 95 suited on the button doesnt mean I'm a moron, I'm just hoping to get it heads up and bet that the person doesnt hit a decent part of the flop to be able to call another one or 2 decent size bets. It takes balls though and you need to be aware of the type of player your up against. I think it's very hard to play against "maniacs" as they're making you play the way they want you to play, making you loosen up and making a few bad calls. You also have to change gears when you're the maniac aswell because once you're exposed the whole table will have you down as a useless player, so then is the time to start playing premium hands.
This is actually my main question here. Should I bet to try to isolate, or just call pre-flop and wait till I hit a hand. When a maniac is present, people start disregarding aces alltogether, and you therefore often get some monster family pots built pre-flop. When this happens, people have pot odds (or think they do) to stick around with anything. When you keep it small you might get some better tools for limiting the field after the flop. So should I simply stop start raising altogether here?
This post assumes you're sitting on the maniac's left.
I think it will depend on your opponents other than the maniac. He's going to play generally the same way, but the rest of the field is what you have to look out for. When they catch on to your isolation raises and start capping your 3bet with medium hands as well, then it's probably in your best interest to find a new table. Tightening up is not an option for me shorthanded, you're paying too much in blinds to wait around for monsters.
I think just calling the maniac with intention of folding if the flop misses is your worst option here. He'd be getting at least 5:1 on his flop bluffs (if you just called him) so if you fold to him more than 20% of the time it's automatically profitable to him to bet! You're just plain giving your money to him in that scenario and achieving his goals for him. I think anytime you manage to get it heads-up with the maniac, you gotta grit your teeth and go to showdown. If you get involved in a multiway capped pot, then your pot odds should dictate your path but it is going to get expensive because you're probably ahead of the maniac but behind the rest of the field, who now has position on you putting you in bad shape to get whipsawed. If you don't get whipsawed, then you should get good odds to chase just about any 5-outer and up, but it's going to be a highly variant but profitable situation. However, a few of these capped multiway pots should make up for your losses. In the multiway situation, One win will breakeven with two losses if you call all bets on the river. However, if you don't call on the river when you don't improve then one win should make up for about 3 losses or so.
If you have just one maniac and a weak-tight field, then that's your dream! If a weak-tighty caps it behind you, then you are behind and you'll have to imrpove to win but you gotta call for the 11:1 right now plus the huge implied odds. Add in another agressive player behind you to the mix and you're in bad shape. Too much gambling and "hit to win" for my tastes, but I prefer less variance even at the expense of some profit.
I see this guy is being called a maniac now. I don't see it that way. A true maniac is typically a bad player and requires far less strategy to outplay. This guy sounds more like a bully who knows exactly what he's doing. You try to play against a bully like you would a maniac and you can kiss your chips goodbye.
A maniac doesn't ever want to be called, but a bully does. Big difference!
You got that right. the big difference between this guy and a normal maniac is that he will bet weak hands very strongly, but he wont cap it on later rounds without some kind of hand to show down.
Consider this hand.
Maniac raise and I reraise with AK. flop comes rags. He checks, i bet and he cheak raise me!
now what do you think he has. J30 for a pair of 3s on the flop. But he would have played his set the same way, and AK unimproved for that matter and sometimes even less.
Bully is a good term - as my question was not aimed at playing bullys in general (wait and they will pay you back bigtime when you hit a hand), but this particular guy with the strategy described above. If you start doing some thought experiments on his strategy, you will probably find (as I did the hard way) that he is way tougher then the average maniac, simply because he didn't cap without some kind of hand. The maniac is uaually just a player on tilt. This dude might have been as well, but geee do I wish I played that well when I tilt.
I posted a story a while back about the first time I got "bullied" at a table. Same situation...he is on my left, calls my preflop raise or he raises and I three bet. Almost every flop, he would check raise and when I had missed, I would dump the hand.
He was able to recognize that I was tight and somewhat of a rock...and rocks are easy to move off of hands when they don't hit.
Once I realized this...after the session...I had the opportunity to play with him again, and he tried the same moves, and I played back at him. Most of these hands, he would muck or call and fold on the turn. I also did experiment with playing on his right, and found that he would push the same way, but would let up if I pushed back. Overall, it was easier for me to play on his left.
I think they key is, that if you see a pattern like this with this type of player...and make no mistake, this is a good aggressive player...you need to isolate this player and sometimes decide whether you have a better starting hand than him and push till the river. You will lose many pots, but you should win many more pots.
While this may happen at a full table, or a six max, your game has to shift to shorthanded mode....and you will not be able to sit back and wait to hit big hands in big pots. If you find this player playing most hands, and can isolate the two of you, you will have to take hands farther than you are probably comfortable with...and lead with them the whole way.
