Playing the Maniac
By Annie Duke of BluffMagazine.com Female poker players will find that their opponents often play them differently than they play the men at the same table. One of the most common types of players women come across is the testosterone-fuelled "maniac." A maniac is someone who plays a super aggressive, loose style of poker. The smart woman player will have an arsenal of tools in her poker toolbox to maximize profit against a player like this. Of course, these tips apply to men as well, since there can be a maniac at any table. The maniac plays an amped-up game; raising too much and bluffing way too much. Clearly, this is a generally non-optimal style of play, but the maniac does have one thing going for him - because of his constant raising, when he wins, his pot is much bigger than it should be. Many players choose the wrong tactic when they play a maniac. They decide that since he is playing so loose, they should open up their game against him, lower their hand values and play more hands, more aggressively. The theory here is that since the maniac is raising every street, you can raise him back with much weaker holdings, because the probability goes up significantly that your hand is best against a guy that plays everything. The premise is sound enough, and generally in poker when you think you have the best hand, you should raise. Good logic, but wrong execution. All this accomplishes is to turn you into a maniac too. Building huge pots for the maniac plays right into his advantage. The one important component of his maniacal play that allows him to survive is that the pots he wins are much bigger than they should be. So, should you be aiding and abetting him? Should you be helping him create huge pots? No. The way to punish a maniac is to keep his pots small. And the way to do this is to isolate him whenever possible. If you think you have the best hand, go totally passive. If you are on his left, re-raise the maniac raiser to knock the rest of the field out of the pot. If you are on his right, raise into him knowing he will re-raise and knock out the field. Now you have him isolated. Now what? If you are in position and the maniac is betting into you after the flop, just call. If you are out of position, just check and call. The reason is, there's a high probability that he is bluffing. If you raise, you will tempt him to fold and you will lose all the money he might have bluffed off on later streets. When you think you have the best hand against a maniac, you should wait until the river to raise. Never discourage him; make sure you allow him to bluff every last penny. This means that the pots you win are bigger than they would be if you were to raise when the maniac had nothing. Just calling accomplishes another important thing as well. While it will often make a bigger pot for you when you are best, it makes a smaller pot for the maniac when he is best, by not rewarding him with extra raises. The fact is that you will win the majority of the pots from the maniac because, when you enter the pot against him, you will almost always start with the best hand. By keeping the pots small, you reduce your variance against him, winning lots and lots of normal sized pots, many of which are much bigger than they should be because you don't discourage the bluff. And when he does suck out on you, his pot is tinier than it would have to be for him to really reap the rewards of his maniacal ways. When he does just have you beat, it's the same thing. If you are always isolating the maniac, and then only raising on the river, you will maximize your profits and reduce your variance against people trying to prove how much they can bully a girl. Annie Duke is the most dominant female force in the poker today. The all-time leading female money winner at the World Series of Poker, she's also the only woman to win two major poker tournaments in a single year, 2004.
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