Playing against the serial raiser

“How should I play when there's a maniac at the table?" Good question! We all know what a maniac/bully is. He is overly aggressive, and that's putting it mildly. There shall always be a bully of some sort at your table, and the traditional logic of ‘just stand up to them’ will get you beaten and broken both mentally and financially.

I remember back in the Caribbean 2005 when I first encountered the play of Roland De Wolfe who was an absolute maniac and I had to try and combat against this style of aggression and it was difficult to say the least. Needless to say Roland has now channelled that aggression successfully and is now reaping the rewards.

So how do we combat these aggressive players at the table? After all, isn’t a tight aggressive game what we should all strive to master? Well sure, but a loose aggressive player, once spotted can be countered very effectively with a tight passive game. He's aggressive, all right. But he missed out on the selective part of this lesson entirely. The maniac’s love running over other players and the more they can intimidate their opponents, the happier they are. If it sounds like the prototypical schoolyard bully, you've got a pretty good picture of a maniac at the poker table.

Let's describe the characteristics of a typical maniac. If you bet, he'll raise - even when he doesn't have a hand to support his action. If you check, he'll bet. A loose-aggressive player will raise pre-flop often, he does this for three reasons:

1) To scare players out of the pot, decreasing the number of opponents he has to beat.

2) To increase the size of the pot and increase his potential winnings and

3) Because they just can’t seem to help it! Loose aggressive players are action junkies who thrive on making bets and trying to intimidate players. When someone bets, the maniac usually raises. If you reraise, he is more likely to move all in (Viduka Style) than give you credit for a big hand and simply call.

Please note that seat selection is critical against an aggressive opponent I would recommend position yourself to his left however you obviously cannot do this when playing in tournaments. This is the single most important strategic adjustment one can make with a maniac at the table. Since maniacs raise with lots of weak hands, you want to be in position to reraise whenever you have a strong hand. Since you will usually be reraising on hands that are significantly stronger than those he raises with, you will hold the advantage much of the time.

When you're playing against a maniac, you have to make some adjustments in your playing style as well as in your attitude and perspective this is imperative. Starting hands change in value dramatically when most of the pots are raised before the flop. When you're trying to get in cheaply from early or middle position with a hand like 4d6d you've got a problem if there's a maniac at the table. Holdings like these work best in unraised pots where you hope to flop a big hand against a relatively large number of opponents who, presumably, will pay you off if you make a hand that holds up. The only time you can play smaller, suited connectors against a chronic raising machine is from late position, when the maniac has already acted and hasn't raised, and you figure to have a good chance of seeing the flop for one bet against a big field.

You should also note that Pairs and big cards go up in value, and so does your position at the table. If you're holding 10 - 10, and the maniac raises before you act, you must reraise, in order to minimize the number of opponents you'll play against. If you're lucky, you and the maniac will play the hand heads-up. Heads-up against aggression is even harder to combat over a number of hands. When it’s just you and the schoolyard bully for 12 rounds, you have to adopt many of their tendencies to avoid losing every blind to a raise. If you are the chip leader and you have a hand of moderate strength of better, you always want to put pressure on the short stack pre-flop. If you have a poor hand, don’t push your luck.

One key skill that a lot of players do not do is watch when you aren't in a hand. I really cannot stress it enough since most people nowadays get too caught up in playing multiple tables or watching television and they don't pay attention to the action enough to pick up on who is playing what style. If you haven't figured it out, this will end up costing you quite a bit. You could easily throw away the best hand against a loose and aggressive player if you weren't watching the action enough to realise who you were playing against. Since the super aggressive player plays a lot of hands, you'll eventually get to see some of them in a showdown. This is extremely helpful in figuring out how he plays post-flop in different spots.

It is also important that you get as far as you can, as cheaply as you can. The aggressor of course shall on occasion wake up with a big hand. Sometimes you have to call, or bluff-raise, even though you are an underdog to capture the pot simply because you're giving up too much of an edge if you allow him to bet and take the pot every time you're heads-up and the flop is unfavourable to you. Even if you're holding A-K, you'll flop a pair only about one-third of the time. But the maniac is subject to these same probability parameters too. And if you go into the flop with the best holding, chances are that you'll come out of it with the best one too.

Finally always remember that the aggressive player is ultimately no stronger than the cards they hold and on a lot of occasions they are raising a lot of pots with junk. Therefore as long as you keep your discipline and position yourself to act after the maniac you should win long term by adopting the strategies in this article.

See you on the tables

Scott “Shaaboom” Boyle

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