We now have a sound understanding of those classes of hands which we should be taking into battle against a maniac pre-flop. In order to complete our strategy to combat his extreme aggression we need to consider his later street tendencies and conduct an analysis of the board textures on which his style is most exploitable.

How a maniac beats you

The maniac’s strategy is not a subtle one, and yet amidst the controlled chaos that is a game of PLO it is easy for the analytical player to feel a little lost. The reason for this confusion is simple, “Maniacs beat you by bloating the pot on early streets and getting you to fold on later streets.” On many flops, playing your standard bet/fold ranges on the flop and/or turn will get you killed against a maniac. On other flops the maniac takes aggressive lines with hands which most players pot control with and thus playing back at him is ineffective. Your failure to adjust to the maniac can be compounded if he stacks you early on in a session with a legitimate hand. It is easy to become timid after he set-mines you in a 3bet pot with Q955r (to take a hand I was stacked by yesterday) in the false belief that “running hot” is some form of semi-permanent state whereby a specific player predictably gets dealt more good hands than is usual. Whenever you get stacked with an unlikely hand by a maniac, remind yourself that you ran into a tiny percentage of his very weak and vulnerable range. On no account should you start making big folds post-flop, as this is the only way he can beat a player with good fundamentals in the long run.

Maniac post-flop tendencies

Post-flop the maniac will put in big bets on the flop and turn with the initiative 70%+ of the time. He will typically donk 40%+ of the time without the initiative. There are two key tendencies to watch out for post-flop: check-raising the flop and river betting tendencies. One class of maniac only wants to put his whole stack in with some kind (any kind) of equity. This player will bet a huge range on flop and turn but then only bet very strong hands on the river. This tendency usually goes hand-in-hand with only check-raising a very strong range (since he considers that committing). Adjusting to this player post-flop is simple: we call the flop and turn light but fold to river bets and check-raises. We also need not fear his donk bets on many static flops (especially monotone, lockdown, paired) since he persistently check-raises the top of his range. The other class of maniac will keep betting until made to stop (usually by a shove from us, but physically restraining him is the only sure-fire way

1). Against this opponent we should call down all 3 streets liberally, but bear in mind those flop textures where his range contains many legitimate hands. On those boards where he is stronger than us, it is wise to fold our marginal hands early, there are too many clear +EV spots against this player type to warrant playing back against him when he actually has a range-advantage.

Flop texture considerations

Monotone boards

If you play the top 15% of hands then you have a flush on a monotone board around 25.5% of the time. The maniac’s range (described in this article) has a flush on this board 20.5% of the time. Since to most maniacs ‘flush = good hand’ it is futile to try to push him off of a made hand on this texture. He will also flop a set or top two around 8% of the time, which gives him close to a 1/3 of his range which he is unlikely to fold. Countering the maniac on a monotone board does not lie in forcing him off a hand but rather in adjusting your own stack-off ranges. The maniac has the nut flush 5% of the time, contrasted with 11% for a 15% opening range or 10% for a 25% opening range. He has the {nut or second nut flush} 10% of the time, a lesser flush the remaining 10.5% of the time, the naked nut blocker 2.8% of the time and {nut or second nut blocker} 6% of the time. More importantly, when you hold a flush he holds a flush only 6.5% of the time and has {nut or second nut blocker 7% of the time}. Failing a strong read that he is unwilling to triple barrel you should call down every flush against a maniac in any HU pot.

Two-straight flops

A 976 flop has two available straights (T8 and 85). Two-straight flops are another class of flop where the maniac’s aggressive style is effective (or at least less bad). On 976, the maniac has the nuts 8% of the time, which is just as frequently as a solid 25% range does. Furthermore the maniac has the second nuts 6% of the time whereas the 25% range has it only 3% of the time (on the account of the lack of low cards in the latter range). Our difficulty facing a maniac on this flop becomes compounded once we add sets to the equation: the maniac has any set around 5.5% of the time and the 25% range has a set only 3.5% of the time. All things considered, the maniac has a stronger range than you on low two-straight flops, with 19% set-or-better versus 15% set-or-better for the 25% range. When we pair his stronger range together with his not-folding tendencies, these boards are best surrendered meekly as they are one of the few textures where he has an edge over us. Once we shift up in ranks to broadway-oriented straight boards we have the upper hand. His range flops set-or-better on QT9 only 18% compared with the 25% range flopping set+ 27.5%. The former range contains the nuts only 7.5% of the time versus the latter 12.5% of the time. He has bare KK or JJ blockers 5.5% of the time and so, barring reads to the contrary, we do not want to be folding the second nut straight against him.

Hxx flops

If you follow the advice from my pre-flop article you will be 3betting the maniac with a wide range and will face many decisions with an overpair or TPTK on a K85r texture or similar. On such a board the maniac will flop {bottom two or better} 19% of the time. As a guideline, if we flop top pair with 2 overcards to the second-ranked card or 1 overcard plus a gutter we should be going with it on a rainbow board. A hand like AKJ2ss has 35% equity against the two pairs in our opponent’s range (he only flops a set 5% of the time). AK97ss has 45% equity against those same hands. The naked overpairs can be a little tricky to play, certainly stack off with a gutter, but a bare overpair only has 27% equity against the two-pairs when we get it in. With us both potting pre-flop, 100BB deep we only need 34% equity to call off if we bet close to pot on the flop. Our best line with such hands will depend on our maniac’s specific tendencies. If he tends to float the flop very light, prefer to bet huge with naked AA on the flop and ship it in on any turn (even the scary ones). Use the width of his range against him to force him to make a hand which beats you. Against players who will give up with some frequency on the flop but always stab when checked to, the check-raise is effective against the 81% of their range which is behind us. When we CRAI with a bare overpair against a half-pot stab we have 25% equity against a nutty calling range, and thus need him to fold only 55% of the time in a bloated (22.5BB pre + 11BB stab = 33.5BB) pot. This translates to any stab frequency over 43% giving us a +EV CRAI2 These numbers further emphasize the importance of using pot-size 3-bets pre-flop with our range to maximise our edge against his very weak range.

Paired textures

Paired boards are worth a passing mention here; the maniac will have trips+ on an innocuous 338r texture 16% of the time, which is more than twice the frequency with which the solid 25% range will have it. As we move up in rank these ranges get closer, maniac has trips+ on 773 18% of the time versus 14% for the solid range. Once we reach TT3 the advantage switches, the maniac remains on 17% whilst the solid range moves up to 21%. On an AA3 board the maniac is still on 17.5% whilst the solid range hits 36%! We can really press our advantage on AAx boards but must be more cautious than is usual when we are played back at on low flops. The statistic to remember is, the maniac has trips+ around 17% of the time on any paired flop.

This concludes our analysis of flop textures against maniacs and thus concludes our article on post-flop play against them. Study the numbers and suggestions contained in the article and, with a steely resolve, you should find this opponent type extremely profitable.

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Show 2 footnotes

  1. Violence at the poker table is not condoned by Quadrophobia.com. Stack her, don’t smack her/Stack him, don’t smack him.
  2. This alone does not make CRAI better than bet/calling, since bet/calling may be even more +EV. It does, however, give an easy guideline for a +EV line when we don’t want to bet/fold but think bet/calling could be incorrect.