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Thanks goodness for maniacs.
They liven up snug Texas hold’em games. They often loosen up the tight players, too — and sometimes cause them to become unglued. And they create huge pots.
And so we smiled a little when a maniac sat down in a weekend game. A buy-in of about three times the usual amount was the first clue. A slightly nervous, wild-eyed look was the second. And when he raised preflop on his very first hand without so much as a glance at his cards, we were officially on Maniac Alert.
A maniac is best described as a hyper loose-aggressive player. They play nearly all hands and play them aggressively with multiple raises and re-raises. Their play often attracts other esurient players hoping for a shot at a big pot.
In this case, the maniac was seated to our immediate left, which is not ideal. But we made the appropriate adjustments, such as actually ratcheting up our starting hand requirements slightly to ensure we had a better shot at volume pots.
In one of the very first high-volume pots, we raised with pocket 10s, virtually assured that the maniac would raise behind us. He did. But that offered clues since subsequent callers would normally have had sufficiently decent hands to call two bets cold.
And he took Round 1 when he caught a straight on fourth street, rendering our pocket pair useless. We made a tactical decision and folded up our tent and got out of the way when the potential straight landed.
Of course, that left us with a slightly shorter stack, but we rebounded nicely when our A-J spiked an ace on fourth street, and we were able to lead out on the river. The pot had been raised, of course, but this time not by the maniac.
We won another decent pot with our As-9s when the flop came 10-8-7. It was unfortunately double-suited in diamonds and the diamond jack fell on the turn. We sucked it up and called the two big bets on the turn and river bets and were pleased when the bettor showed J-8 for two pair.
And then, the maniac raised preflop. Yeah, big surprise.
He was on a roll, actually, and had recouped some big losses incurred when he bet several rounds without looking at his cards. We had already called with Kd-10h in late position, and we quickly called the raise.
The flop came with a king and two hearts, giving us top pair, middling kicker and backdoor draw to a 10-high flush. We bet it and got two callers including the maniac.
The turn came another heart, and we fired again, once again getting two callers.
Another smallish heart fell on the river. This time, after a check from a middle position player, we checked, figuring the maniac would bet behind us.
He didn’t disappoint. Both the middle position player and I quickly called. A slightly bigger flush would have given us a chance to check-raise.
“Youse guys probably have flushes,” he said. The middle position player tossed out the heart nine. I turned up the 10 of hearts, and the maniac tossed his hand away.
The maniac racked up his chips shortly after. He had recovered from some big losses and muttered something about finding a blackjack game.
We played one more round and then cashed out with a respectable win. Hand selection had a lot to do with. So did some short-term luck. But we have to thank the maniac for livening up the game.
