Positional question?
Dave had a question regarding position.
The game is loose-passive. New player sits down and he is a "maniac", raises 7-5s, q-9o etc. and starts to create these very large pots. New player is starting to put the whole table on tilt.
My question is this: Do I want to be to the maniacs immediate left and raise him when the opportunity presents itself , so as to isolate him from the rest of the field, or do I want to be to his immediate right and let him lead the action and that way I can see where i am against him and the field and/or close the betting ? Which is more adventageous? And don't say " it depends".
Thanks in advance.
The game is loose-passive. New player sits down and he is a "maniac", raises 7-5s, q-9o etc. and starts to create these very large pots. New player is starting to put the whole table on tilt.
My question is this: Do I want to be to the maniacs immediate left and raise him when the opportunity presents itself , so as to isolate him from the rest of the field, or do I want to be to his immediate right and let him lead the action and that way I can see where i am against him and the field and/or close the betting ? Which is more adventageous? And don't say " it depends".
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Now, after a while he may get sick of leading the betting only to see me rake many (the majority?) of the pots I enter. This may lead him to start calling instead of raising whenever I'm in the pot - and this isn't bad either - we've reined him in a bit and despite his positional advantage he is afraid of me. If this transformation never happens, I let him keep betting my hands for me...sooner or later OTHER players will fear me, seeing that I only play strong hands and they will bail out...leaving me heads up with the maniac. Nice.
Feel free to make swiss cheese out of me, fellas.
The ability to (pretty much) automatically 3-bet the pot pre-flop any time I want to is a gift from poker heaven.
The secret here is that any loose-passive player I have ever seen suddenly becomes ultra-tight when facing 3 bets pre-flop. This exact situation happened to me at the Brantford 5-10 once. Many of the players wised up quickly and loosened up somewhat for the maniac's 2-bet; however, I was able to get heads-up with the maniac every pot I played (while the maniac was still there) that session.
I almost always want to be to the left (most times the immediate left) of any kind of bad player. In my experience the conventional wisdom that money moves left is right. Ummm... is correct.
This is not to say that there aren't certain types of *good* players which I would like to be to the left of. (For example, a skilled and tricky loose-aggressive player.)
Wouldn't you rather *know* whether or not he'll be raising instead of merely suspecting it? Sit on the maniac's left and you will.
Regardless of your seat position relative to the maniac, my feeling is that it would generally be wrong to see the flop for exactly 2 bets when one player in the game is raising an insane number (like 70%+) of the pre-flop pots. It's reraise or fold time (or limp-reraise depending on your relative position....OMG "it depends"!!!)
ScottyZ
3-betting the maniac... only to have all_aces cap it behind me is not a situation I want to be in!!!:D
What a mess. When all's said and done, the amount of money that went into the pot pre-flop usually makes it correct to call to the river with unusual draws and/or unlikely pairs, so unusual hands--usually the maniac's--win more than their fair share.
Table change!
Even though NL hold'em is HUGE right now, limit hold'em is still, IMHO, an extremely interesting and challenging game.
Regards,
all_aces
But in your next post you talk about goofy hands winning pots because the odds to call are there.....
This is why I like the right of the maniac. You're UTG, you call the BB, the maniac raises, and around the horn it goes. Now you are in a position to see what kind of investment you will be making - have you got a strong draw and there are 6 callers? Maybe you have QQ and hate your chances against 6 callers. Or your K 9 suited looks shabby against just the maniac and 1 caller, but real good against 5 players. THe problem is, if the rest of the table has some sensible players that correctly identify the maniac and discount his ramming and jamming, it might be VERY difficult to isolate him (I think your last post acknowledges this).
I agree that the left is generally best, but I guess my point is that being to the right of the maniac isn't necessarily a bad seat. Let me put it this way - would you turn it down? In fact, any seat at the table is probably a good one to have, but it will depend :banghead: :banghead: on the rest of the table too. Is he scaring them all away (tightening up) or are they firing chips and calling with any 2?
Don't call either. (in this case)
K9s goes in the muck UTG knowing there is even a *reasonable* chance of the pre-flop action going 2 bets, maniac or no maniac.
I'd have to say that the seat to the immediate right of a maniac is the worst seat. I ceratinly would not turn it down if the alternative is *no* seat, but I'd choose any other seat over it. (Okay, okay, to the immediate right may be a bit better than 2 or 3 to the maniac's right.)
ScottyZ
Not if the maniac looks like Maria Sharapova and the goof that rushed into the seat on her left keeps blowing smoke her direction.
And to quote forrest gump, "that's all I have to say about that". :rolleyes:
How many callers were there? Let's say it's the maniac + 6 callers + you in the pot = 8 players total, just to nail down the specifics.
You don't expect to win 100% of the hands with the QQ. Not even 50%. But you *will* win far more than the "fair share" of 12.5% of the 8-way pots in the long run when holding QQ. Since everyone (including players who will win less than 12.5% of the pots in the long run) is putting the same amount of money in pre-flop, you can't help but make money here (assuming your post-flop play is reasonably good).
I like 22 in the same situation (if we ignore the poor initial call for one bet UTG), so I like QQ even moreso. Of course I would *not* reraise with the 22.
Against a maniac and many callers, your QQ is the best hand right now. Getting a lot of money in the pot when you have the best hand is excellent poker. Raise it up when it comes back around to you.
Again, I'd much prefer to pick up that QQ to the immediate *left* of the maniac. Then I can 3-bet the hand to make the post-flop decisions easier for myself. However, if I was glued to the seat on the maniac's right, going for the limp-reraise with the QQ UTG would probably be my approach.
ScottyZ
ScottyZ
I fear I was being taken a bit out of context. The post about 'maniacs winning goofy pots' (the second of my posts) was about two tight-aggressives to his left (who know how to play maniacs), not one. It can get a bit messy in that case, yes, with people trying to isolate people who are isolating and eventually the pot getting big enough preflop to actually give the maniac odds.
In my first post, I was talking about what happens much more often, which is that there is one tight aggressive to his left, isolating him with any Group 4 hand or better by 3-betting him, and succeeding in isolating him, making the pot heads-up. This is an ideal situation.... you control the action with your position, and it's easy to play against a maniac. Value bet/raise if you make anything. Call him down with ace high. In my PokerRoom $25/$50 games, I generally wouldn't play unless there was a maniac in them, and 90% of the time, there was. I'd be on his/her left, every time.
Regards,
all_aces
ps: as for whether I'd actually 'turn down' a seat to a maniac's right, well, no... but for me, it's not even worth discussing whether right or left is better because the answer (for me) isn't debatable. For once, lol...
I think I was looking at a situation which would likely occur more frequently in a low-limit game (which I tend to frequent) where you get many callers and thus ISOLATING the maniac is difficult if not impossible. Though I will have to take your word for it, I certainly suspect that at the limits you are referring to it would be easier to ISOLATE the maniac and this is best done from the left.
WHat I would ask you to think about is if you were playing a $0.25/$0.50 limit game on stars, and isolating the maniac was not possible, would it matter whether you were to his left or right? Or, perhaps another scenario would be - you are seated BETWEEN 2 maniacs - do you try to move so you are on the left of both, or do you stay put? Interested in your response, as always.
Thanks,
NH
The original question has been well answered by the thread.
You prefer to be to the left of the maniac. Loosen up some and three-bet frequently.
If you are to the right, tighten up some and back raise frequently.
In either case you are adding to your win rate, but you are also adding to your variance. In other words, fasten your seat belt it's going to be a wild ride.
Funny that everyone here said you should sit to the left of the maniac. Consensus at the 2+2 Micro-Limit forums is to sit to the right of the maniac...
I don't play at micro limits so I am not too familiar with the game conditions. But my instinct is that you are correct. In a game where nobody respects raises then using the maniac to manipulate the pot from your left sounds attractive.