Exploiting Profiles: Episode III – The Maniac

What Is a Maniac?

You probably have your own ideas about what constitutes a “maniac” at the poker table. Perhaps it is someone who plays too aggressively, plays bad hands from bad positions, and hates to give up on a pot. Perhaps they call against the odds hoping to improve or keep blasting at pots with garbage hands.

The player profile “Maniac” models this player type by tweaking their incentives in simulated poker games. The Maniac profile (I’ll use capital letters when referring to the profile to distinguish from the common language use of the term) is rewarded an extra +6% of the pot when they bet, an extra +3% when they call, and they lose an extra -6% of the pot when they fold.

So, this player is not just overly-aggressive, but also very sticky. Adapting to them will therefore bear some resemblance to playing against a Calling Station, who is also very sticky, but is excessively passive instead of excessively aggressive.

Simple models like these are great because they enable us to run experiments that allow us to notice how tweaking these variables incentivizes us to adapt our strategy. However, it’s important to note that simple models cannot perfectly capture the complexities of human psychology. Your idea of a maniac might prefer large bets, for example, but the Maniac profile doesn’t care about the size of the bet. In fact, they will often prefer small bets because small bets with hands that would check at equilibrium will generally lose less EV than large bets.

GTO strategies tend to be more aggressive than those adopted by unstudied human players.

There is also a chance that some players you consider maniacal may actually be excellent, GTO-aware opponents. GTO strategies tend to be more aggressive than those adopted by unstudied human players. So if you are accustomed to playing against such humans, a GTO opponent may appear maniacal to you.

In this article, we will consider how to adapt to Maniacs in a variety of situations. While we’ll look at a common preflop raiser (PFR) vs BB confrontation, we’ll actually start with playing OOP in a 3-bet pot. In my experience as a coach, many people worry about this scenario, and for obvious reasons it occurs more often against a maniac than against other types of players. 

Preflop

The following reports and simulations all assume a no-limit cash game with 100bb stacks, but the conclusions we draw from them will not be terribly specific to that format. We will be looking for insights into how to adjust to maniacs in any scenario, whether cash games or tournaments. The conclusions will not even be terribly unique to no-limit Hold‘em.

I did not make any adjustments to the GTO preflop strategies in these simulations. That means the Maniac is not 3-betting a maniacal range. If they were, you would ideally respond not with a GTO calling strategy but with a more exploitative one that would include, among other things, more 4-betting. You would also be well-advised to tighten up your CO opening range if you knew a maniac was sitting on your left.

None of those adjustments are reflected in these simulations. They all assume we arrive at the flop with GTO ranges for the formation. Only the postflop reports are generated with the Maniac adjustments discussed above.

There is a caveat here, too, however: Player Profiles are not forward-looking. That means the solver is not anticipating an overly aggressive turn strategy from the Maniac when it generates its flop strategy. In fact, you may want to play a bit tighter than what is advised here on the assumption that your maniac opponent will barrel future streets too often.

This is a bit counterintuitive, because generally if we know a player will make a mistake at a future node, we are incentivized to arrive at that node more often. And in fact, we might be incentivized to slow-play a bit more often on the flop if we anticipate excessive turn barreling. Our weakest flop calls, however, will not benefit from the Maniac’s mistake. In fact, even knowing the Maniac is barreling too much, those hands will still often be forced off their equity, which can make them play better as flop folds. Against such players, your stronger hands over-realize their equity, but your weakest under-realize. In the long run, you come out ahead even without adjusting for this, but you can do even better by anticipating the mistake and accounting for it in your strategy.

Responding to a C-Bet in a 3-Bet Pot

When playing against a GTO 3-bettor on the BTN, CO leads about 5% of flops, but against the Maniac, you should always check. This makes sense when we see the Maniac virtually never checks back the flop, whereas a GTO opponent would do so nearly 20% of the time. The entire purpose of the flop lead is to prevent your opponent from checking back, so if they aren’t going to do that anyway, then you’d rather check and let them put money in the pot with too wide a range before you get aggressive.

Despite the Maniac’s excessive c-betting, CO’s response isn’t much different from what it would be against a GTO opponent. They fold slightly less and raise slightly more:

This suggests that c-betting the flop too often simply isn’t that large a mistake. Most of BTN’s flop checks would be mixed strategies at equilibrium, so they don’t introduce a lot of exploitability to their game by betting too often.

On specific flops where checking is a more important part of BTN’s strategy, however, we do see some larger adjustments from CO. A♥3♥2♥ is BTN’s most-checked flop at equilibrium. A GTO player would check it back 35% of the time, with solidly medium hands like KK and A8 being pure or nearly pure checks, whereas the Maniac bets 94% of the time.

CO folds at almost exactly the same frequency versus both players, but they raise dramatically more often versus the Maniac:

At least in the case of the 3-bet pot, the pattern seems to be that we play less aggressively until the Maniac has had the opportunity to make an aggressive mistake, but once they do, we punish that mistake by responding with more aggression than we would at equilibrium. Let’s see whether that pattern persists in a different scenario where we are the preflop aggressor.

Continuation Betting vs. a Maniac

In the remaining scenarios, we will look at a single-raised pot between CO and BB. To focus the comparison on CO’s c-betting strategy, I removed the option to donk bet from BB, ensuring the players reach the c-bet node with the same ranges in both scenarios.

CO c-bets somewhat less often versus the Maniac. 

And when they do c-bet vs a maniac, they use a smaller sizing more often:

This suggests cautious, defensive play, with an eye toward not getting blown off their equity by a raise they can’t call.

Even though their betting range against the Maniac is slightly stronger than against the GTO opponent, CO’s response to a small check-raise is not much different. As when facing a c-bet in the 3-bet pot scenario, they fold somewhat less and raise somewhat more:

Conclusion

“Fight fire with fire” is a good rule of thumb for playing against maniacs, but it’s not a complete guide to the optimal adjustments. You should also anticipate the fire and not open yourself up to aggression you aren’t prepared to fight. 

Before the Maniac Can Act

This means you should consider more tight and passive play before the maniac has taken an aggressive action with what you believe to be an overly wide range. Your strongest hands profit from “giving them rope” to put money in with weak hands, while your marginal hands prefer not to put money in that they may not be able to defend. And your weakest hands bluff less because they anticipate fewer folds than they would get from a GTO player.

After the Maniac Has Acted

After the maniac bets or raises, you should seriously consider an aggressive response in order to gain thin value and deny their equity. Thanks to your passivity at the earlier node, you arrive at this node with more strong hands at the same time that the maniac arrives with too many modest ones. This is how you earn your license to aggress.

This kind of after-the-fact exploit is appealing because it does not depend overly much on how your opponent responds. Once they have made the mistake of putting money in with an overly wide range, they must do something with the hands that don’t belong there. You’re generally happy to see them fold and forfeit their equity, but if they call or raise (as a maniac often will), you’ve got plenty of strong hands in your range that profit from that as well. The one thing they can’t do is consistently show up with strong hands after betting or raising an overly wide range.