Do you want the maniac to your left or right in poker

Ah, the age-old poker question of where to sit? When it comes to a maniac the general wisdom is to pull up a chair to the players immediate left, which will give you the opportunity to isolate him in pots with raises. However, this shouldn’t be your only consideration when there is a maniac in the game, especially when there are a lot of loose players also in the game.

First let me define my ‘Maniac’: A typical maniac plays about 50% to 75% of the hands they are dealt, and brings-it-in for a raise at least ½ of the time.

Advantages of having a ‘Maniac’ on your right

As I said, having a maniac on your right gives you prime control of the table: When you have a premium hand you can re-raise to get the pot heads-up, and when you have a good multi-way hand you can simply call his raise to invite more players to the party.

By isolating the maniac you are creating a nice heads-up pot where you have position, and are likely ahead in the hand.

This strategy is very effective when the table is loaded with tight players who are willing to let you control the action throughout. But more often than not the other players will quickly adjust to your strategy and start putting you to the test as well.

One other consideration is the maniac. Maniacs might be overly aggressive, but this doesn’t mean they are insane -although you will encounter some players who fit this descriptive as well-and they will often fold to any sizeable bet without a good hand. Furthermore, when they do wake up with a premium hand -yes, maniac’s get dealt good cards too-it’s you who are trapped in the pot.

Advantages of having a ‘Maniac’ on your left

However, there is another school of thought that having the maniac act immediately after you is the best way to go. When employing this strategy your goal is to limp with your premium cards, let the maniac raise, and hopefully get a couple callers to come along. Since the maniac is more likely to get “Action” than you when he raises you increase the likelihood other players will come along. By doing this you can now re-raise, which either wins a good size pot without any effort, or possibly get heads-up with the maniac -a good situation since you are more than likely out ahead-with a nice bit of extra “Dead-Money” in the pot already!

Here is an example: For the sake of the example suppose this is $5/$10 No Limit Holdem game where every player has $1,000. You limp in with KK and the ‘Maniac’ raises to $40, two players call and so does the Big Blind creating a pot of $175 when the action gets back to you. Now you can raise to $250 which will either see everyone fold, or perhaps the maniac come along for the ride -the other players are likely to fold since their hand wasn’t good enough to raise in the first place.

Do you see what happens in these situations? By sitting to the right of the maniac you have effectively put yourself in last position, since the action revolves around the maniac -this is especially true in post-flop situations where players almost without fail ‘check to the raiser’.

Suppose the maniac moves in with AQ, now you’re in a dominating situation getting OVER 1-to-1 on your money, thanks to the extra $125 in the pot in dead money.

You can also employ this strategy with your multi-way hands like small pairs, suited Aces, big suited cards and suited connectors. If the action were to go the same as above, you would have invested $40 pre-flop, to win a pot of $205. Even in the scenarios where another player re-raises -and after you accomplish your check-raise move once or twice they will be less inclined to re-raise the maniac when you are lurking in the background– you have only invested $10 in the pot so it becomes easy to fold.