Dealing with the maniacs who just shove it all in with any hand

...How to deal with these maniacs coz honestly they do end up winning when they are on the roll no matter how good my hands are - they get lucky and hit on everything and getaway with it - ofcourse in the long run they lose out - but that moment it really messes up chances of winning anything..

When someone has gone all-in, your options are limited to call or fold. So you call, if you think, you are ahead of their range, but taking players behind you into account. So you call wider, when you are closing the action, than when someone else could still wake up behind you with a big hand. The board runouts will take care of themselfes in the long run, so dont worry about them.

Of course you wont get to play much postflop in games, where someone regularly ships it in preflop for way to many blinds. So if your goal is to get better at poker, or to have fun playing postflop and making more complicated decisions than calling or folding preflop, then you should avoid such games. Typically that mean avoiding most freerolls and playing some microstakes games instead like a $3.3 MTT or a $5 SnG.

Try not to get dragged into their style. If they're calling with anything, tighten up, value bet your strong hands, and don't bluff much. Yeah, they'll suck out sometimes and it feels impossible when they're running hot, but that's exactly where your profit comes from over time. The hardest part is staying patient and not letting their luck change your game.

fundiver199 said:

Typically that mean avoiding most freerolls and playing some microstakes games instead like a $3.3 MTT or a $5 SnG.

Click to expand...

And of course also avoid any kind of hyperturbo game, where stacks get short very fast, and where going all-in preflop is therefore often just good poker strategy.

Dealing with "maniacs" who shove every hand is frustrating short-term, but highly profitable long-term. To beat them, stop bluffing entirely and tighten your calling range to only premium hands. Trap them by check-calling your monster hands to let them punt their chips, and try to sit to their left to secure position. Finally, accept the high variance; weak hands get lucky sometimes, but their chips will inevitably be yours in the long run.

---

It's quite simple. We tighten right up and call when strong. If they are short stacked then raise to fold out anyone behind you and get isolation.

Read up on positional advantage, range advantage, and nut advantage, and you will be able to handle this type of opponent at the tables.

Lots of times sitting out the first 20 minutes of a tournament and the first five minutes after a break lets you avoid a lot of the initial drama.

eberetta1 said:

Lots of times sitting out the first 20 minutes of a tournament and the first five minutes after a break lets you avoid a lot of the initial drama.

Click to expand...

It also often costs us big pot wins. Never sit out as a strategy. All that it does is a favor for everyone else at the table.

louuu19 said:

Dealing with "maniacs" who shove every hand is frustrating short-term, but highly profitable long-term. To beat them, stop bluffing entirely and tighten your calling range to only premium hands.

Click to expand...

If we think, someone is out of line (on a wide range), then we need to widen our calling range not tighten it. Like maybe against a tight player we dont always stack off postflop with top pair medium kicker, but against a maniac we beat them in to the pot, because we think, they have enough random nonsense in their range to make this profitable.

Where we need to tighten up, is, if they are still left to act, and we think, they are going to 3-bet us a lot, or perhaps jam on us. Then if we dont want to give that action with maybe a hand like JTs, its better to not open that hand in the first place. But if we open a hand like AJo, and they 3-bet us, then we just get it in even for say 50BB or more, because AJo is way ahead of the maniacs range. So we open tighter but stack off wider.

these guys are literally the most profitable players in poker long term man. it tilts you in the moment when they run hot, but you literally just wait for top 15% of hands, snap call, and let math do its thing. if you're folding medium-strong holdings out of fear of variance, you're giving them free money.