One of the more interesting, although often challenging, events at a limit poker table is the arrival of a maniac. Often, the maniac is in the form of a “young gun” type, one whose “experience” has been watching World Poker Tour or World Series events on TV, or who is used to playing the aggressor online, or both.
But limit games, especially lower limit limit games, tend to be populated with passive calling stations, and these young guns don’t seem to ever figure out why their bullying tactics almost never work and why they end up felted in the shortest time.
I had the best situation possible with a maniac on Saturday night, and it helped me turn a nice profit.
I decided on a change of pace and headed down to San Jose to play at Garden City. It wasn’t long before I get a seat at a generally passive $6/$12 table, my favorite type. I’d been playing for awhile, got down early from some bad beats, and had worked my way up to a small profit when the seat to my immediate right opened up.
The maniac arrived, this one in the form of a tall bespectacled Asian guy who bought in for a bit more than $100 and began his litany of preflop raising on his very first hand. It wasn’t long before he was felted, and he pulled out another $200. Before long, he had only green in front of him, and he pulle dout yet another $200.
Of course, at tables such as this, it’s not at all unusual for many, if not most, of the players to be either unaware of or uncaring about what position a raise comes from, and will cold-call raises with any hand that they would limp with–and that range is wide indeed.
Being on the maniac’s immediate right, I recognized this as a great opportunity, and it wasn’t long before I was able to spring my trap. We’d already had a couple of limpers, and this guy raised. I found pocket 10s and made it 3 bets.
Not too surprisingly (although not that much to my liking) a couple of folks called 3 bets cold, and the maniac capped it at 4 bets. We had a munch of callers with capped preflop betting see what for me was a dream flop: A-10-x rainbow.
In the end, only the maniac ended up calling me down and I took down a monster pot. A little while later, he decided that he didn’t like that seat and moved away from what for me was a prime position, and as I’d put in a good amount of time and had a nice profit, I decided that it was going to be the right time to leave.
Speaking of passive games, I found an even more passive one on my visit to Seattle. I had some time free on a Sunday afternoon and I headed to the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, a good half hour south of downtown. It has the most poker tables of any casino in the Pacific Northwest, yet, unbelievably, the room was nearly empty on a Sunday afternoon.
No $6/$12 games were open, so I took a free seat at a $3/$6 game. I bought in for $100, but decided to wait for the button to pass, when I found out that they don’t require new players to post. The older gentleman on my right–and this table was almost all older gentleman, made the comment that he was disappointed that he wasn’t going to be able to get my chips yet. He had a decent sized stack too.
But I found out that this table was tremendously passive. Almost never did anyone raise preflop, even with premium hands, unless they were pocket aces. OTOH, plenty of folks would call down when they hit any piece of the flop or any draw, and lead out only when they hit big.
It was a very easy to read table, and all it took was the patience necessary for a solid, successful limit game. I stayed for just 2 hours, yet pocketed $140, or more than 20 big blinds per hour.
Oh, they guy to my right? His stack had almost disappeared when I left.