See the open shove range of a maniac and learn, which hands, you can profitably call with and get the money before the other players.

The poker players, that fall into the category of a maniac, a more extreme kind of aggressive fish, can be found at any stakes, but is slightly more common on the micro stakes. Maniacs are either level 0 players or level 1 players, that has become low stacked, on tilt or just plain out drunk. Read more about levels in Poker player profiling and color coding.

The range of a maniac all-in open shove.

In order to find a profitable calling range against these players, take a look at their hands, that they open shove or go all-in, typically from between 10 and 150 big blinds deep, with. The hands below are from my own tracked poker hands. It’s about 50% of their dealt hands.

The assumed hand range for a maniac, that open shoves or goes all-in preflop, is shown is Equilab.

23% call range with 59% equity vs. maniac open shove.

If you want to get a higher chance of win the maniacs money before he goes broke to other players at the table, then you might go for slightly wide range, but with a slightly higher risk of variance.

23% call range vs. maniac.
23% call range has 53,58% equity vs. maniac.

13% call range with 62% equity vs. maniac open shove.

If you want to reduce the risk of variance a bit, but with a price of other poker players at the table, that takes the money, you might might reduce your call range to pairs and aces.

13% range vs. maniac.
13% call range has 62% equity vs. maniac.

4% call range with 45% equity multi way vs. maniac open shove.

The situation change, when another player has called before you. The call range of a better player vs. a maniac, can be assumed to fairly tight, so your range should be slightly tighter in exchange of winning a massive pot.

4% call range multi way vs. maniac.
4% call range multi way vs. maniac has 45,16% equity.

Maniacs rely on variance.

It is important to know, that the maniac actually has a surprising large amount of equity, which is why, that it is not uncommon to see, that the maniac sits on a 400 bb stack. He simply won 3 stacks by going all-in. He might even have cracked aces or ace king. But this is soon about to change, when variance tips back towards the mathematics. When the night is over, the maniac will have gone broke and his money has been distributed to the better players, who had strategy, patience and courage.

The poker player Igor 140184 of the slightly rare, but not uncommon, maniac type 4bet cold and went all-in with 87o at a NL100 fullring cashgame on PokerStars. His hand, which are ranked at the lowest, made three of a kind and would also have cracked aces and kings, which are ranked as the strongest hands, that you can be dealt in this game. A bad beat or suck-out, that can make results go below expected value and eventually make some players to believe, that the game is rigged by super users and fortune tellers.