Won $5 from a maniac at 5c/10c Limit Holdem

I was playing 5c/10c limit Holdem full ring at William Hill for about 4 hours this afternoon/evening. There were only 2 tables on the iPoker network, and eventually merged down to one. One particular player on my right had been playing fairly unspectacularly for about an hour – mostly calling, very few raises, mostly seemed to have at least one high card in his hand at showdown. And then he suddenly seemed to go nuts.

He started raising every single hand preflop. After the flop, he would bet if he was first to act, or raise if someone had opened on every single street. Most people were folding to him, including me. When he finally saw a couple of showdowns against other players, he won both with a lucky river holding things like 82o and 4To. Within about 10m, he’d picked up a couple of dollars from the table.

Normally I try to be reasonably tight with my starting hands. Not uber nitty, but I generally wouldn’t call a preflop raise with Axo or Kx or something like that. I decided that with this guy, I should call him with any hand that I thought was likely to be better on average than what he had. And since he seemed to be raising and calling with any two cards, that opened my range up considerably.

I started pushing back at him, reraising and capping, betting when I was first to act. He responded on all streets except the river. On several hands, we would cap the flop and turn and then he would just fold to me on the river. When we did show down on the river, I usually won, although once or twice it was a close thing, with my draws completing on the river. Eventually, he went all in and went bust and logged off for the night. I left the table shortly afterwards.

I sat down at the table with $2 and left three hours later with $8 (60BB), of which half came from this one player.