Am I missing something? I would always try to out-aggro this guy. Check-calling seems like the wrong strategy unless all of the other players met up in the parking lot and split up the donk's money after the game. Maybe that is why I don't play SH, altough that may change in the very near future. Why not out aggro?

I'm always willing to cap it with TPTK type hands against these guys, but I wont bother with free card plays or playing draws aggressively since its likely to backfire and there's little fold equity. I'll normally sponge him with weaker hands like bottom pair and pay off if he gets lucky. I don't really feel comfortable jamming it up with any piece of the flop. It seems to work for the most part. But as Kuso said, you really need a large number of hands to be confident you'll come out on top. Paying off with bottom pair etc is going to send that variance through the roof.

Just be wary of the others at the table too... guys like that tend to send the whole table into a frenzy.

well... i was describing a way to chop this guy up. it's not necessarily +EV for any specific player in an individual hand, but it is +EV for the group as a whole.

when you try to out-aggro a maniac, you do four things.

first, you push drawing hands out of the pot. this may improve your equity, but it also improves villain's. so if everyone pushes their TP hard thinking that it beats the maniac, they'll end up pushing out a lot of hands that likely WILL beat the maniac if they can see the river.

second, you give villain a chance to fold. any decent lag has good hand reading skills, and he'll be able to lay down when he's beat. you want him to be putting more bets into the pot when he's behind, and that often means letting him take the lead.

third... more likely, though, is that raises add fuel to the fire and actually give the maniac correct (or at least less incorrect) odds to draw to stronger hands like str8s and flushes. ditto for aiming for the 5-outer. furthermore, each raise allows them to reraise, allowing them to push out other other people who actually play their draws with proper pot odds. i won't even get into fold equity. i'm guessing that guy took down at least a couple of monsters with weak holdings when the big draws didn't make it on the river -- maybe even the same draws he whiffed on.

fourth... a variation on #3... is that you really allow villain to pump up the pot when he has solid holdings. as you probably know, there's nothing like having a set and TPTK jamming the pot when you flopped a straight. these guys get maximum value from their premium hands.

in HU, a good (basic) strategy against a maniac is check/call check/call on the flop and turn w/ K-high or better, check/raise on the river w/ TP or better and check/call on the river with everything else. i've used a variation of this to slice and dice many a maniac. my suggestion was just a variation of this strategy. i'm guessing that the maniac would slow down when he realizes that he's playing 5v1.

of course, since you can't collude, this is hard to do in real life. but in principle, i think calling is probably a better strategy if you want to crack the guy. it seems counterintuitive, but you'd be shocked when you see it work.


[edited to add the last sentence to point two]

Smashing him in the face with any reasonable hand was an excellent plan....it worked.

The problem was, the other two guys that would not let me issolate him...between the three of them, somebody drew out a lot.

He was directly to my right...so, when the table folded around to him, which was rare, I could get in his stack with any playable hand, most of the time.

Short of that, I had to either get out of the way, or wait for big hands.