A maniac to my right

Tuesday is poker night and I had the unique opportunity to sit down next to a true maniac. He was raising and re-raising the first two hands I observed before the big blind hit me so I got a chance to size him up a little before being dealt in.

We were sitting six handed in a limit game so I think his strategy was to raise people off pots when ever possible. He won a lot of small pots without ever showing his hand, but lost and mucked to queen high at least two times that I observed.

He was sitting on my immediate right so I decided to bide my time and play back at him with premium hands. The strategy paid off, and so did he.

He paid off my AA, KK, AK, and 67s. Okay, 67s isn’t a premium hand, but there were five limpers when I caught them in the small blind and the maniac raised on the button. I flopped a four-flush, and then complete my flush on the turn and probably would have made more off of him if the board hadn’t paired aces.

The only hand where he may have been ahead of me was when an ace fell on the turn as an overcard to my KK, but the river gave me an ace-high straight, with no flush or pair on the board. The maniac CAPPED the raises on the river while I was holding the stone-cold nuts.

Thank you sir. May I have another?

I’m sure if I had played longer he would have laid a bad beat or two on me, but the poker gods decided to pay back my cold run of cards from the previous week with at least 13 big bets off of one maniac.

Thanks for reading.