A maniac is a special category of player with unique characteristics.  Because of those unique characteristics,  making decisions about a maniac requires special consideration.  This is true whether you’re making decisions about his playing actions or decisions about where to sit relative to his seat.  Anticipations of his future playing action is part of the key to picking a seat relative to a maniac.  The classic view of seat selection decisions stems from a theory about a clockwise flow of money and has pretty much nothing to do with where you should want to sit

DONT BE THE FISH. PLAY AT POKERROOM

First let’s look at what a maniac really is.  A maniac is similar to a player with fancy play syndrome  (FPS),  but a little more extreme and with a different motivation.  A player with FPS tends to make bets or raises in an attempt to be tricky,  and he does it in situations where it's probably inappropriate and not to his advantage to do so.  He’s tricky for ego reasons,  just for the sake of being tricky.

A maniac often raises just because it's fun.  Like an FPS player,  he’s trying to establish dominance,  but his reasons are different.  He’s not feeding his ego,  he’s just having fun.  And he raises a lot.  Not in an attempt to be tricky, although he is trying to be unreadable,  but because he gets a kick out of the raise itself, and out of the reaction he gets from other players.  That reaction he gets from other players is often confused anger, and the maniac really enjoys that.  An FPS player is establishing dominance by instilling fear,  a maniac by creating confusion.

This difference in motivation is important because it helps explain how a player will react to you if you play back at him.  If you check/raise an FPS player he’s likely to respond with anger.  If he’s heads up with you that anger might manifest itself in increased aggression.  It might not;  he might respond by trying to trap you.  But if it’s a multiway pot he’s more likely to express his anger inwardly and become trickier than normal,  much more likely to attempt to lay a trap for you.  In a multiway pot he’ll tend to be more likely to back off the aggression for fear of being trapped himself by one of the other players.

A maniac likes it when you play back at him.  He’ll

CLICK TO PLAY AT TRUE POKER

It’s common to mistakenly classify a maniac as a loose/aggressive player.  A loose player is one who plays a lot of hands,  and an aggressive player is one who raises a lot.  A loose/aggressive player is, then,  one who plays a lot of hands and raises a lot.  Of course it’s true that a maniac has these characteristics.  But a maniac is so much more than that.

A maniac is not just a loose/aggressive player.  He’s also not just a loose aggressive player with FPS.  He's a loose/aggressive player with FPS,  an itch to gamble,  a psychological need to be recognized by other players,  and a strong sense of playfulness.  He doesn’t care about being recognized as a good or tough player,  but he does think of himself as a force to be reckoned with and he wants that recognized.  A comedic force that splashes a lot of chips,  but still a force.  He might not win your chips but he sure can burn them up if you’re not careful.  He does want your attention,  and he wants that attention much more than he wants money.

He's loose in that he plays too many hands;  he's aggressive in that he tends to raise a lot;  and like a player with FPS,  he tends to raise often in inappropriate situations.  He check-raises too much,  semi-bluffs too much,  bets marginal draws too much.

The bottom line is that a maniac likes to play and likes to bet.  Maniacs seldom fold,  seldom call, and they raise a lot  --  at the slightest provocation.  It's best to avoid tables with maniacs if you're a novice.  If you're an experienced player,  a maniac can be a major source of income.  Seat choice relative to the maniac can be very important,  and usually depends on the composition of the rest of the table.

I had originally intended to use this article for discussion about picking a seat relative to a maniac.   But I’ve ended up spending the entire article on just discussing the maniac  -- how he thinks and how he acts.  I think understanding the maniac is of critical importance to understanding how to position yourself relative to a maniac.