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Adjustment to Maniacs
One of the terms and concepts in economics is ‘elasticity,’ or ‘inelascticity.’ We use that in poker too, for concepts such ‘range inelastic.’ But in poker conversations I’ve heard this usually denotes a longstanding charactic of someone’s strategy. I wonder if we could apply it to everyone under particular circumstances as in economics? For example, some commodoties such as gasoline are price inelastic, because changes in gas prices don’t result in immediate changes in demand for gas. It take awhile for people to replace their car with bigger or smaller ones, incentivized by gas prices.
Here’s the situation I faced at the WSOP Colossus this week. They opened a new table and I got seated there. The first time I opened the betting in a hand the player 3 seats to my left 3-bet me. Since this hand was in my open-fold bucket, I folded. In the first couple orbits he did this to players several times. His own opens were limps half the time. But if he raised it was hard to reraise because of his aggression. In one hand he opened UTG and got 3-bet. He 4-bet and got called. The hand went to showdown and he had AJo, which didn’t surprise me.
But then after a few orbits he seemed to slow down. It seemed after he had established his bully image he throttled back, waiting for a real hand hoping that people will play back at him. When a new player arrived at the table, he similarly bullied the new player.
It seems that a player like that is taking advantage of some sort of temporary range inelasticity in his opponents. There’s a time lag between executing a maniac range and the opponents’ adjusting to it. During that time lag the maniac can steal some chips. Then after throttling back there’s a time lag before other players notice that and readjust, during which he can pick up a big pot.
As soon as he 3-bet the new player I knew what my exploit would be. When a new player sits down I planned to merge my range, hoping to exploit the temporary maniac’s weak range that he uses to attack the new guy. I could pick up a medium or large pot that way. Alas, the card gods didn’t cooperate by giving me such a spot, and I lost a flip for my stack to another player before I could use my exploitative readjustment on maniac.
What do you think? Is this “maniac” on to something? Or do you think his strategy courts inevitable disaster in every tournament he plays?
Could this be a profitable strategy against some player pools, but not others?
Can you think of other ways to take advantage of this exploitative adjustment inelasticity that exists in poker?
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1 Reply
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This is an old strategy that was common in the “feel” days before solvers and GTO. Play a certain way, develop an image, then take advantage of that image. I think it probably still works very well in most live settings below the stakes that are dominated by pros.
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