Poker Diaries – Dealing with a Poker Maniac at the Table

Whether you call them a maniac, a “purple tag’ or a crazy poker player, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered them in your cash game journey. Their strategy has no rhyme or reason, they just click buttons at a whim. As Alfred says in The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” I sometimes think he was talking about poker when he said that.

It’s late on a Thursday night, I’m sitting in a poker room in Sheffield, and it’s the only cash game running. What was a slow, steady £1/£2 game would essentially be doused in gasoline within the hour.

An unknown guy sits down, and a regular player at the table decides to throw on the £5 straddle to raise the game’s energy. The same player would be in his straddle versus the unknown player and would 3-bet the £15 open to £60. A snap jam would go flying back in his face for £300, and he would respond back with a snap call. The table suddenly jerked awake. What kind of cooler was this?

A boring Jack-high board would be dealt out, and the snap-jammer would flip over Ace-Jack offsuit, and the regular would turn over Ace-Queen suited in disgust. There’s never any justice in poker. Suddenly, the table was wide awake, and I’m pretty sure we all had the same thoughts at that point.

What Makes a Manical Poker Player?

There’s a big difference between someone who is crazy at the poker table compared to a “red tag” aggressive player or a “blue tag” fish/whale. The red tag will often lean towards aggressive action, and there will be some basis for this, regardless of how well or poorly it works out for them. The blue tag will be making confusing plays often, but the net negative outcome of these is something you are not concerned about, as the chips will generally flow into your stack.

A purple tag is a player who is capable of doing anything at any moment, and you will have no idea whether it is good or not. Their donk for pot could be a bluff, or it could just be with top set. They could defend their straddle with Kings, they could check-raise their absolute nut low for a 3x pot size.

The only common thing for most crazy players is that they will inevitably run into a wall at some point. Their maniacal style of play will be their undoing, and there will be some wealthy recipients at the end. I give them the purple tag because they remind me of Nero, a crazy Roman Emperor who was “born in the purple”. This was something done for the royal family at the time, and typically, purple tag players will play as if they have this sort of bankroll.

Nero would have well-intentioned meanings behind his actions, like trying to abolish taxes throughout the Roman Empire or pushing an obscene amount of money into athletics and shows while his Empire dwindled financially. Rumor has it that he started the Great Fire of Rome to distract from his inadequacies as Empreror, and this feels like a good metaphor for a purple tag player.

What Happened When I Played a Pot With The Joker

I think that, especially in live poker, the loss of mental inhibition is addictive and spreads across the table. Not long after that crazy hand with the £5 straddle on, the game would morph into a £1/2/5/10/20 with an occasional £40 mega-straddle, like the lack of care for currency was seeping into the other players at the table. In fairness to me, I had a very fun player come and sit to my right in between me and the Heath Ledger poker player, and he was great for the game – I even got us a round of tequila to knock back.

Playing the biggest stakes of my life, I found T♥️7♥️ in the Big Blind with the £1/2/5/10/20/40 on, and after it folded round to me, I opened to £120 off my £900 stack. The fun player would flat, the purple tag would come along in the £10, and the rest would fold. We smashed the flop on a Q♠️T♠️7♦️ flop, and my pulse intensified. The pot had around £400 in it, and without too much thought, I slid in £150.

Not noticing the fun player only had £175  behind, he went all-in, and then the crazy player tank-called. I was unable to re-raise at this juncture, and I was swearing at myself in my head. We need to fade a spade and hope for a dry turn when I can get all the money in. I called. The pot ballooned to £925, and I sat about £500 effective with the crazy guy. The turn peeled the 2♠️, and I checked over to the man with the gun. When he threw out a bet of £90, part of me laughed. The other relished the great price he set, and I’m pretty sure the whole casino felt me praying for a Ten or Seven on the river.

The river was an inconspicuous-yet-board-changing 9♦️ and checked in flow. He doesn’t take too long before putting his £410 into the pot of around £1,000, and now I am truly in the mental blender. Is this guy really crazy enough to bluff in this spot? He still had to beat my Tequila-drinking friend, but it didn’t take long before he threw a spanner into my thought process too. Just as I’m about to fold my hand, he stands up and walks away to the cash desk. Now what do I do?

I sit and think harder than I have ever done in a poker hand. On the surface, everything points to folding. He has flushes, sets, better two pairs, and even straights that just got there on the Q♥️T♥️7♣️2♥️9♦️ board, and I only really beat a select group of hands. In terms of mathematics, my hand is an east fold. But then I think about how wild this player is; could he just have AQ, KQ, and QJ here? I had seen him lose his mind in multiple hands, including calling a pot-sized river bet on a four-liner with just Four-High to chop.

I decided to revert back to the good poker play, the right one and slowly slid my hand into the muck. It felt like a dagger was staked into my heart when he flipped over K♥️Q♦️, with a face that expressed that he had missed some kind of value from me. “What the F****…” I mutter and put my hands in my head.

Batman Doesn’t Always Catch The Joker

Sometimes the purple tag gets away with it, and that’s fine. In the same way, the Joker often eludes Batman; it is something you have to naturally accept in poker. You can’t win them all, even if you feel like you deserve to.

I healed my wounds, learned how I could have played the hand much more optimally (like check-raising the flop), and somehow found pride in making the right poker play even if it meant I had to lose the biggest pot I have played so far.

I think the biggest thing that differentiates winning poker players from losing ones is their ability to be process-driven and not results-driven. The outcome will always fluctuate, but that keeps people like this purple tag player returning to the felt.

Make the right play, and the game takes care of itself. I really believe that. Till next time.

You can follow my poker games and adventures at the Camzilla Poker channel, and you can also catch my TableTalk PokerListings podcast for some incredible conversations with poker’s best minds.