Drunk Maniacs online...

How do you avoid/exploit them?

In online play, they are simply maniacs. You can't see them to know if they are a drunk. So a maniac is a maniac.

Now you may suspect them to be a drunkard if they are mangling the chat box feature or exhibit extreme inconsistency. Problem is they could be tilting. Or they speak a different language. Or a cat could be walking across their wireless keyboard. No sure way to know they are drunk, inebriated or on something but it can be helpful to figure it out.

At first, your strategy should be to simply play them like any other uber-aggressive maniac. Pick your spots, wait for big hands, punish them and hope they don't draw out on you. This is very similar to a question posed on British Poker's site about online poker but I think there is more to it.

I think there are a couple of key strategies to employ if you think your virtual opponent is popping a few back and getting sauced while playing.

1. Find out if he is. How? You can ask "Is anybody else enjoying happy hour, right now?" or "Who else here is loaded?" Make it a positive question, because if posed negatively he might not cop up to it.

2. Then, if you get a yes, though they may be leveling you, say you are too, but if you are... don't follow the next piece of advice.

3. Encourage more drinking. Make it a prop-fame... "Any time a king hit the flop take a pop! Anytime a queen hits I'll take one (don't)."

4. Turn the needle a little bit. Once he can't differentiate between playful and antagonizing jawing, you've got him teed up.

5. Hit your hand, and felt the angry drunk.

Or... if needling isn't your thing.

1. Act quickly. Get the time function on him as often as possible. This will force him to think quickly. Even the best drunks lose processing efficiency so an online game with short clocks that force action are good places to exploit your advantage. Make it force him quicker.

2. Chat at him, be friendly, when it's about to be his turn. Another thing drunks aren't good at is multi-tasking. You do it as a friend, he won't turn off his chat box. Engage him in conversation and he'll think he's got a flush draw when he doesn't and he'll make more mistakes.

3. Soothe him after his bad plays. You want him around to leak more money. Drunks sometimes will lay off the guy they like when they have nuts, which is good for you too.

AND REMEMBER, you want him to make bad plays, don't get fired up when he draws out on you. That's what you want. If you can't afford to lose that pot, you are in the wrong game.

Latest High Stakes Poker

Latest Winners of Trip to WPT Venice

Earlier this month Bwin held their Sunday WPT Venice qualifier one of their many daily poker tournaments. 61 players sought to join previous qualifiers skburke, KristapsK3, Speezebre, barolmay, Ilawa, Kicker Keni, jojojoxx, claystig1, and_Perbaad_Are at the WPT Venice event. The top three would join bwin's roster.

As the field got whittled down to the bubble these five players remained: indrich (~77k), RipCheaer (~70k), 010peter (just short of 100k), King_Dirk (one of two short stacks with about 31k) and Nikos7714 (the shortest stack at almost 28k). With three prize packages to be award with a value of $7,700 the action was tense.

You might recognize a couple of names on here from my posts about the Aussie Millions. By playing in bwin's poker tournaments, they each won a trip around the world. Once there, King_Dirk, went deep and cashed in a side event, and indrich gave a strong showing but didn't make the money. Once again, they were close to the finish line, and this is the reason the play poker tournaments online, as each was hoping to enjoy another poker trip on bwin with a chance to win a fortune.

The short-stack Nikos7714 held on for as long as he could. He got eliminated when his A9 ran into veteran indrich's A10 suited. This moved indrich to the chip lead at 117k. Of course he knew he didn't need to win all the chips, he just need to avoid elimination and hang on to a top three spot in this online poker tournament.

RipCheader and 010Peter chipped down a bit, with RipCheader being shortest at 43k. 010Peter had 87k and King_Dirk had improved to 56k. The stacks would continue to swing until King_Dirk looked, ironically, at two black Kings.

At this point RipCheader had regained a chip advantage on him. He had AK suited and King_Dirk got all his chips into the middle pre-flop. Like most online poker tournaments, in fact, like any poker tournaments, starting with the best hand doesn't mean you'll finish with it.

King_Dirk, knew if an Ace came, he'd be drawing slim to the case King. It didn't take long for the painful news to be delivered as the flop was Ace high.

Congratulations to 010Peter, indrich, and RipCheader for winning the $7,700 prize package and their trip to the WPT Venice event.