I always say, I'd rather sit at a table with 7 or 8 players BETTER than me, than worse (OK, maybe 6 better and 2 worse
)Its is usually easier to play good players than bad ones.
Those of us who take NLHE seriously and try to improve our game, we analyze online hand histories, we read books & online forums/resources, we talk to players we respect, we replay hands in out head at the break or after the game playing out different plays etc.
But when it comes down to it, it mostly comes to nothing.
Let me explain why I say this.
Say your in a situation (whatever) and think to yourself, if I bet out X here on the turn and he calls, that means he'll be playing for his whole stack on the river. YOU KNOW THAT. But most players don't think like that. You make that X bet, thinking to yourself "If this was reversed I'd realize I am playing for my whole stack on the river, so I better have a hand with good showdown value", in the hope that your opponent will fold marginal hands. But he WON'T if he is not thinking the same way, which 95% of the time they aren't!
And the old rule of thumb: If a call preflop is 40%+ of your stack you may as well shove. Well how many times have you seen players with 1550 stack bet 1500???? (I know I have way too many times)
And many many other examples of similar.
I have built a fairly substantial online bankroll from almost nothing (free $50 from pokerstrategy.com) grinding through the micro limits, ergo coming head to head with many a crazy, donk.
Personally how I came to deal with this (after many a scream of "How do you call a push with a 5 high flush draw?" [which hit!]) is to play ultra tight the first few levels/orbits until you identify those maniacs, then play ultra tight and only SMALL pots against them. Even lay the best hand on the flop if they raise you or make some other maniacal move. The chips you SAVE in a tournament can be worth more than the chips you win.
How many times have you lost half your stack with JTs to one of these maniacs, only to be dealt rockets the very next hand, and think to yourself "Gee those chips I just lost (or some of them) would be real handy here!" - Especially when you raise, and someone comes over the top allin and shows JJ!
So when playing the crazed maniac, just play very very cautiously.
And lets face it, as I said above, fancy moves like a chk-call on the flop followed by a shove on the turn, or a chk-raise on the turn/river/or both are lost on most of these players. As is a raise from UTG, which any good player will interpret as strength, but no not these guys... No respect! They won't think twice about calling your UTG raise from MP with QTo or 98s or 33. And darn how many times to they hit and hit hard? flops of 89J or 985 or T73??
Whoops, there's your aces cracked..... again....
I think it reasonable to say that at the micros, when u get down to the top 5-10% of any decent size (1000+ entrants) MTT you no longer have to worry about such players, but occasionally they will sneak through.
It's also reasonable to say that even when playing a $200 buyin MTT you will still come across these types of players. Early on in my poker 'career' I satellited into the Sunday $1M GTD on pokerstars and raised 4BB [200] UTG with AA, only to be called by the hi-jack with 33 who hit his set (his very well disguised set - surely he didn't call me with pocket 3s????) but was savvy enough to fold to his 3bet on the flop, so it didnt hurt me that much (so example above was from a real hand as you see, but I put him on trip Ts not 3s)
So.... I think it is a paradox of this game we love called Poker, that it can be easier to play good players than bad ones.
