How do I beat the maniacs?

If the maniac is to your left, sadly, there's not much you can do apart from shelling up and playing only premiums to the bone since he'll have position on you pretty much all the time: leaving is fine here since table/seat selection is primordial to a high $/hour. If he is to your right, you have found a new friend: you have the best seat at the table, milk it for all it's worth.

Milking the Maniac:
1) Playing looser or trying to out-maniac the maniac is not going to work: he is better than you at it. Play your normal game and act accordingly to the range you can put him on. Take notes and stick to your reads. If the maniac is not in fact a maniac but a good LAG, be careful.
2) Trapping the maniac can work: it is sometimes best to play a little bit more passive and not try to bluff or semi-bluff as much.
3) Playing against a maniac is massively +EV if you pick your spot, but can be high variance. Remember that the game will be a lot more swingy and wild.

Also, your maniac doesn't seem really maniacal to me, 1.7 postflop is not very agressive.

Looking at your stats I'd say you need to raise more preflop. Your PFR should be more than half of your VP$IP (@ 10% for you I'd think). Obviously with a VP$IP under 16 you're only playing solid values so there is no reason to be letting others in cheaply. Charge the Any 2 Carders for playing against you.

Agreed - this guy was a bit of an oddity, and perhaps not the best example. He was certainly a maniac pre-flop. He would raise / re-raise / cap with pretty much anything. Post flop he was inconsistant. One hand he would bet like a maniac, and the next would switch o calling station. It was very difficult to get a read on him. Maybe he as better than I gave him credit for then!

I'm glad you mention this, because it's something that I am conscious of, and realise that I need to address. It feels natural for me to play aggressively post flop, but for some bizzare reason I do not feel so comfortable raising pre-flop with anything less than premium hands.

It appears that I have a definite issue to address here. My original point about the maniac was based on his pre-flop play, and the point that you have raised is about my lack of aggression pre-flop. I need to have a serious thing about this, as I seems to have a problem with pre-flop aggression, both my own (lack of) aggression and my oponents who ARE aggressive.

Thanks for your comments.

Boltneck

This is why you want to get in with the best hand against him and this is why playing against him will be more swingy/wild than agaisnt your average passive fish who you know when he wakes up with a hand. Nonetheless, your preflop range should stay the same, but the range of hands with wich you want to go to show down with/value-bet should broaden IMHO.

For example:
Against a passive opponent who raised UTG and wich you reraise OTB with AK, when you hit your K but the passive guy c/r you on the turn after bet/calling your flop raise, your K is probably no good. Against a maniac, your K is probably still good and you should push to make him pay if he is on a draw for example.

And yes, 4.7 PFR is very passive preflop considering you're not a total rock (VPIP of 15.8 is solid and not too tight). Please to be bumping that to 8-9+ because:

3-betting your good hands proves to be cheaper than flat calling a reraise and getting your c-bet countered. For example:

You have AK UTG and you raise, MP who is 30/7 reraises. The correct move here is to 3-bet to try to take it down right now. If he 4-bets, fold. Flat calling here makes c-bet costly because he can have med PP wich are in his raising range, but since he is pretty passive preflop, you can give him credit for a monster and safely fold (he plays loose but raises pretty tight).

Raising more pre-flop also makes you more difficult to read, unpredictable. If opponent in the previous example was 17/11, you know is starting hand requirement are high, but that is raising range is actually looser, so folding to his reraises might actually be wrong (he could have JJ, QQ or AK).

Also, your numbers indicate that you might not be stealing/squeezing enough: against a passive table, stealing the blinds can accoutn for a large % of your hourly. If CO open limps and he is a passive, non tricky player, even K7s might be good enough to raise because:

a) He will be scared to play back at you and might flat call or just fold. A c-bet will often take care of him if you can get it HU.
b) You will get action for your big hands. Not getting predictable is important here though, if you just raise every time somebody limps, you'll get slaughtered.

Smith & Wesson, or Colt in the alley.........