Whilst playing poker we will want to have a solid strategy that is hard for players to play against, we will want to be protected in our checks, balanced in our bets and unpredictable to remain profitable at the tables.
We are also going to come up against players that are playing a fair margin away from this middle ground of what is generally a balanced style, in these cases we will need to adjust to the players around us, if we don’t adjust then we won’t be making money.
In this post, we take a look at some different player types and learn how we can adjust our strategy to beat their game plans.
Loose Aggressive Table Bosses
We’ve all sat down at a table and seen these maniacs just fire, fire, fire… often raising nearly every open spot and constantly three betting weak opponents and taking down pots with pure aggression.
So how do we combat this player type?
Well, we will want to make many more call downs versus our opponent, we aren’t going to want to raise with our big hands either we are going to want to keep all their bluffs in the pot.
Let’s look at this example:
$1/$2, $200 Deep
BTN: Raises to $6
SB: Folds
BB: Hero with Q♥ T♦ calls $6
Flop: T♠ 8♠ 2♦
Hero: Checks, BTN: Bets $10, Hero: Calls
Turn: J♣
Hero: Checks, BTN: Bets $30, Hero: Calls
River: 3♣
Hero: Checks, BTN: Bets $100…
Hero: ?
This is a pretty typical hand that you might see against an aggressive player, they will fire all 3 streets of action looking for either value or to get their bluff through and win the pot.
We have a very clear call on the flop… We have top pair with a decent kicker and beat many hands that might even be betting for value.
The turn is an easy call for us too, we will have a tonne of equity here against even a strong range in our opponent’s hand with our pair and gutshot as back up.
The decision is in the River, do we call this big bet with now what is just a bluff catcher, our opponent is not going to be betting a worse Ten for value here, so we either beat their bluffs or we lose.
We will have to factor into account many things about the player, how many bluffs have we seen from them if any at all it pretty much means that this could also be a bluff as they will be capable… Other factors to account for is how many hands missed on this board, all the flush draw combinations missed, but many of the overcards and straight draws got there on the turn.
Decisions like this are not easy but we will need to pick a certain percentage of our hands and call, we can’t just call with our top pairs in spots like this so we will need to choose some other holdings to call down with too, a solid second pair that blocks the nut straight and doesn’t block any of the missed flush draws on this board is from a GTO point of view one of the best calls we could have, so personally against a maniac this seems like a decent hero call spot.
Tight Players that Make a lot of Folds
We all know this player, they are the nits of the table that will need a huge hand by showdown to put in action, so how should we be adjusting to playing against these guys?
Let’s look at this example:
$1/$2, $200 Deep
BTN: Hero with A♥ T♠ Raises to $6
SB: Folds
BB: Calls$6
Flop: Q♠ 6♠ 2♦
BB: Checks, BTN: Bets $6, Hero: Calls
Turn: K♣
BB: Checks, BTN: Bets $25, Hero: Calls
River: 3♣
BB: Checks…
Hero: ?
We have a good spot on the flop to bet, we have the range advantage on a dry board, so we will want to bet a large percentage of the time at a small sizing with our overcard and backdoor straight and flush draws.
On the turn we have a clear bet, we have picked up a draw to make a broadway straight and we can put pressure on all small pairs that can’t call two bets.
On the river, we would normally need to have a pretty balanced range of bluffs and value hands in order to be playing well from a GTO style, so maybe we would bluff with all our low spade combinations but give up with our more showdown heavy Ace high hands.
However against a player that is shown to only make calls with big hands we will want to punish this tight play by betting with all our hands that we get to the river with, if they are going to even make tight folds with hands like second pair Jacks or even some weak top pair hands then we need to be pulling the trigger in these spots.
Even if we do get called we will set up the image later on for when we have a value hand and get paid in a spot where we may not have normally, so bluffs can be seen as advertising even when they don’t win us the pot, they will buy us action we may not have gotten in future had we not made the bluff.
Also, let’s not forget there are a tonne of auto-folds from our opponent, all the combinations of spade draws, some straight draws that got to the turn like AJ, JT & another AT and not to mention we can apply huge pressure to any 6x or pair under the Queen and King that was calling hoping we would shut down betting have a really tough and almost impossible call with this action.
Sum Up
Don’t forget, we aren’t going to want to pigeon hole all the players that we come up against, we will want to occasionally look to exploit our opponents as part of our overall balanced style.
Try and learn from these two player types and realise that we need to have balanced ranges whilst playing so we don’t fall into one of these categories!
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