Dealing with Hyper Aggressive Players : Poker Player

Dealing with hyper aggressive players

We've all seen some players turn into betting and raising maniacs, as soon as a tournament hits the short-handed stage, and right they are to do so. It is obvious that aggression is a key concept in short handed and - later on - in heads-up games. Some people however, take aggression way too far.

They take a backwards approach to the whole poker strategy issue. They act extra-aggressive on hands where they don't really have anything, thus betting a lot on negative expected value. Make no mistake, these guys know what expected value is, they just choose to completely disregard it.

Their most prominent problem is that they can't handle winning hands. Whenever they get one, they start slow-playing it so obviously, you'd have to close your eyes not to notice. Now, you might say that an approach like this one, is pure nonsense. To bet a lot on hands with negative EV and bet little on hands with positive EV is something that goes against basic sane poker strategy, yet there are people doing this, and some of these guys are pretty successful too.

The reason for their success is that there is an endless number of loose-passive rookies out there, who want to take a peek at almost every flop, but they find nothing wrong with folding as soon as the flop misses them.

It's easy to spot one of the above-described aggressive players at a table full of weak loose-passive guys. Our guy will usually have a huge stack of chips in front of him, and he'll be betting into every hand, full effect.

Now you and I both know it's impossible for someone to happen upon that many good hands, so most of the time he must be bluffing. What's really intimidating about this guy is though, that most of his wild betting goes down as semi bluffing with his opponents, who - if they're under-stacked to make matters worse - dare not try to keep him honest.

This is where you come in. Remember, the bets that he makes are by no means semi-bluffs, (even though he is taking some advantage of the pretty wild luck-induced variance in Texas Holdem) and keep in mind, that there is a lot of value for you, in the way this guy plays.

There are a few things that throw a player like this more or less off-course. The first thing is, if he gets a good positive EV hand. Then he'll slow down and desperately try to lure money into the pot. If you see him slowing down, don't mess with him.

The second thing is when nobody calls him. That really pisses him off because it basically kills the very object of the game he's playing.

The third one is his arch nemesis: the check-raise. That sends him off-balance immediately. He can tell he just walked into a trap, but more importantly, the message that a check-rise sends him is that you're on to the game he's playing, and you basically view him as a source of EV+.

He'll react to your trap in three possible ways: 1) he folds it, which means he really doesn't have anything and admits defeat, for that hand at least. 2) he'll go all-in. That usually means that he's on a draw. 3) He calls your raise. That will either mean that he just wants to see if you lose momentum later on, so he can bet into you again, or that he has the nuts (remember, he likes to slow-play those).

Forget about that latter possibility though, if you ever intend to get the best of him. Don't go bluffing into him right away. He might just get lucky, continue to win, and in the process, the important message that you have for him, will remain undelivered.

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