How do I deal with aggressive opponents?

Author: Simon Dexter

Guys,

I’m fairly new to online poker and was recently playing with a group of people whose names I recognised. While this might not sound as though I’m extending my poker horizons, it’s a good way to learn the game and the other guys all seemed pretty laid back about the whole thing. There wasn’t a great deal of pre- or post-flop pressure and in truth, the betting was quite tame.

However, one of my opponents insisted on playing aggressively, constantly raising or stealing blinds, scooping pots on the flop and generally testing players every time he played a hand. I don’t blame him for doing this, but I wondered whether there were a few easy ways in which aggressive opponents can be slowed down?
PetaQKA

The poker guru responds

There are a few ways in which you can make aggressive opponents slow down and think twice before taking you on – unless they’re absolute maniacs of course, in which case, these suggestions are of only limited use.

Let me tell you that few players will be quite as ready to take you on if you’ve got a sizable chip stack on display. Why? Well, if it’s enormous, he knows (or should know) that you could bust him. Conversely, if you’re short-stacked, he can afford to intimidate you because the number of moves you can make are severely limited.

Depending upon you chip stack size then, try the check-raise option: it doesn’t take many of these to have an aggressive opponent exercising caution before raising indiscriminately.

Thirdly, you may also want to call with the specific intention of betting or raising later. In such instances, unless your opponent can read you like a book, he will probably believe you have a decent hand and as a consequence, you should be able to extract a free card (at the very least) from this approach.

Best of Luck!

Tags: inexperienced poker players, Poker Strategy

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Have Your Say!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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