I'm in camp 1, but I have a question for the others in that camp...

How far do we take the post flop call downs with just a pair? With top pair and the maniac betting 2/3 to pot each street, are you calling down to showdown? How do board textures affect your call down?

Nah mate I was really really impressed by your posts. The only problem I had was anything to do with raising. Without some idea of the way the opponent will react we can't justify a raise over a call. The only thing we can do against this guy is continue more than GTO. We don't know whether we should be more aggressive or more passive.

In general, I would say that it is inconclusive as to which approach to take. Sometimes a fish will fold all their weak value hands to a min raise! Other times they will make crazy stupid calls with A high. Sometimes they will over bet jam with air. Sometimes they will do it with the nuts. I am very much against making a pre-judgement on any player. I'm not saying I need to see exactly what they do before making a unique strategy against them. Instead of finding out exactly what they do, I just try to get an idea of his character. With this aggressive guy, we can't really say anything about him. He might only play a few too many hands and be really good at exploitative poker. In this case the way we react to him would be completely different to the way we react to a fish.

More guys like you should post on these threads. There is usually only a very one sided approach to poker and quite often it leaves me standing alone. (I do hold my own, but back up is always good!) If you hadn't said that tightening up was foolish we would have seen a lot more people going for option 2.

Yup. Making a general assumption that the slightly loose guy opening preflop will play poorly postflop isn't safe.

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback and, of course, the compliment.

1>2 but needs other adjustments. Also, we don't want to take overly conspicuous exploitative measures that force him to stop making obvious mistakes.

Surprised most people prefer option 1. I expect it is common knowledge to everyone here that we should dramatically tighten up vs a player that shoves every hand. That is, we should be playing far less hands vs a player that is this aggressive. How do you reconcile preferring option 1 when we know this? To me, the "shove every hand villain" is proof that option 2 is preferred in at least some cases.

I don't think the question specified cash game or sng either (my above paragraph is in regards to SNGs). That matters because winrate maximizing play (in SNGs) is different than maximizing EV of a particular hand.

A less extreme example: If villain 3bets 100% of my opens, then I will entirely eliminate my raise/fold range and instead open fold those hands. For example, I may pfr a hand as weak as 82o vs some standard heads up players, but I would obviously open fold this hand vs a villain that 3bets 100% . Hence, there is merit to tightening up vs overly aggressive players.

I think everyone else was assuming a cash game.

I agree. I'm curious what people think of the post I made after that one, regarding cash games.

Sorry for multiple posts, but really the point stands for cash games. If we know villain is going to shove over our raise, we're not going to raise any hands that fold to a shove. We would play a lot of these hands versus a more standard villain.

Versus a villain that, for example, 3bets 80% of my open raises, I may not entirely get rid of my raise/fold range, but I would significantly reduce it.

Since he shoves every hand, that takes away post-flop implied odds. Therefore, we should start folding hands that rely on implied odds, such as suited connectors, but we can add back in hands that have reverse implied odds problems against raises from normal players, such as offsuit broadway cards.

This logic is generic, it doesn't matter if your in a tournament or cash game. Nor if your playing Omaha. It even works if you are in a boxing ring! If you are up against a boxer who throws hundreds of punches every round you don't want to just stand there and defend. He will leave himself open a lot and so we attack a lot. If you are up against a person who plays too many hands and you don't have many chips behind, (in a tourney perhaps), you may decide that the profit margin is too small with suited connectors, and so you may decide to wait for a more profitable hand, but there is still profit in playing the weaker hands.

Look guys, try this instead. Try reversing the logic. If an opponent only raises with AA, KK, and QQ, what do you do against it? Remove your bluffs and tighten up. Obvious right. I think that is something we can all agree on. So then... If they are playing a tighter range, you tighten up. And if they are playing a wider range, you tighten up... Surely you see the problem here!?

I don't memorise my answers to threads like this. I use exploitative theory to find the answers. So do be aware that you guys haven't simply learnt the wrong adjustment to make. You have massive holes in your understanding of exploitative theory, this really is beginner stuff.

Don't just argue against me. I was only winding you up before to get an emotional response to maximise the chance of you breaking through this thing. Listen to me. Your subconscious mind is making it difficult for you to grasp this obvious logic! What's happening is called cognitive dissonance and it doesn't just affect poker players. There are boxers out there standing around getting their face pounded because their subconscious mind won't allow them to understand the simple strategy which they should employ. This same ailment effects economists, businessmen, solders... You guys are the first I've approached with it. My fellow poker players. All I'm trying to do is help everyone, but most of you guys hinder me at every step. Join me instead! Get your head around this stuff.

Fold hands with reverse implied odds, such as broadway hands. Be more willing to call with speculative hands that have good implied odds (which requires stacks to be sufficiently deep). How many speculative hands you start playing depends on how your opponent plays.

"Tighten up" and "loosen up" are unsophisticated lines of advice, when a more advanced understanding of poker takes into account how hands will play out over multiple streets of betting.

Hopeless. You're a lost cause.

Shouldn't you just call shoves with any hand that has +EV against a random hand? (And in tournament setup use ICM on top of that).

Exactly. Why would you openraise any hand that folds to a shove vs a villain that shoves every hand? (you wouldn't. The exception is when we're trying not to 'teach' villain to change his bad strategy, but thats not what we're discussing here.)


Tournaments are a little different because in a cash game we'd call a shove with A2o (because it's +ev). We'd open fold a hand like this in a (medium to deep stack) husng spot because waiting for a better hand maximizes our chances of winning the tournament.