Handling Aggression
Constant aggression is one of the things that poker players have a difficult time dealing with. Many amateur and professional poker players make their biggest mistakes facing pressure from an opponent on a series of several hands or a session. A common reaction is to improvise and start fighting back in situations that you wouldn’t normally which can get a player into some difficult spots. There can even be an emotional need to fight back and try to win some of the pots with weak holdings or make hero call downs, stemming from our desire to win. This can work some of the time, but it is very unlikely to be our optimal strategy.
Poker strategy is very complex. It’s not an easy task to come up with a strategy to counter your opponent’s while playing. We might have a general sense that our opponent is aggressive, so we can gather that they have looser ranges than our typical player. In itself, that doesn’t tell us enough information to react. For example, against a player that likes to fire multiple streets with their bluffs or semi-bluffs, we might want to just continue with a tight range against their initial aggression. Our strong hands are more profitable because they are putting a lot of money in with weak hands. If they like to only bluff once at the pot, continuing with a wide range becomes a great option because for the small price of calling we get a lot of information about their hand. If you assume the former but our opponent is of the latter type, then it can end up costing you big.
Fighting back is not a legitimate strategy to countering aggression. It is an emotional response to protect our ego. A common response to a frequent 3-bettor is to try 4-bet bluffing. If someone 3-bets us a few times in a row, 4-bet bluffing can be a costly decision. First, an opponent's range tends to be stronger when they take an aggressive action immediately after taking a pot from you or 3-betting you. Second, the timing you have fighting back tends to be transparent and your opponents realize that your range is weaker than normal. Having a set range for 4-betting for value and bluffing makes you more unpredictable. Third, there is a decent chance your 4-bet will get called in a small stakes game, making your hand value more important.
The correct way to deal with aggression is to tweak our ranges. If they truly are playing overly loose and aggressive, then we don’t have to do anything except tighten our ranges. We can just wait until we have a big hand and take advantage of the fact that they put a lot of money in the pot with a weak range. If they have more of a style where they take one stab and give up frequently on the turn or on the flop in a 3-bet pot, then we certainly should loosen up our ranges to their aggression.
If our strategy is poor versus our opponent's strategy, the correct time to deal with that is away from the tables. Coming up with a good strategy while at the table is a difficult task. We need to look at our ranges away from the tables to figure out the best way to react to our opponent's anticipated strategy. Also, it's important to consider whether they are using the strategy to exploit a weakness in our game, or if they just tend to be more aggressive than average.
One thing we need to evaluate is how much our opponent's aggressive tendencies affect our profit from our bluffs. A common mistake made when stealing is focusing too much on our opponent's 3-bet percentage or their fold to c-bet percentage. Since we have a weak hand we are not that concerned how often they are taking an aggressive action because we can fold and not think twice. It is much more important how often they fold to the steal or c-bet. If your opponent folds to 80% of steals then it doesn't matter if they 3-bet 20%; your steal is going to be profitable. In this case, we would not want to tighten up our opening range to counter their aggressive strategy.
When we are facing an opponent playing an aggressive strategy it is important to have a specific strategy in mind to handle them. If you are not prepared to face a strategy like theirs, then it is more likely to cause an emotional response and cause mistakes. It's very important to understand when you have to tighten up versus aggression and when you have to loosen up to maximize your profits. If you master the skill of handling aggression from your opponents, then you are a step ahead of the rest at small stakes No Limit Hold'em.
Last edited by Awesemo; 02-19-2012 at 02:49 PM.