So for the past week I've been playing poker with a guy named Juan 8 handed full ring $1/$2 and $1/$3. What Juan does is he never raises pre flop but will call a raise. Juan's main strategy is on the flop whether he has the nuts or total air he will always bet $6, then on the turn again whether he has air or the nuts he will bet $12 and on the river whether he has air or the nuts he will bet $18. This past week I've been playing with him and I'm making so many mistakes, I'll call him down with A high when he has the nuts and fold my middle pair when he has absolute air. I never know what he has and it's really tough for me to get a read on him because he bets the same amount everytime.

1) how often does he limp preflop? 20% of hands? 35% of hands? does he vary based on his position (closer to the button is he looser?)

2) make good hands (top pair good kicker) and raise him aggressively.

3) if he ever raises, snap fold.

You haven’t really given us any sort of real strategy here.

But simple story: if someone is betting turn at near 100% given that they bet flop, and betting river at near 100% when they bet turn, then what should you not be doing much of?

Answer: calling one street and folding the next, especially when the board doesn’t change drastically (so like if you have 87 and the board is KJ8-A, yes you can fold turn).

If you want to fight back with aggression, you do it with a small raise size and with a polar range of hands (this level polarity is determined by what he’s willing to call a raise with: top pair might be good enough to raise for value or we might just have to call for example).

So really, against a guy who cooks up this kind of stupid strategy to compensate for their loose passive preflop play, the strategy is easy: play good hands before the flop and don’t fold after it. And if you can get more value, raise and charge him even more money for playing way out of equilibrium.


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Do you mean that he's betting $6 100% of the time? Or that he literally bets with only nutted hands and air?

He bets the same amount everytime regardless of what he has, 100% time

Villain's strategy is stupid bad but it is so far outside normal play that you will have to work out a strategy specifically for him.

What does he do if raised? Is it the same preflop and on all streets? What if somebody else bets first?

If he is literally betting 100% of flops/turns/rivers for those small amounts then call down a lot, he has to have more air then made hands. As jdr0317 noted above if your heads up and get past the flop with a made hand then you should almost never fold.

What you want to call down with depends on what what percent of hands he plays and anything else you can figure about his hands. Does he play lots of pairs? Lots of AX? Lots of suited garbage?

In heads up hands it's probably profitable to call down with any pair. Multiway you will need to consider opponents and the board. Top pair is a judgement call, give up worse hands and play better ones. Either way play draws when your getting odds.

What are the other players doing? What's his VPIP? This is essential info.

In absentia of that info, pre keep a good tag raise range (or roughly half the rate he is limping in with) and raise your premiums very big (experiment with sizing to find elasticity).

Post raise with good hands (mid pair or better and experiment with sizing), and call down with nearly everything else ( down to King high if not lower) because your pot odds are so good sinice you inflated the pot and he will have air enough for it to be worth it

I have actually played against two Villain's with similar "strategies".

One is named Amahl, as in "Amahl and the Night Visitors". Opens for 8, bets flop for 16, turn for 24.

Don't know the name of the other guy, but he plays the same way in general, with a little variation in sizing but not much.

Whatever you decide to do with your Villain, OP, should apply to others like him.

Because, if you've seen Juan, you've seen Amahl.

If he 3 barrels 100% of the time, you should be calling down light a lot because this is NLHE and mostly people don't have much.

His preflop range though is extremely important as mentioned above. Also his behaviour facing cbets rather than making them/donking behaviour is important. Also facing raises.

This is a fairly common online microstakes fish "strategy", and it's really not that hard to combat.

If he's legitimately leading 100%, we really shouldn't be flatting much, if at all. His range contains so much air and weak hands that can't stand pressure that we are printing money by just raising 100% of our range ourselves.

Make it 2.5x with all your hands, then bomb ~100% of turns. Mostly only 3barrel rivers for value or on ridiculously good bluffing cards.

Our own holding doesn't even matter. Just pray villain doesn't figure out he needs to adjust BEFORE he loses all his money. Once he starts developing a checking range (or god forbid, a x/raising range) we need to tone down the aggression factor also.

I guess we should flat if the board is super dry AND we have/block top pair AND it's hard to get value AND we don't really fear overcards. Something like A5 on a A82r board could be a flat. Or maybe raise 2.5x - xback turn.

To be clear, this is all assuming we are HU with villain. Multiway we obviously need to be tighter. Allthough we can still liberally put on the squeeze when villain leads and others flat in between, specially when we are the PFR.

I see your dumb ass strategy and raise you one.

Treat every first action from villain as a check and proceed accordingly. If you would have checked then just call his bet. If you would have bet then raise him instead. Basically his first action is meaningless so you ignore it.

First of all, if he's betting 6 into say, a 20$ pot, that's not an meaningless amount. Heck, 2bb will cut into our winrate no matter how big the pot is.
Secondly, he's betting 100% of the time. If we treat this bet as a check, that means we also putting in money with hands that are -EV to do so, because they have little to no equity or SDV. And since he's barrelling turns 100% as well, we are just giving him money while folding on later streets.
Thirdly, we are letting him realise his equity for relatively cheap.

Villain is using this strategy because it's an exploit that works. At least it does against weak players who call or fold too often, which of course is 90% of LLSNL. We need to adjust to exploit him, rather than ignoring him and letting him exploit us. We do that mostly by generating fold equity.

And by going for thin value also. Where 2nd pair no kicker would be a checkback, vs this guy it's a clear value raise.

^ completely disagree. His $6 sizing is automatic from what I read. The pot could be $100 and he'll still lead for 6. Whatever equity he's realizing we are also realizing since he's doing this with any 2 cards, so we could very easily be ahead quite often. Our goal is to get to the turn as cheaply as possible whilst concealing the strength of our hand as we would do when checking behind.

The exploit V uses here exploits tilted opponents trying to bluff him with their perceived FE when they have none because you have no idea what his range is. All you're doing is building bigger pots for when he hits. We need to counter balance his strategy by playing equally devoid of range. There's no thin value to be had vs him. He's not doing this to make sneaky hands. V lacks flop skills. This is his way of canceling out 1 street of action.

+1 I like the treat it as a check, with the exception that Viral mentioned that I'm nearly always raising 2nd pair here, though we lack info on what he does to raises.

I'd also add that you want to be raising big pre with a range advantage to iso him, so hopefully pot is 40. Even if flop comes say 547, where he may have a range advantage, you're priced in to call for 2 overs *even* if he has a pair, and chances are he doesn't because you miss more most flops.

/