After moving from Ignition to ACR (long overdue) I finally found a strategy to combat extremely aggressive tables, as the anonymity makes it damn near impossible to fight off, where as seeing players names on ACR allows me to use Poker Tracker 4 hand history and HUDs to figure out how to tactically counter aggression from all angles in the following 5 steps:
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1. Screen snip all entrants in the MTT to take note of super aggressive players that rebuy 5+ times per MTT as they're obviously too loose regularly
2. Use PT4 to dissect how they bet a hand that goes to showdown vs how they bet when the hand doesn't see showdown
3. Once I get a table with a few of high rebuy players near registration close I start betting extremely slowly, this seems to provoke looser play as their opportunity to chip up or rebuy vanishes
4. Get aggressors with stacks I have covered in heads up action pre-flop with a hand that has strong nut potential, check / call down the river even if I hit the nuts a few times to ensure the table gets a look at the traps I am setting (and of course some call / folds when I flop garbage)
5. After there is a sense of of caution with the aggression, I will isolate LAG chip stacks I have covered and try to provoke huge 3bet semi-bluffs when I have their stack covered with no deep stack traffic between, it can turn into a coin flip but if you are knocking other aggressive players out it will start to get folds.. hopefully
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One thing I've found to be absolute with LAG tables is the short stacks will often throw semi-bluff aggression through traffic of 1-2 fellow LAGs that has my chip stack covered, so if I jam back my entire stack they call the jam and its a coin flip to lose my stack - So every chance I can isolate with a strong hand I am jamming.
After enough tactical counter aggression I've actually had regs at MTT tables step in to defend my short stack from harassment all-in bets from a rando, and go from doing the snap all-in from SB to just calling 1 BB and check to the river to see who gets the chips.
Once I stop losing chips to aggressive players, making them is just playing good poker, hope that helps anyone struggling with MTT aggression!
/rant
Last edited by OsamaTheLlama; 08-07-2021 at 04:58 PM.