How to handle very aggressive players in no limit hold’em

Very aggressive players are a nuisance to solid poker players and especially solid players who wait for good values before they commit a decent number of big blinds. If you raise to steal the blinds with a speculative hand then they often three bet you. If you flop a decent middling pair then they bet and bet until the pressure just becomes too great and you fold……so how do you handle them in today’s modern online poker environment? Well firstly once you know that this is the type of player someone is then that is a massive step forward.

If you know beforehand that a player will three bet your steal then you are one step ahead and not one step behind. But too many players just look at the monetary amounts when they fold and do not stop to consider the game theoretic consequences of folding to ultra-aggressive players. As the saying goes then if you cannot stand the heat then get out of the kitchen and in poker then this means that if you cannot stand the variance then leave the game. Very aggressive players thrive on greater variance because this makes their opponents fearful.

So when they three bet then if they believe that they can push you around then their hand range is probably quite wide meaning that you can either four bet pre-flop or call and then look to move them from the hand. When a player is very aggressive then you need to know just how they like to be aggressive. All aggressive players tend to have a bias towards a certain type of play. They may like to three bet a raise pre-flop or they may like to four bet.

Some players on the other hand like to take the hand past the flop and look to exert pressure further on down the streets. The key here is to know your opponent and how they like to be aggressive. If they like to barrel all three streets then you need to be prepared to make some pretty marginal call downs. If pocket nines looks weak on a board of A-A-K-4-2 and your opponent has bet all the way then you need to remember that your hand beats all bluffs and any player that triple barrels a lot has fresh air a lot of the time.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays poker at www.pokerstars.co.uk 

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