Joe The Pro

Forum Strategy - Strategies vs Player Types

Before I blog about how I 3-bet these days, I am going to repost a forum post. There was someone in the forum that I disagreed with on a few of his points. I will post it here. Please feel free to write who you agree with as I am always ready to change my mind in light of good convincing.

You must learn to play each person at the table differently.

This is where I recently fixed this problem your having. If someone is raising a lot I am folding a lot, unless I have a pair that is then because of the wide range that person can raise with I will gladly call. If he is the sort of person who likes to keep firing barrels with air I call him "my little chip magnet" his stack climbs but I have a plan to make that stack mine. Sometimes I will even call the odd continuity bet just to make sure he feels comfortable firing off into me.

But here I am set mining.

Do not be the person who raises with too wide a range too aggressively too often or I guarantee someone will play you this way.

if you are set mining vs a loose aggressive person, you're just not going to get paid often enough to set mine for value. he's raising with such a wide range of hands (garbage) that he's not going to pay you off when you hit your monster hands. i would instead rather set mine with someone tight aggressive. i love being in the BB with a pair when someone really tight open raises.

the way i play vs LAGs is to generally out AGR them if i have position on them or to tighten up if they have position on me.

Against a tight passive player, I am going to call with anything. I will fight this guy after the flop if I think he has missed, other than that the pots his.

if he is passive PLUS has a high fold to cbet percent then i will fight if i think he has missed. some passives are calling stations and i like to avoid betting into those people. for example, if the flop is all low cards and i know the calling station has missed. i'm not going to bet with my overcards b/c i know he'll call with HIS overcards so i've lost my fold equity (and since we're calling him TIGHT, he probably has better showdown cards than me). also, if he is TIGHT passive, i am going to avoid playing dominated top pair hands like KJ, AJ,AT and KT against him and would rather play suited connectors and pairs and even suited one gappers over those dominated hands.

So where do the moves fit into all this?

Well they don't very often. Every so often I will do a move against someone but I am generally only going to do it once in a blue moon just to show the table that I have some flair to my game. You see, the beauty of the moves you see on this site is they throw a lot of players off balance when they see them made. Here is another thing, what you going to do if you only make moves rarely and yet everyone folds? I know what I do, show my hand. Thats it then, the move has served its purpose, no need to bother doing it again or really any other move for the next 30 mins or so. Back to ABC poker and with a bit of luck when I finally hit that monster I am going to get the action I need. If not then I wait a while and shoot another move, show em it and back to ABC poker.

i am going to make my moves quite often if it's a small pot, dry board and the people in the pot have approx 50% fold to cbet numbers. i love making moves at these small pots, just to SHOW ppl, hey i make moves a lot and then they mistakingly generalize this to me making moves all the time, including big pots when i hardly ever do, or to calling stations or to drawy boards.

flop is K72 rainbow and there are 3 players in the pot, i'll be out even first to act. sometime i'll even bet out 4 in the pot. i'll pound at these small pot, dry flops if i am able to OPEN raise. gives me a good image at the table that is opposite of my natural play (i'm a nit).

posted by joe | permalink | 1 comments