I'm furious beyond belief and extremely frustrated. I've been destroyed for over ten buyins by a losing player.He limps sometimes but for the most part, he makes 5x button raises at 10/20 and makes it very awkward for me to call from the big blind. If I do call, he uses his position to outplay me. He wins if I don't flop anything. If I 3-bet, he often calls but uses his position well and can make light call downs when I try to steal pots. If I shove, he usually folds but expands his calling range based on my frequencies. If I do nothing but wait for hands... I get blinded away. Moreover, when I tightened up, he raised his standards for stacking off. I usually play small-ball and this makes it tough for me to control the pot size. When I commit with something like middlepair, I've often been wrong (he also ran amazingly well and sucked out in virtually every all in). Even my good hands are getting crushed because when calling or 3-betting with AK, I still miss most times. When I tried to play back, he usually had something better. The annoying part is that the pot gets bloated and he just has to bet a little, like 1/3 pot to get stacks in by the river. If I call with A high etc., I'm just guessing and if I try to make a play, I have to risk my entire stack. What bothers me the most is that he knows if he has air or the nuts and I am forced to keep guessing... position is just so powerful. What am I supposed to do?BTW: I used to destroy this player before he adopted this style.
Hey mate,What you're saying brought to my mind something I heard in a heads up video somewhere by a top pro, on the lines of "A great player will usually breakeven OOP and make a ton of money IP" that really stuck to my mind.So I think the fact that he's playing such a radical strategy IP just takes a lot of options away from your arsenal, but it's not necessarily to his advantage. He's supposed to be winning money when IP, and when he does that he's not going to get to use that advantage so much because you're going to flat very little. So you can do a few simple things to not get runnover OOP, play a very simple strategy on your BB, and just focus on beating him up when IP.What I would do OOP would be:- Forget about playing any speculative hand like suited connectors.- Reshove any pocket pair when the shove is around 12x his open or less. (We should do some math on that number, just brought it out of my head, but it should definately be +EV)- Go and go him with AK-AJ type hands, make a big 3 bet that will set up stacks well for a flop jam. (Of course if he's a thinking player you'll have to balance these 2 points)- Flat his open only with decent high card value hands like KJ and play very aggressive on favourable flops when you do flat.- Also flat some monsters like KK-AA sometimes to balance the other hands you're flatting and trap him.I'm sure there can be other ways of playing him but if you do something like this you shouldn't lose much OOP, and he's actually completely losing the power of playing IP. Then if the guy is a losing player, you should be able to destroy him IP and that should be enough to beat him consistently.On a side note, if you were getting frustrated and didn't really know how to attack him, you probably should've quit before losing 10BIs. No shame in quitting even if you think the guy is bad if things are just going very badly, just step out, analyse things, and come back to destroy him another day.Hope some of this helps!
This sounds like a decent thinking maniac/aggressive player.You encounter these guys in the lower stakes, but they are much easier to beat (sit on a hand, rebluff once or twice, etc.) since they still have big leaks. This person sounds like he might be a bit stronger, however.I think you would really have to post an entire match (or even record one). If you'd like, you can PM me the guy's name and I'll try to make a video against him (or get somebody else to if they see him first). Adjustments against these types of players can be challenging and quite fun, as it often is going to be correct to play a great deal more hands much more aggressively than we can ever justify, these players just don't have much hand strength on latter streets and bet way too often. If he has some bet sizing issues or timing issue it'll be easier, but otherwise it could make for a very interesting video.
Thanks for the advice everyone!I got quite a few buyins back by making this adjustment:I tightened up OOP but also became passive when I hit (since the guy loves to barrel) and aggressive when I didn't (since he folds to aggression if I've been tight).However, playing him is still very high variance due to all his 3-betting and huge raise sizes.BTW: This is just the 20s and he refused to play me at the 50s once I got a handle on him.
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Hey mate,Very glad to hear you crushed him again!Gl with everything!