Hey Everyone!
I need some advice/help on an opponent I recently went 0/3 with.
I just faced an opponent who was super aggressive. He ALWAYS raised 3bb preflop in position. I was playing smallball against him (similar to how Brilliant27 plays) and was limping in on mostly every button. He also defended against my limp ~1/3 of the time and would raise 4bb OOP. He c-bet 100% of the time.
Match 1: During our first match, the pressure got to me. I made a a couple of 3-bets preflop that I shouldn;t have made and he shoved all in overtop. I was forced to fold due to my hands being marginal in strength (I was trying to slow down his preflop raises by 3-betting). Before I knew it, I had less than 500 chips. He continued to apply this relentless pressure and I shoved with A5os and he snap called w A9os and won the match.
Match 2: This time I went into the match with the intentions of being patient. I 3-bet when I had good hands and he folded. However, he continued to apply the same amount of pressure as before. I always had less chips than him during the match. Out of 70 hands he won 54. The hands I won were large, but he won so many small pots it never really dented him. The blinds became 25/50 and I had 700 chips left. He continued to raise 3bb preflop from the button. Thinking this was a hole that I could exploit, I began to shove. The first hand I shoved with was A8s- he folded. The second hand I shoved was 77 and he snap called w 99 and i lost the match.
Match 3: Same story as Match 2. I ended up with 650 chips and he was 3x every hand preflop in position at 25/50. I shoved with A3os and he snap called w A6s and I lost the match.
If anyone can provide any tips/advice on this type of opponent that would be great! I have some specific questions... if they could be answered, it would be a HUGE help!!!
1. Was small ball the correct strategy?
2. I never really called his pf raises OOP. Should I have challenged his raises more often via call or raise?
3. What frustrated me about this opponent was that he had NO RESPECT for my ability to adjust. He almost seemed to welcome it. It appeared he almost challenged every adjustment I made. Maybe it was one of those cases that I was getting poor cards and that every time I had a hand, he had a better one. However, I don;t believe that was the case.
4. How would you play such an opponent?
Any help/info would be greatly appreciated! I look forward to hearing from you! Best of luck at the tables!
-Pokerdevil
I think it might help to post hands from the biggests pots you lost.
That can be a starting point to giving you some suggestions on how to beat this player.
You can ignore the hands where you shoved in the end game 10-15bbs deep and lost, those are likely just coolers and sound fine as you described them. I'm more interested in 20+bb play as a starting point to dealing with this aggressive player.
I'm having pretty much the same problem. These guys that 3bet a ton, donk bet a lot, so then I start limping and they raise the limps...these guys have been destroying me...basically unless I hit a run of cards they run me over. After doing well against a lot of passive players, and calling stations it seems Iately I'm running into a ton of these guys and they basically ate all of my profit because I can't play them correctly.
This is typically an Italian player ;)
Ive noticed that the more you give in, the more you get pounded on. I have countered this with 4 betting light and just keep raising every button, and sometimes trap with high pockets. Also I often reraise donkbets with nothing, if the board loos good for it.
They seem to calm down with agression and get mega agressive against passiveness.
It seems however that higher variance is inevitable against these guys.
Would be nice to hear more comments on this...
Mike
There are so many different ways and adjustments you can make against these players, that's why I would like to see a few of the major hands. It'll be much easier to tell what you were doing correctly and what you could have done differently.
Some of these guys you can't 4-bet light b/c they will call ATC, a lot of these guys are so predictable on dry boards, that you can basically play ATC on a dry board profitably by rebluffing their aggression.
Other guys will call with anything earlier on in the hand, then play a lot weaker at showdown when their wide (and weak) range often misses draws/good pairs. Against those guys you just value bet early streets, perhaps with semi bluffs thrown in and bluff them more often on later streets.
That's just the beginning of adjustments, but it is very opponent dependent, these maniacs often do not operate by similar rules from one player to another, unlike the tight/weak player. It does not mean they are not as profitable or as bad, however.
This true, I play the same Italianos at the small Entraction network, hence the genralizaiton..seems there are positive sides also with a small network :)