I need some advice on how to improve my game when I'm card dead. Against tighter players I'll usually get impatient and try to keep firing barrels or bluff my opponent out of the hand. This will work sometimes, but there are quite a few times when he'll realize I'm betting with nothing and just become a calling station. This is usually a good thing but not when I'm card dead because I won't get paid off.
Against aggressive players I'll tighten up and wait for top pair (maybe even 2nd pair) or a draw and try to slow play him. This won't work if I'm card dead and he'll just run all over me. I also try to win more hands preflop by 3 betting, but this is only really effective against very passive players.
I know every opponent is different and you can't play everyone the same. But I just want to know how you guys handle being card dead against tight players, aggressive players, and those in between. I should also include that I play turbos on PokerStars.
You're being a bit too general by separating player categories into only: tight & aggressive.
Against tight players it really doesn't matter what your cards are except for the low frequency of instances which they play back at you.
Basic strategy: Relentlessly steal small pots from them by abusing position and their imbalanced nitty continuing ranges. Don't play big pots without very strong holdings. Cherish this player => he will provide a nice low risk annuity income stream from bleeding chips to you.
Against (presumed loose or wide ranges + high bluffing frequency?) aggressive players, ideally we want to use their aggression against them. As you say, this can be very difficult if you're not picking up hands which suit the trapping strategy which naturally exploits these guys.
Basic strategy: Increase trapping vs imbalanced bluffing frequencies & ranges. You know the pots are on average going to be a lot bigger vs this guy than some nitfish that will let you rofl stomp all over him without a very strong hand. It's ok to tighten your ranges up because the implied value he donates in very big pots will more than make up for the frequent small pots he takes down.
Dynamic strategy (can be effective vs somewhat think but overly aggressive opponents): Although our default strategy will be as above, I wouldn't stop bluffing entirely, particularly wrt to light 3b & NAI c/r. Villain will be playing quite wide ranges and will frequently put you to a lot of very difficult marginal decisions as he keeps barreling into you. But you need to work out what sort of aggressive player he is. For example some regs will play very aggressively and then shut down once you play back at them. This radically increases the profitability of bluffing & semi-bluffing.
You can feel him out at a relatively low cost by having a default polarised 3b range preflop. Add a heap of suited crap to your 3b range early in the match to determine out what sort of aggro he is. If he's prepared to flat or 4b jam over wide then widen your value range & contract your bluffing range. Most people will play fairly nitty vs 3b until you demonstrate you are doing it with such a frequency that there must be a decent amount of bluffs. They may adjust by adding in a 4b bluffing range or by tightening up their own opening range. Watch very carefully.
Against someone who is not risk averse wrt splashing chips around, it can be very effective to build an OOP preflop bluffy image. Vs an aggressive competent opponent OOP it is very difficult to play for a net profit using a value oriented strategy because you simply don't make a hand enough. One meta (setting up a dynamic to take advantage of it) strategy is to intentionally unbalance your 3b range to force your opponent to adjust suboptimaly. If you double or even triple the number of 3b bluffs in your 3b range relative to your value holdings even a monkey will notice (or they'll spew anyway because they are a monkey).
As mentioned above, they will likely adjust by either:
- tightening up their opening range
- or adding some 4b bluffs to their range
Very loose aggressive players like the idea of pushing people around. They're almost always in the 2nd category. And we can take advantage of it :)
The 1/2 or 1/3 or however you set up your 3b range so that you have a value holding villain is a lot more likely to 4b jam. You've forced him to adjust but his aggression will often overshoot the risk/return threshold at which his 4b value : bluff ratio is profitable against the value part of your 3b range. That is, given the right stack sizes and the right spewiness, we can set up a dynamic whereby our calls vs him 4b jams will be profitable even net of our 3b folds.
Don't be afraid to push these aggro guys down a decision tree branch where they play really badly vs your strategy.
And cherish these players because they make the game a hell of a lot more interesting than the nitfish :)
Hey, thanks for the advice, all of this is really helpful. I'm gonna try to incorporate your advice into my game, especially widening my 3b range early on like you said, since thats not something I do enough.