The Poker Academy Session 10: Adjustments For Opponent TypesA Session By Session Look At The Poker Academy's No-Limit Hold'em Tournament Course |
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Join us as we take a closer look at the 12-session course from the brilliant strategic minds at The Poker Academy. Every two weeks, Card Player will break down the curriculum from poker pro Rick Fuller and two-time WSOP bracelet winner Rep Porter, to detail the positive impact that The Poker Academy can have on your game.
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Last time we looked at session 9, Reading Your Opponents. Let’s move on through the course.
Session 10: Adjustments For Opponent Types
After learning how to read and identify your opponents, site instructors Rep Porter and Rick Fuller are careful to follow up with an explanation of how to adjust based your classification of each opponent. This session is all about discovering what type of opponents are out there, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how to adjust.
Of course, sometimes a player has different characteristics at different points in a hand. Players can often be aggressive preflop and passive postflop. Or tight with their starting hands but loose once they get involved.
“People play differently preflop than they do postflop,” said Porter. “They have a preflop strategy that they set up, then how they react to the board is a very different characteristic.”
The next four videos in the session focus on the strengths, weaknesses and adjustments needed for passive players, fit or fold players, tight aggressive players, and loose aggressive players. For example, the way you attack a passive player is much different than how you would attack a loose player.
“When we’re in position against a LAG player and we have a shorter stack size, somewhere between 30 to 50 big blinds, we’re going to want to try to find spots where we can exploit their loose tendencies by reraising them,” said Fuller. “When we do this, though, we should be aware that we aren’t going to fold if they four-bet us. Because of that, we need to have a narrow range. Against a tight player, that range would be very narrow, but against a LAG, we can expand that.”
The sixth video of the course session focuses on how to handle balanced players. Being balanced is optimal because it allows players to act in a situational manner and adjust to the others at the table. Because of that balance, these dynamic players are much more difficult to play against.
However, even balanced poker players fall into tendencies. The key is being able to identify when a balanced player is leaning too far in one direction. If the rest of the table is being passive, a balanced player can find themselves becoming more aggressive, which you can counteract with your own well-timed aggression and a narrower range.
Next time, we’ll take a look at session 11, Making Moves.
If you’d like to take your game to the next level, sign up for The Poker Academy today.
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