Card Player Pro

Nobody likes to be pushed around, especially at the poker table. Facing an aggressive player can be threatening, annoying, and costly. So, naturally, we want to be that player! The beauty of putting people under pressure is that they will adjust in so many wildly incorrect ways - and when they do, they play right into our hands.

A good example of this is a sequence of hands that I played in my latest series for PokerSavvy Plus - "Value-Betting at $25 [buy-in] NL." In the first hand, I'm in the big blind with the A 3. It's folded to the small blind, a solid, thinking tight-aggressive player. He raises to $1, four times the big blind. He knows that I'll very rarely have a good enough hand to continue, so he thinks I'll just fold most of the time. Against most players, he would be correct, but I know this means that he's raising with a wide variety of holdings. Furthermore, we are heads up and I have position on him, which is hugely advantageous for me. So, I decide to turn up the heat, and I reraise him to $2.75 - which is not a good situation for him. He's out of position with a suboptimal hand without the initiative, and he correctly mucks his cards.

A few hands later, I get the A A in the small blind, and our villain is on the button. He open-raises to $1 again, and I make the exact same reraise to $2.75. This time he calls, and the flop comes Q 8 3. I bet $3.65, and he raises to $13. We get it all in, and he shows the 8 7 for middle pair and a flush draw, and my aces hold up.

Game	$25 [buy-in] no-limit hold'em on PokerStars
Opponent	A solid regular
Stacks	100 big blinds effective
My Cards	A A
My Position	Small blind

Our villain made a huge mistake in this sequence. He assumed that just because I put him under pressure twice in short order, I must be out to get him. Calling with the 8 7 is incorrect against a player who is never reraising light, because he won't flop something that can beat an overpair often enough for the play to be profitable. So his call indicates that he thinks I'm trying to push him around, and maybe he can take me off my hand after the flop. He did hit an amazing board, but you can see that even in one of the best-case scenarios, he still got all of his money in behind.



This is a great example of how inexperienced players overreact to aggression. Against this type of player, you'll want to constantly harass him until he starts making mistakes; then, when you can see that he's had enough, come out firing with your big hands. You'll notice that I reraise to the exact same amount as before; then, on the flop, I bet smallish to make it look like I was trying to win the pot cheaply. If he thinks I'm pushing him around, I want to help him convince himself that I'm bluffing - but without my carefully planned campaign of intelligent aggression, this play might not have worked.

To watch Andrew Arnott comment on and play this hand, point your browser to Card Player Pro, the complete online poker training site, at www.CardPlayer.com/link/ama-1.