Fighting Back

If you’ve played much no-limit hold’em, you’ve no doubt at some point run into a hyperaggressive player. This player is constantly betting and raising with little pretense of actually holding strong hands each time. In many games, a hyperaggressive player will thrive, because no one has the guts to fight back. He drags pot after pot as everyone else glumly waits for a huge hand.

It’s OK if someone steals pot after pot from everyone else at the table, but not from you! You need to fight back. This column will tell you how to do it. First, I’ll cover two common mistakes that people make when they try to fight back, and then I’ll give you two tips for successful self-defense.

Don’t Try to Hit a Flop
Many players react to a hyperaggressive stealer by trying to hit a flop. They call preflop with the intention of folding if they miss, but getting their money in if they hit it really hard. This is perhaps the worst way to try to fight back. It plays into the hyperaggressive player’s game plan. Here’s an example:

It’s a $2-$5 game with $500 stacks. NotGonnaTakeIt makes it $20 to go with the A 10 from three off the button. SirRaiseALot makes it $70 from the cutoff. Everyone else folds. NotGonnaTakeIt is sick of getting reraised, so he calls.

The flop comes Q 9 7. NotGonnaTakeIt checks. SirRaiseALot bets $90. NotGonnaTakeIt lets out a frustrated sigh and, having missed the flop, folds.

The problem with trying to hit a flop is simple: It’s a lot easier to miss the flop than hit it. If you concede every pot when you miss, you’ll be folding most of the time. You may think that you can make up for it by winning a huge pot when you hit, but for the most part it won’t happen. SirRaiseALot is aggressive, not stupid. He’s going to notice that all of a sudden, you’re thrilled to get all of your money in. He’s going to get out of your way, not pay you off.

Calling early aggression in hope of hitting a hand doesn’t work. If you aren’t prepared to truly fight back, don’t get involved.

Don’t Play a Scared Stack
Hyperaggressiveness works best against players who are afraid of getting stacked. No one likes getting stacked, but some players are nearly terrified of it. Losing $50 or $100 in a hand is no big deal, but losing all $500 in one shot is unthinkable.

Here’s the thing: When you are happy to splash around for $50 or $100 but completely unwilling to gamble for $500, you’re a sitting duck for a hyperaggressive player. He’s a one-trick pony, and his trick is: threaten your stack, take the pot. If you back down every time your stack comes into question, you’ll be abandoning large amounts of money.

You simply must back your reads with your stack. When you do this, some percentage of the time you’ll lose. Rebuy, and move on. That’s how you play tough poker.

Get in the Last Bet
Fighting back well against a hyperaggressive player means playing big pots with some weaker hands than you would play against a normal player. This is necessarily true because if you aren’t willing to loosen your standards for playing a big pot, the hyperaggressive player will repeatedly force you to play for stacks and steal pot after pot as you back down.

The trick to playing marginal hands profitably in big pots is to get in the last bet. When two players have weak hands, the one who makes the last bet usually wins. The “last bet” doesn’t necessarily have to be an all-in bet, but an all-in shove is the simplest example of this concept.

It’s a $2-$5 game with $500 stacks. NotGonnaTakeIt makes it $20 to go from the cutoff with the A K. SirRaiseALot makes it $70 from the big blind. NotGonnaTakeIt calls.

The flop comes J 10 3. SirRaiseALot bets $100. NotGonnaTakeIt shoves all in.

The key play is to just call the preflop reraise. Provided that SirRaiseALot bets, the plan is to raise all in on any flop. By calling preflop and shoving on any flop, NotGonnaTakeIt reserves the last bet for himself, thereby forcing SirRaiseALot to either show up with a hand or concede.

Obviously, you can claim the last bet at any time by shoving, but you don’t want to shove $400 into a $50 pot. That takes on too much risk for not enough reward. Instead, you want your all-in bet to be roughly commensurate with the size of the pot. Plan the hand out in advance, so that your hyperaggressive opponent will build the pot to just large enough for you to take it away from him with one decisive bet.

Give Him Some Rope
Usually when you make a hand strong enough to back with a good chunk of your stack, you want to drive the betting. This commonsense approach works best because most players are more likely to call bets with medium-strength hands than bet themselves.

With hyperaggressive players, however, the opposite is often true. They’ll call good-sized bets only when they happen to make a strong hand. But they’ll make bets anytime they think the pot is out there for the taking.

So, what should you do? Build the pot a bit early on, then “give up” on it. If you sell it well, your opponent will fire a bet, and you can call or raise. Here’s an example:

It’s a $2-$5 game with $500 stacks. SirRaiseALot opens for $25 from four off the button. A weak player calls from the button, and you call from the big blind with the 6 6. The flop comes Q 10 6, giving you bottom set. You bet $70, SirRaiseALot calls, and the button folds.

The turn is the 10. You check, and he checks.

The river is the 3. Check again.

Your opponent easily could have called the flop with a flush or straight draw, and therefore now holds just a busted hand. He’s likely to fold if you bet. On the other hand, from your opponent’s perspective, you also could hold a busted draw. If he bets, he might steal a pot that he has little chance of winning at showdown.

Check-raise all in. Checking can win you an extra bet from your opponent’s busted draws. And you might get lucky and stack him if he decided to play a hand like A-Q in a strange way.

Against a typical player, you’d probably want to continue to drive the betting on the turn, hoping to get calls from drawing hands that are now drawing dead. But against a hyperaggressive player, you should give him a little rope.

Play on Your Terms
When you reserve the last bet for yourself, and confuse your opponent by “giving up” with strong hands, you are facing the hyperaggressive player on your terms. If you do this consistently and don’t allow yourself to get frustrated, you’ll eventually get the best of it.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.