Avoiding Preflop Overaggression

Most people don’t play aggressively enough preflop. They don’t raise often enough. They don’t reraise often enough. And they really don’t four-bet or five-bet often enough.

Aggression preflop is particularly important when you’re responding to a weak opening range. Say you’re in the small blind. Everyone folds to the button (or cutoff), who opens. You should respond to this open by reraising with most of the hands you play. The majority of players, however, fail to reraise.

This aggression is critical because it prohibits your opponents from seeing “free” flops with their blind-stealing junk. Giving away free flops permits your opponents to attack your blinds much more often than they’re entitled to try.

Aggression is not nearly as important, however, when you’re responding to a strong opening range. If your opponent’s aggression is reined in by other factors (for example, sitting under the gun in a ten-handed game), it’s not as important that you punish his weakest hands by reraising.

This concept brings me to today’s hand. I was playing $5-$10 in an online game in Nevada. It was a nine-handed game, and the starting stacks were capped at $500. My main opponent and I both started the hand with about $500.

The player under the gun (UTG) opened to $20. This player was clearly a strong regular in the game. I was next to act with K K. I called.

Everyone folded to the cutoff, who reraised to $100. The blinds folded, and the original raiser folded. I called.

The flop came J 10 8. I checked. My opponent shoved for $400. I called. He showed A Q. Naturally he caught the 9 on the river to beat me.

When the player UTG opens, particularly if it’s a strong player, you’re in a poor situation if you’re next to act. You have all the disadvantages normally associated with playing way out of position. In addition, you can no longer steal the blinds without committing a large reraise. Furthermore, you have an opponent already marked with a strong hand.

Truly, you should fold almost all your hands in this situation. It’s a terrible spot — the worst one possible, in fact, in a pot that has not yet been reraised.

It’s also a very bad bluffing spot. Your under the gun opponent could easily have aces or kings. And, if not, any of the eight players behind you could have one of those two hands (or queens or ace-king or another hand they’re unwilling to fold). Inherently, therefore, this is a high-risk/low-reward bluffing situation, which implies that you should try rarely if ever.

I’ve chosen never. I never bluff in this situation.

If I never bluff, however, then I must also never raise for value. Raising only for value, but never bluffing, makes you incredibly easy to play against. When you reraise, your opponents can just fold their pocket jacks. When you just call, you are extremely vulnerable to someone reraising from behind, as you rarely have a hand strong enough to continue.

So my strategy in this one peculiar preflop spot — next to act after a strong UTG raiser in a full ring game — is to play very few hands and to flat call with all of them. If I don’t want to bluff, then I can’t raise for value either. Everything becomes a call.
In light of this, reexamine my cutoff opponent’s preflop play. A strong player raised UTG. An even stronger (in terms of the strength of my hand range) player called. Then he reraised big with A-Q offsuit.

It’s an overaggressive reraise.

What’s the purpose of the raise? Is it for value? If so, then he must expect one or both of us to have hands like A-10 or K-Q and to call with them. It’s unlikely that both of us have hands so weak, and even more unlikely that’d we’d call his big reraise with these hands.

Is it a bluff? If so, it’s not the worst hand to bluff with. The ace and queen in his hand make it less likely either of us hold strong hands like A-A, Q-Q, or A-K.

But, again, it’s a situation where he should be bluffing rarely. The only hands he should consider value raising are A-A and K-K. So he needs only a few hands to use as bluffs. I personally would prefer to use suited ace hands like A-5 suited or even A-10 or A-J suited to A-Q offsuit. And if he’s chosen to bluff with A-Q offsuit, it should likely be the only hand he’s reraising beside A-A and K-K. Something tells me, however, that he also would have reraised A-K, Q-Q, and perhaps other hands like 10-9 suited.

He raises and I call. Theoretically he should be very polarized to make this reraise. My hand is just a call against a range of A-A, K-K, and bluffs. If I assume that he’s being overaggressive — raising hands like J-J and A-K offsuit and bluffs — then shoving would be OK. But if I assume he’s overaggressive preflop, I’m going to assume that he’ll continue to be so after the flop. My plan is to flat preflop and see if he fires too frequently postflop.

The flop is not great for my hand, but at least I have the king of the suit. I check, he shoves, and I have a mandatory call.

It’s a very poor shove from him. He’ll have poor equity when called, he’ll get called often by my very strong range, and he’s far overbetting the pot. I don’t have much else to say about it. It was a poor, poor shove that demonstrates a fundamental lack of awareness of the situation.

Final Thoughts

Most people don’t play aggressively enough preflop. In particular, when your opponents are pushing the envelope by opening weak hands, you should push back by reraising frequently. Do this with your good hands and also with some not-so-good ones.

But some preflop situations call for restraint. When one player marked with a strong range has already entered the pot, often there is little to be gained from further aggression. Don’t automatically reraise your “reraising” hands. Think about how your entire range plays against the strong player (or players) already in the pot. Think about what hands are truly worth a value raise. If these are few, then you should also be bluffing rarely.

In extreme cases, you can argue that you should reraise with no hands at all.

Aggressive play with plenty of bluffing is how to get the money in no-limit hold’em. But when one (or especially two) of your opponents shows real strength, it often calls for restraint. When that happens, put your aggression aside and sit one out. ♠

Ed’s newest book, Playing The Player: Moving Beyond ABC Poker To Dominate Your Opponents, is on sale at notedpokerauthority.com. Find Ed on Facebook at facebook.com/edmillerauthor and on Twitter @EdMillerPoker.