Hero Calling Against LAGs

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Early in a recent $3,500 buy-in tournament, I was playing my standard loose, aggressive strategy, which consists of raising with lots of hands preflop and making numerous small stabs post-flop.

There was a young, loose, aggressive player across the table from me who was also quite active. We battled a little, with me getting the best of him (twice he bet the river and I correctly called down with middle pair) before this hand took place.

With 200-400 blinds, he raised from the cutoff to 1,200 out of his 80,000 effective stack and I three-bet to 4,000 from the small blind with Q Q.

While you normally want to make a roughly pot-sized three-bet, you should make it a bit larger when you are out of position. Three-betting even a bit larger to 5,000 or so may be ideal due to our very deep stacks.

Only the initial raiser called. The flop came A A 6.

Q-Q is clearly a marginal made hand on A-A-x because it is quite easy to be against an ace, but if I am not against an ace, I almost certainly have the best hand and my opponent is drawing thin.

If I bet and get called or raised, proceeding on the turn will be difficult. The main problem with checking is that it makes my range look capped at underpairs. If you are going to check Q-Q in this spot, also be sure to check some trips that can easily check/call down on all three streets.

Checking in this spot makes a lot of sense due to my opponent’s loose, aggressive tendencies. If you know your opponent likes to bluff, do your best to not fold your decent bluff catchers.

I checked and my opponent bet 5,000 into the 8,400 pot.

Many recreational players see an ace on the flop and instantly go into check/fold mode with their underpair. You should rarely be looking to get away from a spot like this for one (or even multiple) bets against an aggressive opponent because his range is wide, especially when he just calls my preflop three-bet, perhaps J-J – 2-2, A-K – A-2, K-Q – K-10, and numerous suited connectors and one-gappers, such as 8-6 suited.

Against that range, most of which I expect him to bet on the flop after I check, I am in amazing shape. Also, he probably would four-bet preflop with his best A-x (like A-K and A-Q suited) and with the weak A-x hands due to their poor post-flop playability, removing a few effective nut hands from his range.

I called. The turn was the 5. I checked and he bet 10,000 into the 18,400 pot.

Given my opponent’s aggressive tendencies, I was not too concerned about being against trip aces. The five on the turn may seem like a blank, but it gives my opponent many straight draws that can continue bluffing, allowing me to call. Notice that if instead of this loose, aggressive player, I was against a tight, passive player, I would confidently fold the turn because in this situation, their range for betting twice is usually only trips or better.

I called. The river was the 7. I checked and my opponent bet 24,000 into the 36,800 pot.

At this point, my opponent’s two-thirds pot bet certainly looked and felt like a value bet, which should make this a rather trivial fold under most circumstances. The problem was he had shown a willingness to bet multiple times as a bluff, plus, I thought he was smart enough to use the same bet sizes with his bluffs and value bets, meaning his size likely did not indicate strength or weakness.

After thinking for a while, I called and he revealed Q 10.

While I certainly could have been against an ace, by considering my opponent’s range and overall tendencies, I was able to find a somewhat easy call with my marginal bluff catcher, allowing me to scoop a nice pot that many more cautious players would have conceded.

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Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT winner and the 2024 PokerGO Cup champion with nearly $9 million million in live tournament earnings, best-selling author of 15 educational poker books, and 2019 GPI Poker Personality of the Year. If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to crush the games, check out his training site at PokerCoaching.com/cardplayer.