Adjusting Your Play

An important element of advanced play is being able to adjust your play, (or changing gears) to adapt to your opponents playing styles.  Many new players are often frustrated when asking about decision making in their play when the reply comes back, “it depends.”  Determining what type of opponent you are playing against and interpreting the decisions they make is one of the big factors that go into that “it depends” answer.  Some of the decisions you would make against a “standard” opponent would be the absolute wrong choice against an unusually aggressive villain.  Here’s an example:

My usual live 4/8 cash game.  Normally, my opponents are very loose-passive but occasionally get some overly aggressive players.

Hero in cutoff with 10d-10c
Highjack limps
Hero raises
Button 3-bets
Blinds fold
Highjack calls
Hero caps
Button calls, Highjack calls
3 players, 6.75 big bets
Flop 10s-7h-7c
Highjack checks
Hero bets
Button calls, Highjack folds
Two players 7.75 big bets
Turn Qh
Hero bets
Button calls

Button is a classic loose-aggressive player. I’ve seen him constantly play hands like unsuited connectors and A-x. There was some metagame going with this fellow and myself. He ran me down with fourth pair beating my overcards, with at least two paint cards on board and a smug little grin. I’ve seen him play very aggressively early in hands but slow down a lot on later streets.  Including a few pretty bad river folds.  Highjack is a very well known loose-passive regular who takes this line all the time, calling four bets to see a flop and folding if not connecting.

With highjack’s limp, I’m very sure I’m ahead of him preflop but am I ahead of the button? Against a “normal” player in the spot, a capped preflop bet would probably have been a mistake.  My usual loose-passive opponents are probably not 3-betting anything worse than pocket Q’s or AK.  A better choice would have been to flat call the 3-bet and look to check raise a safe looking flop like J-8-2 and bet down praying I’m up against AK. 

 

However, the opponent in my example I’ve seen open raise very light.  The 3-bet means he really has something of value but because he is loose-aggressive he could have an A down to a suited 9, K down to a suited J and maybe 9’s 8’s or 7’s. That’s a lot of combos compared to the wired pairs that are crushing me. Also, with the metagame stuff, he may have just been trying to isolate which would really open up his range, maybe down to J-9 and any pocket pair.  All this made me fairly confident I had an edge preflop and to include pocket 10’s in the bottom of my own capping range against this specific opponent.

Another read specific decision in the hand was to bet down in this hand.  A different but fairly common player I find in my games are weak-tight players who give way too much credit to their opponents and make terrible lay downs in the face of the mildest of aggression.  A bet on a flop like this to a player like that would clearly look like what it truly is.  A monster hand!  He might even fold a hand as strong as pocket J’s.  In a situation like that using what’s called a “value check” on the flop might induce a weak-tight opponent to call on later streets.  In other words, I’m sacrificing some immediate value for the chance of bigger value later in the hand.

In the example, however, my opponent’s style and his pre-flop three bet make it a pretty close to a slam dunk that he’s calling down.  A check through on the flop would be a disaster in that case and my betting to him could clearly look like another overcard bet down like the one he caught me on earlier.
 

Understanding and classifying your opponents and adjusting your decision making accordingly is a vital skill in advancing your poker prowess.