How to play/adjust against superloose players?
Posted by ZOMGDURRRR
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ZOMGDURRRR
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Low Stakes
How to play/adjust against superloose players?
More of a theory post- but let's say you encounter someone whose VPIP/PFR/3B are something like 60/40/15 and their 3bet call is 50%. When playing IP vs them, if we had a more polarised 3b range before, do we start lowering our 3bet to more value hands (99+, AJs+) with less bluffs/Ax suited? Reasoning being we are playing post flop quite often vs these villains who don't fold much preflop.
When playing OOP vs them, just tighten up a lot?
What other adjustments would be optimal vs this type of villain?
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3-bet wider (and generally play wider) for value instead of being polarized. Add more broadway hands to your 3-bet range.
Definitely don't tighten up. Rather the opposite.
Right so let's say if I'm typically 3betting TT+, AQo+ and some combos of 9Ts I should start adding suited broadways, Ax suited etc? The thing is these villains are usually sticky so a flop and even turn bet doesn't faze them. If I whiff should I be shutting down by turn? Feels like they will figure this out quite quickly though.
As rule of thumb, his ranges are always weaker than they should be. Fold less, raise/call wider and polarize/depolarize your ranges depends on how and where he puts his aggression and how much FE do you have in some dynamics, try to figure it out as soon as possible with notes if you haven't stats. You can also train your exploitative skills with a solver (if you just have enough awarness of why a solver does something).
Super weak ranges have to pick a node to compromise and lose on, for most players this street is preflop, specifically before they have put money in the pot because it's the cheapest one. Against this kind of player the secret is to understand which street they are losing on and in what way, they will probably make 1 or more of the following mistakes:
1) overfold to small CB - this one is super common and really easy, essentially you have a crushing range advantage on every texture because their range is so wide so you can range bet every board and print, all they wanted was to see a flop and know they weren't going to flop a monster, they're now happy to fold their hand safe in the knowledge that they didn't miss the opportunity to flop the nuts.
2) overfloat and overstab - this is the one that decent but not crushing regs have a really hard time playing against, basically the player is going to float your CB with some really marginal stuff because they're here to get in the mix and outplay you, step 2 to them of outplaying you is taking it away on the turn or river. When you're OOP you want to play a really high checking freq on the turn with intent to x/r very aggressively. When you're IP you want to maintain high barrelling frequencies on the turn that go very thin for value as well as aggressively as a bluff, basically you're making them pick between overfolding here or just paying you off way too often. You can also throw in some traps to x back turn to raise river, has the added benefit that the outplay loving whale might look you up super light because they just don't believe you.
3) call one, call three - just your typical station but usually they still overfold the flop against very small sizings, basically just print on the flop with a small bet and then just value bet them to death on later streets.
4) aggro fish - they're just going to put in lots of money and therefore pressure and watch you fold middle pair except you're not going to fold middle pair because he's playing 40% of hands he just hasn't made a strong hand on the flop. I think these players are really under punished for their leaks by a lot of the pool because people just fold linearly rather than just deciding to go with their bottom pair, yes it's high variance but if you can't afford the variance to make a +EV play and call this guy down then play lower stakes.
5) balanced aggro who's never heard of checking, this one again causes people problems, basically they go super wide for value and as a bluff so you can feel a bit lost, yes you could hero them down but sometimes they 3 street top pair no kicker and you just feel a bit owned. The way to fight back against these players is to save lots of aggression for their passive lines, your delayed CB and barrel freq should be really high, your stab vs missed CB should be really high, if you float flop and they x back turn go crazy on the river. Basically every time that take a passive action you need to be at least considering overbetting every non-sdv hand in your range on the next street because they just don't have any pairs left to defend with.
Hey thanks for those tips, I feel like you've defined some of the types well. I think the ones I have trouble against are a combination of the aggro fish style along with overfloat and overstab. Real pain when they're on my left as I feel like I have to play a lot tighter. Against these type of villains, is x/r flop with top pair a good play assuming they're playing a wide range?
I play a TAG style so usually my x/r are draws, monsters or semi bluffs- so x/r something like top pair or mid pair is something I'm not use to.
Also, if they're the sticky loose type who often call with any type of backdoor draws and turn up with a whole range of things on the river- I feel like bloating the pot OOP for me is no good, which means I've been playing a lot more passively with c/c quite a lot. Also have not made a flopped flush draw in what feels like years, which is definitely affecting my confidence in playing more aggressively.
Being TAG/LAG is kind of a myth imo, yes people skew that way but you should avoid styling yourself like this because sometimes the right play is to be a complete psycho who goes with random crap and sometimes the right play is to nit it up. If you're not skewing away from GTO due to the situation and it's more because of your preconception of some style you're playing then that's just a fancy name for a leak. This isn't to say I don't understand where you're coming from but just that you're leaving EV on the table if you don't have the option in your playbook to get pretty wild when people just don't have the hands to call you down.
In specific regards to countering these people when OOP essentially there will be an amount of money that their range gets to put in the pot when checked to, this amount will be very small because their range is extremely wide, they will in fact put in way more money than they should with most if not all hand classes when you x and so the maximally exploitative line is to x your entire range and then x/r almost your entire continuing range. There will be a really thin section of hands centred around strong mid pairs and weak top pairs that might prefer to x/c but that's really it. You need to get really liberal with your bluffs here, can't just be sensible stuff with direct equity, NFD blockers, overcard with a bdfd, just 2 overcards, it's all gotta go in there if you want to punish someone who's going to CB too much and can't defend the raise. Also x/r for a fairly small sizing so you really punish the overfolds, if you x/r for pot it's not nearly as bad for them to ditch their bottom pairs as it is if you x/r for 50%. This strategy essentially describes how to play OOP in SRP because everyone at low stakes flats too wide and stabs too wide IP.
Things to bear in mind is that your range is super wide on the turn so throw in a fair bit of checking with strong less vulnerable hands like AA/sets (you can just call down the AA but the double x/r with a mix of sets and draws is fun and really makes people hate playing you, make sure you go really big on the river with these hands against a x on a brick) and also that for some players this range will be unnaturally strong as they iso to a very strong part of their range here + never check something like a set IP so they have every value combo. Also be careful that you're not getting floated on flop super wide and giving up the pot on the turn too much, this is very unlikely to happen as this just looks like the nuts but they might have again decided to delay the node that they lose on so you might need to start barrelling turn more aggressively although this honestly is rarely the case.
DNEGS88 who r u and do you coach?
Yes I do some coaching, if you PM me we can talk details
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