How to Exploit Maniac Poker Players
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Once again, you are forced to muck ATo after the same opponent has 3-bet you preflop for what feels like the millionth time in a row. You sit there, tilted, thinking “How am I ever going to win a pot against this guy?!”
This article arrives right on time, giving you a quick and digestible blueprint to use against your next aggressive opponent — helping you make the right adjustments to ship the pot your way.
Below, I’ll break down everything you need to know to conquer this tricky opponent type at any cash game or tournament table in the world.
What Makes an Opponent Aggressive – Tag Correctly
Poker played to true perfection isn’t about rigidly following some arbitrary line you believe to be “GTO.” Perfect poker is about understanding the baseline of optimal play at different junctures while also making adjustments that boost your EV.
“Adjustments” is the magic word here — it’s what separates the best poker players and makes them the biggest winners in the game.
When you play online or live, you are tagging players, whether you realize it or not. This player is “tight”, this player is a “nit”, this player is a “huge whale”. You are classifying your opponents in your head, putting them into a variety of buckets.
Tagging aggressive opponents is as crucial as tagging your weaker, tighter players, as they can be a bigger drain on your win rate than anyone.
An aggressive player is someone you think might be finding the more out-of-line raises and bets, both preflop and on later streets. They could be going very thin with marginal value, finding more bluffs with a wide range of blockers, or simply looking to play a big pot and gamble — maybe even tossing in a 3-bet with the Robbi hand to get a laugh from the table.
NOTE: Tagging incorrectly and making adjustments against vague reads can be a disaster, and lead to a huge cost in EV. Always ensure you are making clear and rational tags against your opponents, not ones made on a whim.
Example Hand: How to Adjust to Aggression
Let me paint a scenario for you — one we can use as an example to find out how to adjust to aggressive villains at the poker table.
Using Lucid Poker, I can select the Cash Game option, navigate to the Sim Browser, and build a straightforward simulated hand at 100bb for us to analyze.
An aggressive player opens in the cutoff and you defend your big blind.
The flop comes Th8d6c, and — unsurprisingly — the aggro villain keeps their foot on the gas, firing a one-third c-bet. We call.
Turn is the 5h. We check in flow and face an overbet — we call. The river is a brick 2c. We check again and the villain shoves his remaining stack.
The most basic and lazy approach to adjusting against aggression in poker is to become a calling station — convincing yourself to simply call wider with hands you would normally fold against other opponents.
What’s funny about this low-effort approach is that perceptive aggressive players will catch on. Once they realize you’re calling down lighter, they will go even thinner for value — often negating any EV you think you have clawed back and winning even more.
Adjusting Earlier on The Turn
A good way to approach this critical adaptive strategy is to act earlier. Let’s go back to the 5h turn.
Our strategy has us doing a mixture of folding, calling, and raising versus a large bet from our opponent. However, when you know the river bet is coming at a high frequency, you can begin to alter your decisions and battle back against the aggression.
From a balanced perspective, on this turn, you will want to purely raise a lot of your best value, hands like sets and top two-pair. Other strong hands like good top pairs (AT, KT), some lower two pairs (T6, 76), and our nutted hands like straights, will find mixes between raise and call.
Here is our turn strategy against an opponent playing at equilibrium, using Lucid Poker:
But remember, we’re not playing a balanced villain, we’re up against someone who is betting far too often on this turn…
Let’s think about our two pair, hands like T7s, T6s and 76s that we’ve defended in the big blind.
We will be incredibly comfortable on almost every river card that comes, and we know our opponent will blast many rivers too. Therefore, the EV generated from pure calling these strong value hands heightens, as we allow our aggressive counterpart to either go far too thin or bluff far too often into us.
Looking at our super nuts in the form of straights, some of these are raising and some calling when being balanced, but against someone who is blasting off, you are far more inclined to call down happily.
With the weakest part of our range, hands like low pairs (86s, 52s, etc), we find that we’re happier to simply muck them, or even turn them into semi-bluffs.
Against someone who is going to fire later streets more often, you make things far simpler to arrive at them with a stronger range, so any way you can not have these weak pairs will be very valuable.
So rather than stationing off with a hand like 52s, we can find the check-raise on the turn as a semi-bluff and take down the pot or pitch it to the muck versus any continuation.
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Adjusting to Aggression on The Flop
Going back to the flop of Th8d6c, we find that a balanced approach with our top pairs has a mix of call and raise, but we will want to adjust this depending on the type of aggression our opponent shows.
Here is our flop strategy against an opponent playing at equilibrium:
If this villain can’t find the fold button in any instance, you can go a bit thinner for value and start raising hands like QT and JT. On the other hand, if they tend to blast but fold against any aggression, you might want to purely call all your top pairs and ride the money train to the river.
The same line of thinking occurs with our weaker hands. Hands like KhJh might want to pure fold, because following on from before, we want to arrive at the river with as strong a range as possible versus an aggressive opponent.
If you think the opponent might be bet-folding frequently (online, you can check for this using a HUD by looking at their “Fold to Flop Raise %” to identify bet-folding tendencies), you can start turning hands like KhJh, Kh9h, Ac8c, QsJs into a bluff. These hands block a significant portion of your opponent’s value range and can pick up equity on favorable turns.
Becoming a Preflop God Against Aggression
When you look at a balanced preflop range for defending the big blind versus the cutoff open, you’ll be raising a mix of suited connectors, strong Broadway hands, some pairs, and of course, the natural pure value raises.
Hands that might sometimes be a call at a low frequency, like 65o, 78o, K9o, 95s, and J3s, can go straight in the muck. They perform too poorly in this dynamic.
Here is the big blind defense strategy against a cutoff open:
Strong hands that sometimes 3-bet, like AJo, KQo, KJs, and ATs, can become pure calls, against an opponent who takes initiative too often and will blast off multiple streets. When you call with these hands versus aggressive opponents, you allow them to bluff into your strong range post-flop, maximizing your EV.
You should also note that 3-betting more of your better hands against an aggressive villain depends on how they react. If you think they’re aggressive and will not fold, go for it. If you think they find the muck with hands they would usually blast, it’s better to just call.
How This Makes Life Simple Versus Aggressive Opponents
If you’re playing an aggressive opponent and followed the strategy above, the following should be true:
- You’ve folded a bit more preflop, and 3-bet a bit less preflop.
- You’ve folded a bit more on the flop and raised a bit less on the flop.
- You’ve folded a bit more on the turn and raised a bit less on the turn.
The key maxim to take away would be to fold more often earlier, so when you face the final missile from your opponent, they’ll be running into an indestructible calling range.
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