Q: While reading Sylvain’s discussion of his hands with Bonomo, I wondered how best to handle such an aggressive player. Sylvain described his style of pushing back against the aggro. I wondered if you can ever counter aggression with passive play, such as calling multiple streets. Then, near the end of Sylvain’s report, he describes his last $1500 NLHE tournament. Sylvain described himself as active, and how he ultimately was busted by a fish who check called all three streets. I admit the hand, in isolation, may not have been ideally played by Sylvain’s opponent. But I wonder, is there value in taking a passive line to counter very aggressive players? If so, under what conditions?
A: Great question! It’s actually inspired me to write a series of magazine articles on the subject, but here’s a sketch of what will eventually be a more thorough answer. The short answer to your question is yes, definitely. The best counter will almost always be a mix:
- Rebluffing with some weak hands/draws
- Raising for protection/inducing bluffs with strong hands (how strong will depend on how aggressive your opponent, how deep your stacks, etc.)
- Bluff-catching with well-selected hands (more on this in a moment)
- Folding weak hands that may be best but can’t stand up to the pressure you’re likely to get on future streets
Selecting hands for bluff-catching is tricky. Often your strongest hands aren’t the best candidates for this since you want to build more of a pot with those. But with hands that are too weak you risk letting the board get so scary that you can’t keep calling. Ideally you’ll have something like pair + flush draw that isn’t overly vulnerable and has good showdown value.
In the hand that you reference, I think that pre-flop Sylvain’s KJo might have fit better into the bluff-catching category (ie he should maybe have just called, though I don’t hate the 4-bet by any means) than the bluffing category. Against an aggressive player, top pair in a 3-bet pot is actually a quite a good hand, even without the best possible kicker, and KJ can flop that well. He still may choose to bluff with it on other flops, but I don’t think a pre-flop bluff was necessary.
After the flop, though, the hand was strong enough to fit into the value/betting to induce category. In this case Sylvain’s opponent had second pair, but he may also have shoved hands like 98 or KQ that had draws, so top pair good kicker is a strong hand, and it’s a good time to bet a strong hand.
In the hand where an opponent check-called all the way against Sylvain, that player wasn’t really bluff-catching. On the flop and turn he had a draw, albeit a strong one, with very little showdown value. He could have countered Sylvain’s aggression much better by raising (even though in this case Sylvain actually had a hand he would have felted) rather than check-calling and hoping to improve.
The last option listed here is important to keep in mind. It’s generally better, for instance, to raise JT than 44 if you don’t believe an opponent’s bet on a Q85 flop. Even though the latter is technically the “better” hand, both are essentially bluffs once you raise, and JT is the much better bluffing hand.
Hope that suffices for a quick answer to a good question!
Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!
Dan Harrington used to call that play the “Rope-A-Dope”…
> In the hand where an opponent check-called all the way against Sylvain, that player
> wasn’t really bluff-catching. On the flop and turn he had a draw, albeit a strong one,
> with very little showdown value. He could have countered Sylvain’s aggression much better
> by raising (even though in this case Sylvain actually had a hand he would have
> felted) rather than check-calling and hoping to improve.
I’ve gone back and forth on this, and it seems much better to not always raise/shove flop here if you expect calls. And if we do x/r all broadway+diamond draws and AK+, I don’t see how KQ can be good calling.
Recap (roughly, not all info. was in the post):
SB: Jd9d
BTN: KQo (unknown)
9k effective
Pre flop: 50/150/300 pot=750
BTN Raise to 600
SB calls 450
Flop: pot=1,500
Kd Td 5
SB Checks
BTN Bets 900
SB ??? (~8.4k left)
…our options are:
1. Fold and lose ~600 for the hand. (lol).
2. Check/Raise-AI for FE on winning 2,600 but risking 8.4k.
3. Or call flop+turn and shove river (or x/c river to let villain value town himself 😉 when we hit, thus. losing ~3.5k when we miss and winning ~9.5k when he hit.
…for #2 to be better than #3 it feels like villain has to be bet folding this flop _a lot_.
What about bet/3betting all-in on the flop over a likely frequent raise?
I don’t think we can raise/fold flop … so I doubt villain can raise/fold if we only bet ~900. Betting that much sucks more than x/c if villain just calls, IMO.
Donk betting 1.5-2.5k on flop and shoving all non-K/T turns (or all of them :-o) maybe gets the same folds as a x/r, but with more money in the pot or more FE on the flop. Not sure. Would we really want to take that line with KT/TT though? Also not sure :).
FYI … my donk betting stat is probably like 0% in this spot, so take both comments with that in mind.
Hi, Andrew. This comment is unrelated to the topic, but it seems that Mailbag threads are a good place to submit questions for future Mailbags (or to get feedback from any of the more experienced regulars here).
Anyway, I played my first live game at a casino this weekend. I played $1/$2 NLHE for about and hour or two at the Sands in Bethlehem, Pa. I finished with a very small profit, but I found the game a lot less fun than playing a home game with friends or online. A big part of my less-than-stellar time was my total lack of familiarity with the environment. The table wasn’t especially welcoming, and every player at the table clearly viewed me as a fish, so I wasn’t feeling very comfortable to ask my fellow players what I’m asking you now.
I’m hoping you might be able to provide a quick “Casino Etiquette for Dummies” Mailbag post. The etiquette I feel worst about was that I didn’t tip the dealer. I’d heard of the practice before, but it didn’t occur to me until I noticed a good 45 minutes into the session that a few other players did it. I did rake a few more pots after that that I could have tipped on, but I generally was so caught up in the hand that it slipped my mind until the cards were in the air again. Honestly, I’m generally a pretty generous tipper, so it wasn’t for lack of interest that I stiffed the poor guy. My question is should I tip on every pot I rake? If not, how should I determine what pots I should tip on, and how big should the tip be? Would it have been very odd for me to slip the guy a chip or two as I was leaving the table to rejoin the friends I was there with? (It seemed odd to me for some reason, or I would have done it.)
Also, the play was much generally faster than online. There were a few big decisions where guys took way longer than you would be able to online, but generally, as the action went around the table, guys very quickly made whatever move they were going to make. When I play online, I generally take at least 5-10 seconds to do whatever I’m going to do (unless it’s to fold), to minimize the risk of giving off easy timing tells. Am I a big douchebag for holding up the game if I take that amount of time in the casino?
Finally, I had my phone handy because I was with a large group of people who weren’t playing poker, and I wanted to be able to respond if they wanted to leave. Once, as I was checking my phone, the action came to me. The dealer and another player very civilly explained that I couldn’t look at my phone when I had cards in front of me. This makes sense to me. My question is if you can think of any other rules like this that I should be aware of if I should find myself at a casino poker table again.
Thanks for any advice you can provide.
hi, i was actually at the sands this past sat night too! in general, i view casino players as pretty friendly but i can totally relate to you feeling intimidated on your very first time… very normal… i would actually recommend you do ask players or dealers questions so people will know your not making faux pas’s on purpose… a lot of people at the table love to teach; you just have to be careful since a lot of what they say in terms of actual poker strategy is not 100% correct… but usually in terms of etiquette, they’re probably reasonably on target…
in terms of tipping the dealer, a lot of people feel very strongly about this subject… my philosophy is that whatever you want to do with your money is your choice… i generally tip $1 regardless of the size of the pot… if the pot is 1k or 2k then i may tip $5 but that’s completely my choice… the only times i don’t tip is if i just win the blinds or if i find the dealer rude/not acknowledging my tip from before… but again, that’s my personal choice… and if you want to tip as the dealer leaves the table or if you leave the table, that is totally fine, basically from their pov, any time is fine to receive extra money… also, sometimes when i forget to tip, i just tip when the dealer is done dealing and is sitting there, again, there is never a bad time to receive free money from their pov…
the time question is tough, but in my humble opinion, since people are waiting on you and they can see you, don’t take too much time if you are going to fold, from their pov you are just putting on airs or trying to appear cool… i understand what you are doing in reality but keep in mind, most casino players, especially at 1/2, aren’t paying attention to your timing tells… so i would recommend just taking the time that you need and nothing more… but it’s up to you… yea the phone rule makes sense but it’s really not that enforced… other rules, don’t splash the pot, don’t expose your cards cause at the sands that means they are mucked, don’t string bet… i hope this helps!
If you do “livepokerfordummiesarticle” I would be curious to know at what point you think the rake is too high to justify playing (other then just for pure entertainment purposes).