Altering Bet Sizes Against Aggressive Players

Poker Strategy / Matthew Pitt / 24 August 2011 / Leave a Comment

One area that many poker players struggle with is playing against an aggressive opponent who has position on them. For the most part good players try to avoid these situations but sometimes they cannot be avoided and the player just has to grit their teeth and get on with the hand.

A common scenario is for a player to raise preflop and then be called by an aggressive villain in a later position, the player then flops top pair and does not really know how to proceed. One of the reasons they struggle in this situation is that they fail to plan ahead in the hand and they are stuck in their ways when it comes to bet sizing.

There was a hand I played recently that fits the above description exactly and by deviating from my usual line I managed to make life a little easier on myself and I scooped the pot. Come play the hand with me. We are playing in a six-handed No Limit Hold'em cash game and from under the gun we are dealt AcTc and we raise it up 3.5 times the big blind to $1.75, our standard raise in this game. Everyone folds to the button, a pretty solid player who is aggressive both preflop and post-flop who was playing a similar style to me and is running with Holdem Manager stats of 28/26/4, and he opts to just call. The small blind, a total fish, calls and the big blind folds.

The Ts-7d-6d flop is not the best flop for our hand but we probably do have the best hand. The small blind checks and now this is where we have to think about out options. Checking, in my opinion, is out of the question as we will have to call the button's inevitable bet and we will not have any extra information about our hand. Anyone contemplating folding wants shooting so we are left with betting. But how much to bet? At NL50 if we make our standard 1/2 to 2/3 pot sized continuation bet the aggressive button is going to raise us with his entire range, that is all of his draws, all of his made hands and also some random bluffs a large percentage of the time and we are then in a really tricky spot. However, if we bet the pot or even over-bet the pot then we will fold out all of his bluffs, some of his drawing hands and he will only call with his weaker made hands, his stronger draws and only raise his really big hands. If we bet $7 into the $5.75 pot and he comes over the top we can let go of our top pair. We actually bet $7.50, the button calls and the fishy small blind folds.

The turn was 6c and there is no way villain has a six in his range unless he has specifically 66 or he has decided to call preflop with 76 and if he has these hands then fair play to him. Even aggressive villains generally will not raise on this board unless they have us beaten so ideally we want to bet an amount that he will continue to call with his drawing hands and hands such as QT or JT but also so he will raise us if he has us beaten. With $20.75 in the pot I fired a bet of $12.25 and villain made the call.

The river was the 4s which is as blank as we are going to get and does not hit any of villain's range. I really do not see him getting to the river with 53 even if it was 5d3d. Most of the time villain has a busted flush draw here so is not going to call a bet on the river. However, as he is aggressive there is a chance that if we check he could take a stab at the pot so check-calling is a play we could employ here and one that I did. Unfortunately for us villain did not take the bait and he checked behind and mucked Td9d.

In the hand villain flopped top pair with a flush draw and a gutshot straight-flush draw to boot so I was very surprised not to see him show more aggression in the hand but it is possible that the over-bet on the flop slowed him down a little. It is possible that he put us on a set or something like AdKd and was either hoping his ten was good or to hit the miracle 8d. Thinking about the hand now, I believe if the turn had not paired villain would have certainly bet when checked to on the river and maybe even have called a bet there.

By changing out bet sizing here we won a decent pot without being put under too much pressure, if any. Whenever you enter a hand you should always have a plan of what you want to happen and an idea of how to make that happen. Being out of position is rarely much fun but with some planning it does not always have to be a nightmare.

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