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Preying on the Tight Players
If a loose player gets involved in too many hands pre-flop, a tight player doesn’t play enough. That’s how you can tell the difference between your opponents at the table. This can make determining their range of hands fairly easy as tight players are often unwilling to play with anything less than a premium holding. Because tight players are opposite of loose players when it comes to their playing strategies, it only makes sense that you will need to alter your approach when playing hands against these tight players.
When you play tighter against a loose opponent, you stand to profit by playing more aggressively against tight opponents. During pre-flop play this means that you should raise more hands against tight opponents. For example, if you have an opponent in the blinds that is playing really tight, and you are in late position, you will probably want to raise every single time. If you see an opponent who likes to limp into the pot with marginal hands, like Q-10 suited or a medium pocket pair, you can often push them off their hand by offering a pre-flop raise. By the same token, if you see a tight player who doesn’t defend his big blind with anything other than a big hand, don’t be afraid to open up your game and steal the blinds by raising pre-flop. Many players like to raise with weak hands like 10-7 or 6-4 in these spots rather than mediocre hands like Q-J or 10-9, because they are easier to get away from if they are re-raised. If by chance you do call a raise from a tight player while holding a mediocre hand, be careful if you flop top pair and your tight opponent is putting in a lot of money. It’s probable that your opponent has you beat with an over-pair or a set, or even with a better kicker.
Another key to this strategy is to watch how a tight player reacts once they become involved in hand before the flop. Some tight players will open-raise the pot with a good hand, but fold to a re-raise because they are not willing to risk their chips with anything less than a premium hand. Other tight players will become ‘sticky’ once they’ve opened a pot and their stubbornness will force them to not want to lay down their hand to anything less than a huge re-raise. Only re-raise tight players who will show that they can lay down a hand that they really wanted to play.
After the flop the best way to profit against tight opponents is to bet or raise them off their hands or in other words, bluff them! While this is a very effective play against a tight and timid opponent, you need to be careful when you are facing a tight and talented player. The tight and talented player is very skilled in trapping aggressive opponents and inducing them into bluffing off their chips in bad times.
As the game gets short-handed, you will need to become a little more careful against some tight opponents. Some of those tight players will not be able to adjust to a shorter table, which means that you can continue to play aggressively against them without fear. But the talented tight player will be changing up their game as the situation changes and they are likely to loosen up their ranges, just as you are. Pay close attention to these players and exercise caution if they start to play back at you more frequently in short-handed situations.
Finally, remember that position is always your friend. If there is an all-in raise during a particular hand, make sure you are the one making it! Where a loose player will often fold because they have a weak hand, tight players are likely to fold in these spots because they fear they have an inferior hand.
Play the Player!
There are professional poker players that have claimed that you do not need to be a math magician to be extremely good at poker. Sure, playing the percentages certainly works to your advantage, but what good is that if there is always another player trying to knock you off your hand when you actually have the better percentages; you just do not know it. That’s when being able to read your opponents and not the cards come into play.
Being great at poker means being more than just the type of player who only plays the best of cards. The crushers are great, but they usually don’t come as often as we’d like. The best of players know how to play with terrible cards. You have to learn to prey on the weak and take advantage of the strong. You have to learn how to bluff someone off a decent hand and hone your skills at tricking your opponents into thinking that you have the worse hand. Playing your opponent is just as important, if not more than learning the math.
Not only do you have to think about the strength of your hand and your table position, but you have to realize that any poker player with experience is probably thinking the same way you are. Whittle your way down to the facts you do know about your opponent since you can’t see their hand.
What is their table position? Did they call, bet or raise pre-flop? Are they confident when they bet or are they making a show of it? How did they react when they looked at their cards? How big is their stack or bankroll? Learn to notice when a player is on tilt and cannot control their emotions. Keeping alert, focusing and remembering things that go on around you on the felt and even online, will help you to learn more about the player you are facing off with.
Bluffing is very hard to master and if you are not confident you are better off trying to spot signs of weakness from your opponents. If you’re playing online poker, being able to spot calling stations is an important trait to have. It’s sometimes easier to bluff a good player than a bad one because a good one will fold two pair when a bad one will call you down with a pair of Queens with a five kicker.
There is really no point in bluffing a terrible poker player who is a calling station because he is going to call you down all the way to the river. In a lot of cases you need to have the ability to categorize the type of players your opponents are very quickly, then use their strengths and their weaknesses against them