888poker: Five Tips for Playing Poker Aggressively
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We've all heard about the importance of being aggressive in poker, but the real trick is knowing when and how to put that aggression into action. Join us in the next episode of Made To Learn, where 888poker Ambassador Alexandre "Cavalito" Mantovani spills the beans on five practical tips to bring some aggression into your poker game.
Identify Boards That Are Better For Your Range
When we raise and get called, there are some boards that we can be very aggressive on. Let's say we open-raise from early position and get called by the big blind. Any flop with one or more high cards (jacks or higher) is usually good for us, and with the vast majority of them, we can bet our entire range.
If you raise with a hand like A♠8♠ and go to a K♣Q♦2♥ flop, we have a lot of very strong hands that our opponent simply cannot have. We have a lot of K♠K♥, Q♥Q♣, A♦A♥ and A♦K♦, and if our opponent had any of these hands, we'd expect them to three-bet with these hands preflop.
Even if we have a part of our range that doesn't connect with this board, we can still bet and our opponent will have a hard time with a lot of hands they have. They can even fold better hands than ours, like pocket nines, for example.
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Explore Capped Ranges
Another opportunity to be more aggressive is when your opponents have capped ranges. For this example, let's say we open from the hijack with A♠4♠, and the big blind defends with 10♣9♦.
We see a J♥10♥5♣ flop, and our opponent just calls our continuation bet. It's very likely with this more connected board texture, our opponent would raise their strong hands aggressively, as there are a lot of scary turn cards. Basically, any card from seven to ace and any heart would make it pretty unlikely for our opponent to have called us with a hand like ace-jack. That means if the turn is a blank, we can play very aggressively since our opponent is going to have, at most, a weak jack type of hand. It's usually a ten or worse, and they're going to have trouble calling down.
Identifying these scenarios will increase your aggression naturally and will turn you into a very hard opponent to play against.
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Size Matters
Being smart about the size of our bets is another way to add aggression to your poker game, as your bet size will have a direct impact on your opponent's continuing range.
For example, you raise with 8♦8♣ from early position and get called by the big blind, who has A♠5♠. On a 9♥5♠3♣ board, you bet one big blind, and your opponent will continue with any piece of the board. If you bet full pot, your opponent will fold most of their 3xXx and 5xXx hands, as well as their weak straight draws.
Your bet sizing will also have a big impact on how the hand will play in future streets. If you bet one big blind on the flop and the turn is a three, you should be somewhat careful, as your opponent will have this card in their range more often. If you bet full pot on the flop and the turn is a three, you can keep betting your best hands for value and be less concerned that your opponent has hit this card.
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Think About Which Part of the Range You Are Targeting
With all the poker training software out there these days, sometimes people forget that poker is a game of people and logic. Sound logic sometimes produces very similar results to software.
Let's go back to the J♥10♥5♣ flop we discussed earlier. This time, you have K♥Q♥ and bet 6.5 big blinds on the 6♦ turn. The big blind calls with their J♣7♠, and the K♠ comes in on the river. We know our opponent has gotten to the river with a weak jack most of the time, so we can still extract value with our pair of kings with a not-so-large bet, like half pot.
In the same context, we are going to have some bluffs like queen-eight suited and some value hands like ace-queen and queen-nine. These hands benefit from very large bets.
Know When to Shut Down
It is important to remember that sometimes, you just need to shut down. Aggression increases your profitability when executed in the right spots, but sometimes, we just need to shut down; otherwise, we lose a big chunk of this profitability.
