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We’ve all played poker against those guys who are relentlessly
aggressive, who’ll make
moves with any two cards. The
fact of the matter is that you
have to make a stand against
those guys sooner or later.
The key is picking the right
time to do it. There’s
nothing more painful than
being the sucker who pays him
off when he finally has a
monster. But it’s a gamble
you have to take on occasion
in order to be the guy who
gets all of the maniac’s
chips when he runs an
ill-advised bluff.
At the 2008 Aussie Millions, I had one of those aggressive
players at my table on Day
One. He was an 18-year-old
online guru, I think he was
from Norway. It didn’t take
long for me to realize that he
was playing loose: involved in
a lot of hands, making some
big calls and making some big
re-raises. He was seated two
positions to my left, so I had
to be careful about entering
pots and prepared to make a
stand against one of his
re-raises eventually.
That opportunity came with blinds at 150/300. I had roughly an
average stack, about 19,500,
and the Norwegian was the big
stack at the table with about
44,000. I was two off the
button, and he was on the
button. The under-the-gun
player raised to 800, the next
player called, I looked down
at Kc-Jc and called, the
cutoff called, and then it
came around to the aggressive
kid on the button. I’d noted
that almost every time there
had been five or six callers,
or a raise and several
callers, he had put the
squeeze play on. Something in
my mind was telling me he
didn’t have anything most of
the time and had just been
making this move to pick up
some dead money.
So of course he did it again on this hand, raising another 4,000
to 4,800 total. Everybody
folded around to me, and I had
to consider how much it was
going to hurt my stack to
call. I didn’t have a lot of
chips and would be committing
about a quarter of my stack.
But something just told me
that this guy had NOTHING. So
I made the call.
We were heads-up, and the flop came Q-J-8, rainbow. I checked,
and I made my mind up that I
was calling a flop bet no
matter what. But he checked
behind, and the turn came
another Jack, putting two
spades on the board. I checked
again, and he bet 4,000 chips.
I tanked for a little while,
making it seem like a
difficult call with a marginal
hand, but eventually I called.
I didn’t think he had
anything at all, so raising
would have made absolutely no
sense.
Then a King came on the river, giving me a full house. Again, I
checked, and he put me all in
for about 10,000 chips, and I
insta-called. He didn’t even
want to show his hand, but
eventually he did and turned
over 10-7 off-suit.
I was proud of the way I played the hand on two fronts. First, my
read was dead-on that he was
wanting to make a move with
absolutely nothing, and I
trusted that read and made a
tough pre-flop call. Then,
when I turned a big hand and
rivered a monster, I continued
to trust my read and fed him
rope to hang himself. If I had
bet out on any of those
streets, I might have lost
him. But these aggressive
players often think they can
bully you off of pots with
all-in bets, so when I made my
full house, I let him use his
aggression to my advantage and
I doubled up through him.
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