Beating Extremely Aggressive Poker Players

They're very intimidating at the table. They seem to know nothing else in poker but bet incredibly strong wagers and incredibly effective ones, too. Let's call them extremely aggressive poker players.

But there are also seemingly strong and aggressive players who are actually loose ones with aggressive tendencies. They are also intimidating, but only in a deceptive sense. They're nothing but paper tigers. We should differentiate them from the genuine aggressive poker players who are in the extreme. The first trait of these aggressive poker players is their poker acuity. They don't just bet aggressively but also effectively. They are timing sensitive and when the opportunity shows itself they go all the way relentlessly.

These aggressive poker players prey on players with weak chip stacks. Chip stacks can prove to be powerhouses in a bet-raise poker scenario, and without stack strength we cannot hope to stand against these aggressive poker players for long. They go super aggressive against weak chip-stack players and those who just rely on pure pot odds without strong supplementary betting patterns. They often either hold the winning hand or fold pre-river play. So these aggressive poker players seldom let anybody take even a peek at their hands.

How do we beat these players? The antidote is patience. These aggressive poker players can really frustrate our good intentions and sometimes irk us so that we tend to retaliate with massive bets and raises to intimidate them back - which they'd only love. So don't get tilt, thinking like a sucker by biting into the trap. If possible, slow play, but with extra caution.

These aggressive poker players like nitpicking on weak players with side comments or nasty looks, or with irritating bets that challenge our stack capacity. They have a great skill at taking small amounts of chips now and then from opponents like termites that slowly eat away at foundations. And this is one of the effective ways they irk or infuriate opponents so that the latter are more off balanced in their plays disturbed by their nagging emotions.

So we go after big wins. One or two major pots would slow down these aggressive poker players to sobriety and look for other players to pick on. They easily recognize other players who are not bet-shy and have the ability to take bigger pots than what they can.

We can hone our poker skills with these aggressive poker players, but we should take care not to give our stack away to them.