From the early days of poker games, the expert players have known that the approach to win a poker game is to be an aggressive player.
Like most pieces of advice, this one ultimately trickled down to the mass poker players. Even in the small stakes games many have begun to notice a lot more aggression and have had to find ways to fight it.
Luckily, many of these online poker players are novice aggressors. Here are a few approaches the pro players attempt to take benefit of these extra aggressive players.
Check-raising from early position
This is a play the pros use when they raise out of position and get called by multiple players. When this occurs, they don’t continue the flop unless they have a hand with which they are willing to barrel off and not fold to a raise. Otherwise, they check to the opponents to see what develops. If the action is too heavy after checking the cards, many expert players tend to just get out of the way, but normally checking opens up a chance.
The cool thing about the check-raise normally prices out the draws, but can at times still get called by top pair since it kind of looks like a draw itself to a lot of poker online players.
Opening larger from late position
To combat over-aggressive online poker players, the expert ones at times use a larger raise size of anywhere from 3 to 4 times the big blind when they are in late position or even middle position. They tend to do this less frequently from early position because the range is so strong that they do not mind facing a three-bet.
A larger raise size makes it far more likely that any caller pro poker online players get is one in the blinds. Also, the larger sizing handcuffs players with medium stacks because it makes it tougher for them to three-bet less than all in without committing themselves to calling a four-bet shove.
Open-shoving larger from late position
Many players start to open shove once they get to around 10-15 big blinds. If the players have over-aggressive opponents behind them who are capable of exploiting their light opens by jamming wide over them when they have a 16-20 BB stack, then these players go ahead and open-shove those stack sizes as well.
With the online poker games so aggressive nowadays, a number of players in the small stakes try to copy better players they search for, fighting fire with fire. But habitually they do so in disturbed manners. This opens them up to further counter-aggression which is something the expert players often try to exploit.
Happy playing!