How to play a bully (and some general poker philosophy as well)

I'm new and wanted to share my own humble opinion of how to play poker (I'm no expert and learning every day--I guess I hope I never stop). I searched but didn't find a similar topic that is recent so here is my topic:

How to handle a bully at the table. One of those loose, aggressive types that pounds the table.

The strategy that I use is like this:
Tighten up. Remember what those premium hands are (position matters) and stick with them.
bluffing can be risky. Don't bluff unless it is a semi-bluff (where you have lots of outs)
Bullies will push, so use that against them. Limp when you have a big hand and they'll do the raising for you. Then, take them by surprise.
And very, very important: patience! Take your time. Don't rush. Pick your spot.

Always remember that poker is a game. Strategy is key but sometimes the draw of the cards just isn't with you. Shrug it off and play another day. I like what other people have said about avoiding tilt: close the computer, go and work out or take a walk. Pet the dog.

Above all, what is really important to me at the tables: This is just a game. I want to be entertained, play good poker, and meet nice people. Perhaps silly to say but I'm still surprised by some of the attitudes at a table. Amazing how pissed off someone gets when they lose $0.50! In online games with folks like this, "right-click"/"mute chat" is a wonderful option!

Maybe it is a woman thing, but at my age (mid-40's) I think life is just too short to be aggravated all the time. And, most of the time, I can remember that!

Cheers,

Some great advice in there thx for contributing by posting this for all of us too see

hope your using this to good effect on the tables

oh and welcome to CC (from another newbie lol)

inti

Welcome to the boards!

I agree with a lot of things in that post but this one I strongly disagree with:

Bullies will push, so use that against them. Limp when you have a big hand and they'll do the raising for you. Then, take them by surprise.

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Bullies will still fold hands. This is how you end up in a pot against 4 limpers drawing to sets, straights and flushes while you can't lay down your overpair.

If it does work and the bully shoves into us and we get HU, we can still lose!
Let's say the bully has 4x our stack, and we get AA three times in a row. Everyone of those three times we let the bully shove into us and call.
To survive this, you'll find we need to win all three.
AA wins against a random hand ~80% of the time. So it wins three times in a row 51,2% of the time.

If you do this with say TT+/AJs+/AQ+, the chance drops below 50% especially since a lot of the bully's range is Ax and Kx.

You also miss out on a lot of value if you're just looking to bait a single player with your premium hands. Your main goal should always be winning chips, no matter from whom. Actively betting your good hands will always be the best way to do that.

And let's say you raise pre with QQ, the bully calls, the flop comes J high. Now is a good time to check and induce a bluff.

I don't know, for me it really depends on what the rest of the table is doing. If it's just one maniac and a bunch of limpers/folders, then game on - I'll raise to isolate and get him heads up - if he sucks postflop you'll find out real quick. If he's become the catalyst for a bunch of crazy action at the table, then I tend to tighten up and pick my spots, but still - you gotta raise those good hands. Don't limp.

I think she is talking about a hyper LAG, and if she is then its okay to limp and let him raise for you, as a trap, but you do need to see him still raising after a limp or two, if hes only raising if folded to him thats a whole different type of player, but if hes raising limps in a short amount of time, in different positions, hes hyper, and perfect canidate for the AA limp reraise. A hyper doesnt care if you havent played last 50 hands, and then limp under the gun, they have an inability to shut off there aggresiveness, so i say go for the trap.

side note dont go broke with AA in a multiway pot, that wasnt raised.

Also if you find yourself heads up, with the hyper lag, id ck flop 100% time, then fold or reraise all-in, with top pair or better, open ended with one or two overs, flush draw with any strait draw. (i am assuming the lag is making 3/4 pot or more bet on flop, not probe bets, and that you are not deepstacked) You should be willing to play fast on the flop with a hyper lag. And trapping pre and post flop, is okay.

Thank you all for making some very good points. I was talking about a maniac who is pushing on just about every hand. But it's a good lesson for me that I need to avoid generalizations since so much of poker is situational: how is the table as a whole, what is the history over the game with this specific player, what type of game it is, what my position is. They may call poker a game, but I think it's a craft! One I hope I'll keep learning about.

I was at a $1/$2 table with someone that did this every hand:
raise preflop
bet flop
shove the turn
It was great, he kept re-buying every time he got busted, too.

Good Stuff ' !! I like your tips personally . Keep posting and threading . Your awesome !

oh what a feeling.

It is a hard spot to pick sometimes. But if ya stay cool get a monster hand and position in your favor, there is nothing better then to bust out a player like that. But be carefull, sometimes when I am faced with an lag at my table i somehow feel the need to crush em. And get anxious and make a bad call and bust myself out.

Here's my question:
When you are playing a person like this it seems to me that you MUST have a pre-flop pair to even play because many times I will play a hand with AKs or QJs.

The bully will obviously make it expensive for me to see the flop (Which I will pay with good cards), but then on a flop like 8c 4d Js, what do you do? The bully generally will be pushing on matter what. Do you just lay it down and hope to catch him next time or continue to play knowing that you probably have superior cards?

I agree with a lot of what you have posted. Sounds like solid process. I always try to set the player up. I wait until I have a hand I can play against them and trap as best I can. I some times never get the chance due busting out being moved to another table or the cards never appearing. But when it does it is a sweet reward and I am never bothered by that bully again in that game.

Great post, very useful advice.Keep announcement and threading to help others.

I just don't mind them though.

Just remembered OkanT Last 2 Saterdays he was chip leader near the bubble in the CC freerolls on FT. I think last week he was chip leader in the buble with a 42K stack 4 times bigger than the second place and almost a third of the chips in play. He was busted out both times and he did not get to final table. Ask the ppl who took him out how to play Of course i would give him the award donk of the year, but still is hard to play when someone has giant stack and it requires a lot of patience and skill.

Hi. Arent you the poster who introduced yourself with "any other 40 somethings here who play poker" or something like that? I wanted to reply to that one (if it was you) but didnt cause I am 50 something.lol.

Anyway, I was in a live game last night, and - as said by BTWHII - bullies will fold. I was on the right of a LAG, who was raising a lot, and I got tired of it and fired a 3 bet at him 2x in a row, and he folded, not to mention he pulled back after that. I was playing pretty tight, and that helped. But he was pushing the table around, had the BS at the table (I was 2nd) and after folding to raises of his I started firing back. I had gone to SD with an all in 3 9 K RB board, I had AKst, and some other hands I had won were 99, and KTst with a TT board, and I was pretty much betting and raising if I was in at all. I did raise a couple of times and folded to his RR as were a lot of the ppl, so when it became apparent that he was gonna play LAG a lot, I pushed back when I had something I could live with, and he got the message. Its kinda like when we were at school, the bullies push those around who will take it, but shrink at someone who pushes back. But the tight image helps, when you push a bully. I also got him to fold AJ on a AT board, he was sure I had AT, I had Q high st on the button, and raised, he called, I cbet the A flop, he called, the T turn I went all in with the FD, (I let him think he was right, he said "you got the T and an A dont you?" then he folded. The scary thing was, after he folded, a guy across from me said "You dont have an A, Im going for Q high....wow). lol. So just push those bullies back.

Sorry for derail... but when some specialP.O.S. like above posts a SPAM post like this, click on the small triangle in upper right corner & report it to mods. (please delete my post here too when you get to the spammer's tks)

OP, there's a difference between a 'good' bully on the table & a not so good one (more of a maniac). A good bully 'will appear' to be playing back at you ALOT.. but mostly they're making small stabs at alot of pots, trying to pick up pots that are there for the taking, etc.... BUT.. when push comes to shove.. they will have a BIG hand. A good bully's hope is that you will get sick of them playing back at you & then will make a move against them right at the very worst time (for you that is).. they've once again raised you on the flop.. you shove with TPTK... and BOOM.. yup.. they've got a set.. or they'd flopped that straightflush draw when the chips went in... damn!!
The 'good' bully uses their image to their advantage - - they can pick up alot of smaller pots & then HOPEFULLY you play back at them when they've got THE MONSTER! (it is a VERY successful approach to the game if one is GOOD enough to use it well).

even this ^ is way too general... but perhaps sheds some light on the style.

Poker Orifice said:

Sorry for derail... but when some specialP.O.S. like above posts a SPAM post like this, click on the small triangle in upper right corner & report it to mods. (please delete my post here too when you get to the spammer's tks)

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LOL. I did, just cant resist my Stupid Post About Money thing lol

When people quote and post spam again it makes more work for us. Just report it or ill prob spam kill you by mistake next time.

PO fletchdad has been around for a while, I think calling him a POS spammer is a bit over the top

I agree with with waiting for a monster hand, raising to isolate the maniac and hopefully HU after flop I will let them do the betting, as long as the board is not risky. It seems they will increase the turn and river bets hoping to get you to fold if they have been bullying the table for a bit and it has been working.
If they are first to act after the flop though, and check, I am betting.

tenbob said:

When people quote and post spam again it makes more work for us. Just report it or ill prob spam kill you by mistake next time.

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lol ok. Sorry for the extra work

PooffyFooffy said:

PO fletchdad has been around for a while, I think calling him a POS spammer is a bit over the top

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Thanks Pooffy. But he didnt mean me. But it warmed my heart that you stood up for me . Me and PO know each other from the forum and game chats well enough and he was referring to the spam I quoted and its poster as the POS. But in the future I will just hit the triangle and be done with it.

Sorry for trouble and derail but worth it to have Pooffy fight for me


edit: I just saw that the original spam has been deleted, so thats why Pam thought it was at me.

fletchdad said:

Hi. Arent you the poster who introduced yourself with "any other 40 somethings here who play poker" or something like that? I wanted to reply to that one (if it was you) but didnt cause I am 50 something.lol.

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Fletchdad, thanks for the comments. I am the one who posted that 40-something comment. I didn't mean to be ageist or anything (some of my best friends are in their 50s! LOL). Besides, you're clearly not a novice around CC; you shouldn't let any stinkin' Subject line keep you from putting in your thoughts. I've read many of your posts and enjoy your insight. I appreciate you taking the time to answer (is that shameless enough? )

I think learning how to be (properly) aggressive is my challenge at the moment. I need to learn how to read the "good" bully (as Poker Orifice calls it) and distinguish that player from the maniac. I can manage during cash games because I just wait out the maniacs and have time to wait for good hands. But when I'm in a tournament, especially turbo, I can easily get blinded out when I don't catch premium hands and am playing too passively. Then I think a tight image works against me because there just aren't that many premium hands in a round (but that, I guess, is the subject for another post!)

fletchdad said:

Thanks Pooffy. .

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Anytime

Poker Orifice said:

OP, there's a difference between a 'good' bully on the table & a not so good one (more of a maniac). A good bully 'will appear' to be playing back at you ALOT.. but mostly they're making small stabs at alot of pots, trying to pick up pots that are there for the taking, etc.... BUT.. when push comes to shove.. they will have a BIG hand. A good bully's hope is that you will get sick of them playing back at you & then will make a move against them right at the very worst time (for you that is).. they've once again raised you on the flop.. you shove with TPTK... and BOOM.. yup.. they've got a set.. or they'd flopped that straightflush draw when the chips went in... damn!!
The 'good' bully uses their image to their advantage - - they can pick up alot of smaller pots & then HOPEFULLY you play back at them when they've got THE MONSTER! (it is a VERY successful approach to the game if one is GOOD enough to use it well).

even this ^ is way too general... but perhaps sheds some light on the style.

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You just described David Pham. I watched him a little at TV and a little playing in the FT tourneys.
He's always agressive. Not too much but enough to be annoing. And when you think you have him boom you are out of the game and you get out with "damn donk and his luck". Of course you have to be a master of this. Never put in too much chips than necessary. You can make him fold only with an all in. He feels when you are weak postflop and he feels when you are trying to trap. It is verry hard to play against such guys even for pros.
Harrington took him out at HU one at a final table but Harrington is much more annoing but he had some good reads calling some bluffs and went all in trapping Pham with a 100% winning hand postflop Pham opened a mouth large enough to swallow the table when he saw what Harrington had.

Anyway, if you have a bully at your table in a tournament stick to the TAG play and do not take unnecessary risks if you are a beginner and you are not confortable with the postflop play.