Decent Loose Aggressive
I know the aggressive and nits but I've heard of others and not know how to exploit them. What's the hardest type of poker player to beat?
Hi there Liru, welcome to the CardsChat community! Very nice question you gave us, thanks for so doing it.
First of all there are several types of players, not only the "NIT", "TAG", and "LAG" types.
For a more deep understanding of players types I recommend Polished Poker Vol 1, Chapter 5 Metta World Peace, where the author, John Anhalt talks about this and the importance in taking players notes.
The book is available here:
https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/polished-poker-vol-i-study-group-227214//
IMO, the hardest players are the real decent Loose Aggresive players: they play a very wide range in position and they have a surgical precision in exploring situations, specially when it comes to the CO, BTN, SB and BB. They are the master of these positions and they will outplay Tight Regulars, Nit Regulars, ABC, Aggro Preflop, Tight Passive, finally, all types of players.
Do not try to level with a decent LAG, because the intention of its game is too looks like a weak players to atract more exploitation. This guy is a terrorist at the tables, a kamizase of the deck, but, for our lucky there aren't too many of these at the micros:
Most of LAG players at the micros are what we ofensively call "aggro donkeys", or "aggro idiots": they will
bluff out of position, they will try to represent anything in complicated boards, they will have a huge 3-bet light range, huge 4-bet light range, they are going all in PF with dominated hands, and this fun stuff.
Most of players have information of this meta-game. Although many do not excel at it, many are very good to read the perceived image of player. For example:
You are in a MTT playing for about 3 hours, let's suppose with the 9 players in the same table. You see that the guy in your left is a NIT and has stats of VPIP 3/PFR 3/AF 3.
Now you are in the Level 8 of blinds and it comes in gap for you in the BTN, and you have KTo, and raise 2x preflop, because you have 24 BB of stack size.
The Nit player is in the SB and elects to 3-bet you for 6.3 blinds. The SB Nit has 31 BB stack size remaining.
You look to the stats and the player has simply 0% 3-bet preflop for a sample of 224 hands (let's suppose that you have already played with this opponent before and have a larger sample of hands).
So you fold a very strong hand because you didn't have many options.
Next hand you open a TT from the CO and the same NIT player, now in the BTN, shoves all-in. Your action? We should be calling here almost everytime, but remember this guy had not 3-bet range and then it decided to put more than 35 BB of stack and risk its tournament with hands such as 99, 88, 77?
Okay the Nit will show some AK, AQ, AJ and we are flipping, but the IMAGE of this player make our legs tremble and sometimes we are going to call this and sometimes we must fold.
Let's suppose you folded. In the other round of blinds you see the Nit player 3-betting another player in position. What's your first idea: "This guy is starting to force the table. Perhaps it is not so tight anymore". In fact, the image of the player changed according to the table players.
The Nit observed that the players are scared because of the bubble and started to apply pressure with its range, because it has a very, very decent image: the guy played only premium hands until level 8, so his image allows it to put some bluff here and there, specially when the Nit is "deep stacked" for a level 8 of blinds something like 28 to 50 bb or more.
Do not jump right into conclusions about players! It takes a lot a time (sample of hands) to really know a player moves, tendencies and vices, so we can really explore it: A Tight player will be loose sometimes when it sees it is comfortable. A loose player will play tight when it realizes that the table does not allow it to be the table sheriff, etc.
The vice-versa also works: This Nit player folded a lot to 3-bet in the first levels of the tournament but now, in the level 8 of blinds, it just decided to open his range and do it aggressively to put pressure.
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa