Punishing a LAG

[goofball]

As I was waiting for the 15/30 at Wynn last night, I sat in the 1/3 NL. There was one player who was playing very lag, preflop and somewhat LAG postflop. His postflop play was somewhat reasonable and a little tricky and his preflop play was super LAG.

My first instinct was 'sweet' as I'm very used to punishing this kind of player at a limit table. Do we do the same thingat a NL? I mean, many of the standrad techinques don't work as well. For example in a limit game with an opponent who like to c/r the turn with air you can check through the turn with your good draws/marginal showdown hands and bet it with your good hands. But against this kind of player in NL he can make a big river bet after you check through the turn anyway.

Is it as simple as isolating them and betting your good hands for value?

[rikz]

I'll tighten up preflop. Then I'll usually wait patiently for a decent flop and let the LAG bet into me. It's boring, but pays off eventually if LAG isn't just play acting to get more action with otherwise good play post flop.

A high-variance alternative would be to reraise the LAG preflop and get all your money up front in with good, but not necessarily great hands. So, ATo, for example, on LAG's 5th all-in preflop in a row might be worth a call if no other players are in the pot with you.

Recently, somebody posted an interesting note regarding table position versus an uber-LAG. It was counter-intuitive, but makes perfect sense the more I think about it--you'll want an uber-LAG as close to your left as possible. Ordinarily, you'll want to be to the left of a much deeper stack or a more aggressive player, but with the uber-LAG you already know what he's going to do (bet/raise/push), but you don't know what everyone ELSE is going to do in response to the LAG. So, if LAG is to your left, then you act last prior to the LAG's action. In other words, you get to see what everybody else does before you have to decide how to respond to the LAG yourself. That way, you can fold if another tight player at the table takes on the LAG by calling his all-in preflop, but you can call with less-than-premium hands that probably beat the LAG if everyone folds to you.

So, manuever the uber-LAG to be immediately on your left, if you can.