Best strategy for playing tricky players
 

Someone who is really trying to win, and playing very tricky. Other than finding another table, what is the best way to play against such a player? Straight forward, bluff and semibluff a little more, i don't know what else. By the way, by tricky I mean the kind of player that tries to checkraise twice, will check behind all with top pair in a 2 or 3 handed flop, etc. If anyone has any insight here I'd really appreciate it.

Re: Best strategy for playing tricky players
 

If he is a good player and will lay a hand down, semibluff raise more often.

Then there is the obvious. Avoid them. When autorate shows a player as a moneybag and they raise preflop, I steer clear.

Re: Best strategy for playing tricky players
 

autorate? Is this something confined to one specific online poker room, or have I missed something really important? :-) I'm relatively new to online poker play...


thanks!


--Lob

Re: Best strategy for playing tricky players
 

I'm a half tricky/half retarded player, so I throw in some comments here. First off: SSH has some good general comments on dealing with a tricky player in the "Free Card" section.
Against tricky players, you have to let their plays backfire against them. They will give you more free cards, so take them. You should check decent hands behind a tricky player more then you would a bad player. You should induce them to bluff away their money. If you have a borderline call/raise hand you should probably lean toward calling, and/or try to induce overcalls in those spots more often then you would against a mechanical player.

Hope this helps,
Brad

Re: Best strategy for playing tricky players
 

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autorate? Is this something confined to one specific online poker room, or have I missed something really important? :-) I'm relatively new to online poker play...

[/ QUOTE ]

There's program called Poker Tracker that keeps track of your opponents and has very detailed information about your own stats. Many of us in here use PT.

Re: Best strategy for playing tricky players
 

[ QUOTE ]
When autorate shows a player as a moneybag and they raise preflop, I steer clear.

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You should check their PFR%. If someone is a 19% VP$IP moneybags who happens to raise everytime they play, you should not respect their raises very much. (It's the TP-A pre-flop raisers I worry about.)

Also realize that the post-flop aggression number for a tight player is VERY inaccurate. Suppose you've seen him for 100 hands and he sees the flop 25% of the time and folds on the flop another 30% of the time. Now you've only seen him play 17 hands post-flop and you are estimating his aggression based on that. One flopped set could seriously skew the number.

The bisonbison autorates are a great tool, but like all pokertracker stuff, you need to realize the limitations.