Overly agressive Opp. (Preflop)

[Mikey]

I hope that some of the more experienced players on here can help me with this one.

I have watched some players play that are overly agressive preflop,the blinds will be 1-2 and they will open for $13 or for $15 usually almost every hand. These type of players can be found playing shorthanded.

If you are in a game how do you handle playing against an opp. like this who's usual open raise is pretty big relative to the blinds...

Assume you are an experienced player playing in a 6 handed game with an opp who makes big open raises, but then and this is important too, he's not really a chip spewer either, when he meets resistance he shuts down

For instance if you limp reraise him all in he's not going to call you.

If you open he won't call you with crap, but he will be trying to control the game and he will make pot sized bets when checked to.

A player like this sometimes destroys a game.

Is there any method to this type of play, should it be implemented?

How would you handle someone like this? if they were in your game?

[xorbie]

If he opens to $15 or so every hand, then push with whatever range of hands you feel comfortable with. AK, TT+ is a conservative range, AJ+, 22+ is a bit looser. It depends on what he'll call with, and how well rolled you are for the game. Think about it though... you end up taking it down PF pretty often (win $15 or so). To pay for this, you end up having to pay $3 in blinds. So you only need to do this once every 4 times around the table to be +EV, even if the guy never calls. If he does, it's ++EV because you are often going in with 60%+ equity.

[xorbie]

As an alternate solution, you can definitely call a ton of raises with solid hands and check/raise all in on the flop if he's always contination betting.

[squallA964]

You have to consider that this situation is not too far out there. In almost every 1-2 NL game I've played in, the standard opening raise is $12, at the very least. Any less and you're just inviting 2 or 3 people at the very least to come along and see a flop with you with their garbage. Plus, for every limper in front of you, you have add their 2 bucks onto the 12 if you're gonna raise with the intention of limiting the field. It's like a joke when someone raises to $7 or something, we usually call it a "sweetener", cause nobody ever folds to it.

The people that are folding to you might actually have a pretty good hand themselves, but from your post it sounds like you're fairly tight, so when you go over top of them they're giving you credit for a hand.

[xorbie]

Note that I am very tired and thought this was all referring to $100NL. A $15 open raise in $200NL is really not that crazy.