Do you struggle versus crazy players?
It can be really infuriating playing against those nutters.
Their incessant aggression, when you do enter a pot with them they just get worse and worse, throwing in more chips and forcing you to put more at stake. On top of all that (and you not being sure if they have anything in their hand at all or they’re just plain crayzee), they seem to get rewarded for their crazy plays, hitting their miracle draws on the river etc. ‘So you did have nothing until the river?’
How do you deal with such madness, if at all?
One option is to leave it to others at the table to deal with the crazy one – but then when the crazy doesn’t get their miracle draw and spills a bucket-load of chips, guess who gets them? Not you.
So how about this:
Get involved in more pots with crazy poker players.
Yep, that’s right. Rather than making the common mistake of tightening up too much, laying low and playing them only when you get Kings or Aces, get involved with them – but with the right hands and in the right conditions. The right hands means just play a wider range than usual and the right conditions means unless you have a strong hand, play position.
Trapping very loose players with a strong hand can be an effective strategy, but it comes with a big disadvantage. That is the fact that very strong hands like AA or KK don’t come around often in texas hold’em. So by the time you actually get a monster hand, your target could already blow through all of their chips.
Other players at the table will also be gunning for them as well, so it’s a matter of who can get their chips first. If you want to be the first one to take all their chips, you have to have more opportunities to do so. This means getting involved with them in more pots, i.e. loosening up your ranges.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should get involved with just about any random hand that’s dealt to you, and you should still know when to fold if it gets tooooo crazy and you have very few outs, but it’s about playing the odds. If your hand has some sort of playability post flop, you should be willing to roll the dice, because the potential upside (i.e. stacking your opponent) is so huge.
You should look to play more speculative hands, i.e. hands that aren’t strong enough in and of themselves, but have the potential to make strong combinations post flop.
Hands like suited connectors (ex: 9♥8♥) or small pocket pairs (ex: 4♠4♦) fit the bill. Speculative hands need good implied odds to be played profitably.
Another factor to consider is playing in position. Playing in position means being the last to act in a betting round, and it is a huge advantage to have, especially against crazy aggressive players.
Here’s why:
-
You have an informational advantage – you know what your opponents did, while they have no idea what you will do.
Playing in position allows you to control the pot size – you get a final say at the pot size. When an aggressive player bets, you can call to keep the pot size smaller, or raise to inflate the pot size further.
You can bluff catch more effectively – due to the informational advantage, you can spot bluffs more easily. This is especially important against aggressive players, as they will likely have a lot of bluffs in their range.
The opposite is obviously true for playing out of position so just bear that in mind (playing out of position against loose aggressive players is a nightmare, because they will constantly try to push you out of pots).
Remember: you don’t necessarily need an especially strong hand to beat them these crazies. You only need a hand that’s strong enough to be ahead of all the nonsense they could be bluffing with.
While they can be frustrating to play against at times, this type of player is also the most profitable to play against over the long run. Since they play an insane number of hands and their aggression is usually ill-advised, this type of player will lose chips far faster and in larger quantities than any other player type.
Of course, these players will get lucky from time to time, and go on an unlikely winning streak, but these streaks don’t last very long, and they will end up losing a lot of money over the long run.
Another tip: Commit or quit early. Crazy aggressive players will often continue barreling on multiple streets. So if you intend to call them down, you should be willing to commit to this tactic to the end. Otherwise you’re playing into their game and letting them push you out of pots, while you’re giving chunks of your stack for free. Once again, you don’t need to wait around for the stone cold nuts to make money. Sometimes you need to pull the trigger in less than ideal, marginal situations to get truly great results.
Following this advice, you’re still going to lose in a spectacular fashion from time to time – but – playing against wild, crazy players should be profitable over the long run.
Poker is a game of razor thin margins. Even if you are way more skilled than your opponents, they will still almost always have some sort of equity in the hand. This is what makes poker exciting in the first place: everyone who understands the basic rules of the game can theoretically win even against superior competition.
Playing against crazy players involves a high degree of variance – the maths is on your side, but your results will be incredibly swingy due to the short term luck element involved.
This is the secret to beating crazy players: to confidently get involved in more pots with them, knowing that the maths is on your side.
If you’re not completely comfortable with losing a couple of buy-ins at any given moment, you’re not sufficiently bankrolled for the stakes and the crazies you’re playing.