Free Online Poker Guide To How To Combat Loose-Aggressive Style Players

You’ve arrived at the flop with a decent hand but what do you do next? For many players postflop is the weakest part of their game. A key part of postflop play (as with preflop) is knowing the type of players you are up against and playing specifically to counter their style.

You will come up against 4 primary styles of poker player, tight or loose and passive or aggressive. In the free poker and online nanostakes (.02/.05 blinds), each of these player types make a few key mistakes. In this free online poker lesson we’ll look at how to exploit the Loose-Aggressive style player.

The LAG – Loose Aggressive aka the Maniac
LAGs always bet and raise much to often. 33% of flops long-term).

The key to beating them is knowing that their range in any situation is very wide. What this means is that if you flop second or third pair, calling their bets and raises is often hugely profitable because they’re betting repeatedly with absolutely nothing so often.

They’re somewhat difficult to play against because it takes a lot of guts – calling 3 streets (each a relatively large bet, usually) with third pair weak kicker is not particularly easy, but you have to realize that against some of these guys third pair is basically the same as top pair and so you just shouldn’t fold.

But with that said do not universally call any pair against an LAG as there are degrees of maniac and while the true LAG bets and raises 100% of the time some do not.

Yet another thing to note is your draws (and as a result, suited and connected hands preflop) shoot up in value since if you get the draw you may frequently get paid back very nicely (you may be recognising this as implied odds, but I’ll leave that subject for now and cover it later.).

Pair hands go up in value and draws go up in value as a rule against LAGs. To decide if he a major crazy maniac or simply very aggressive, pay close attention at the table to get a feel for the player’s range and aim for those profitable thin calls against LAG players.

As a rule also wait for the river before you raise LAGs with your strong hands as they will be betting all the way anyway so you will lose value if you raise them at the flop or turn and make them fold.

Remember, everything is in degrees! Some styles share traits with the most closely related group, TAGs with LAG bits, TPs that lean toward LPs and so on, so keep your wits about you and adjust your play per opponents using player style models as a tool to guide observation and decision making.

Learning to recognize player types and the degree to which a player fits a type isn’t easy. You need to practice your game plenty though for some of you it will come faster than others. If you’re new to poker do not risk much or even any cash as you learn.

Kick off by playing micro stakes or free online poker games and slowly work your risk levels up. For the main large version of this lesson where all the 4 styles are covered along with some extra postflop methods get over to the free online poker games blog on NoPayPOKER.