There are different types of loose-aggressive players (LAGs), both good and bad. Most of your profits when playing online poker for money will not come from them, as they are usually the winners on the poker table. In fact, they are a constant thorn that will take advantage of any sign of weakness. It is usually good when you are one of them and not the defensive player.
The 3-Bet defending strategy and the example hands in this article were actually taken from a sample chapter in my brand new poker book - The Micro Stakes Playbook. The full length book includes 20 more strategy chapters just like this one and over 50 example hands showing exactly how I created some of the highest win-rates in the history of. A second temptation is to go into highly defensive mode — that is, to tighten up even further, waiting for the rare premium hand before playing back at the bully. There are two problems with this.
What is the aggressive poker strategy?
LAGs often aggressively play several hands, usually 30% or more of what is dealt to them by the dealer. A good LAG will raise and three-bet on before the flop. At most, they will loosen up their starting hand requirements. For instance, playing any of their two cards while heavily relying on their aggression or skill post-flop to beat other players when the community cards come into play. If you are not a LAG yet but wish to use their strategy, it is recommended that you have some structure to your starting poker hands list, as this is very important.
Furthermore, you will find bad LAGs as mentioned earlier. These are players that are usually reckless when they play poker online for money and will not find a fold. Such players are frustrating to play against and might just destroy your bankroll, as they do not know where they stand in a hand and will not fold to resist.
The strategy for a good LAG is to play a lot of hands and bet aggressively, while understanding equity. Loose-aggressive players are always aware of the importance of their initiative. Once the round begins, they will find a lot of spots to bet then take down the pot just like that with any weak holding. This is their biggest strength. Unlike tight players, they are more likely to get action as they are already aware of their image.
How to become an aggressive player or spot one
There are a number of ways players can tell if they are aggressive or not, preflop, especially in no-limit hold’em poker. The aggressive player is often one that open-raises and places a three-bet. It is easy for novice punters to tell that only a fairly small percentage of starting hands are strong enough to raise or re-raise. So, usually, if a player does raise more often preflop, it shows aggression.
Again, aggression can be demonstrated by a player who frequently attacks by re-raising over a raise or call, preflop. When the game reaches the flop betting round, aggressive players will pull other tricks. One of them is placing a continuation bet that keeps the initiative with the raiser before the flop or by simply check-raising. A check-raise can also happen on the turn and can be viewed as part of aggression, depending on the situation, like when the dealt card could draw. The scare can pretty much occur on the river causing any bet or raise to appear aggressive.
The aggressive vs defensive strategy
Aggression is a more advantageous strategy that new players should learn as part of the poker basics. That is why beginner poker guides will often tell you to “bet if they check” on the flop, just to get you ready. At most, preflop, players are not dealt paired cards. Usually, pocket pairs will appear after many hands meaning that making a pair even on the flop is worse. So, being aggressive works better than being passive, given that your opponent has checked on the flop because they are yet to make a pair or better, meaning if you bet, you win.
On the other hand, the defensive strategy involves taking passive action over aggressive action. Usually, how this works would be to check instead of bet and to call instead of raise. This strategy protects your money, rather than boosting the overall size of the pot. Defensive strategies are mainly popular in online poker tournaments and are referred to as ‘pot control’ as it was important to protect stacks.
Can the loose aggressive strategy be beaten?
Everything has a weakness, and so does the LAG strategy. Below are the different ways you can use to attempt to beat aggressive players in poker online.
- Slowplay against aggressive players – between loose and aggressive players, slowplaying is a good thing. As aggressive players play too many hands and will bet too much, you want them to think that you have a strong hand. However, it is also important to remember that aggressive players are also good hand readers. For instance, if a LAG sees you call two times on a straight or flush, it tells them that you do not have a strong hand such as a perfect pair, since you would have raised earlier.
- Slowplay and four-bet before the flop – as you already know now, LAGs will bet with a wide range. To beat this, you will need to slowplay preflop as well as introduce the preflop four-bet bluffing. Slowplay a hand such as KK or AA before the flop, and the opponent will be less likely to have a strong hand given the wide range. It becomes very profitable to slowplay your strong hand and works to your advantage to have opponents folding whatever hand they three-bet with if you four-bet as a bluff.
- Bluff raise – to defeat a LAG, you can look for spots where your range can be seen as strong, although weak—thereafter add some bluffs. For instance, you can bluff by raising with much weaker hands on spots where there are only strong hands or draws. This will allow you to combat your opponents’ aggression in spots where your range is relatively strong. More so, bluff raising also gives you some equity and could make your play much more profitable. However, it is advisable to sometimes follow up with multiple barrels if your raise gets called on the flop.
Factors to consider
Before you can sit down at the online poker table, there are things that you need to consider—especially as a defensive player, and they are as follows:
- Bet size – one of the most important factors to consider is the bet size, as it impacts the odds of the pot as well as the range that your opponent represents. You will need to adjust accordingly.
- Opponents’ behavior – reading the behavior of your opponents is crucial, especially if they have extreme tendencies. That way, you will be able to act better than them.
- Range advantage – considering that the board is good for your opponent’s range, it is advisable to raise often. You can do the opposite if the board is good for your own range.
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Table Of Contents
Gareth James is a tournament poker player, author, coach, content creator and streamer.
He currently grinds the off-peak Sunday schedule over on Twitch and you can find his regular strategy content, for free, over on Youtube.
I'll start this article off by saying I love Holdem Resources Calculator (HRC). I've used it for many years and regularly recommend it to my students.
However, recently I've seen some content from well-known, respected poker players, authors and streamers who seem to be suggesting that it can give you good opening ranges and responses to those ranges including good, solid BB defence strategies and I'm a bit concerned.
Mainly because I know that HRC cannot do these things as it doesn't factor in equity realisation.
HRC is great and I use it regularly, but definitely not for working out opening ranges or response ranges.
In this article I'm going to just focus on BB defence at 20bb and compare the results of both Holdem Resources Calculator and Simple Preflop Holdem.
READ MORE:7 Tips to Take Your Poker Game From 'Meh' to Amazing
What is Equity Realisation?
First let's talk about equity realisation, what it is and how we know HRC doesn't use it.
Equity realisation is how much of the pot a hand can expect to make (as a percentage) based on raw equity AND many other postflop variables including, but not limited to:
- Whether you're in or out of position
- The type of hand you have (a suited hand like 76s will realise equity better than K2o for example)
- The skill level of your opponent (e.g. will they find enough aggressive moves that will prevent you from seeing turn and river cards?)
The key thing here is the fact that it relies on postflop variables.
Now even if we take out the skill level of your opponent, it will hopefully be clear already that in order for a solver to solve properly, it will need to factor in these postflop variables.
Sadly, HRC does not. It essentially believes that after the final preflop action where neither player is all in (so there is an opportunity for postflop betting to take place) the hand just gets checked to showdown, something which rarely happens or at least is rarely strategically optimal.
Putting Theory into Practice
Let me give you an example. Nine players at the table, everyone has 20bb, the blinds are 0.5bb/1bb with an ante of 0.13bb and it folds around to the BTN who opens for a minraise.
For this example, I've run an advanced hand where I've edited the range for the BTN to see what Holdem Resources Calculator suggests the BB can call and 3-bet jam versus this open.
This is the result:
As you can see it's suggesting playing 100% of hands: calling 81.8% and 3-bet jamming 18.2%. Now you could be the best player in the world postflop, but I still don't think you're going to be able to play 72o well enough where it's actually going to make money as a call.
So what's going on here?
When the BTN opens for a minraise there are 4.67BBs in the middle and it costs the BB just 1BB to call. Thus, they're getting 4.67:1 odds which is about 17.6%.
As you can see, every single hand has enough equity to make the call here, which is why HRC is suggesting playing 100% of hands.
72o, though, does a really poor job at realising equity. In order to profitably call, you would have to realise more than 60% of your equity with 72o, something that just isn't going to happen.
READ MORE:What Is Real-Time Assistance (RTA)? Is it Legal?
Button vs Big Blind
To better illustrate this point, here's a table of selected hands for this spot 20bb BTN vs BB to look at how different hands do at realising equity, sorted by those that realise the best. For a hand to be a profitable call the equity x equity realization has to be higher than 17.6%.
Now all of the hands in this table will make the grade, simply because I only included profitable hands in the BB defence range when running the reports in Piosolver in the first place.
The key thing to focus on here is how some hands do better than others at realising equity. Suited hands will always do better than their offsuit counterparts.
Connected hands will always do better than unconnected hands. K4o, while having a lot more raw equity than 32s, does a lot worse in terms of equity realisation.
| Hand | Equity (%) | Equity Realization (%) |
|---|---|---|
| A9s | 57.27 | 113.44 |
| KJs | 53.98 | 102.79 |
| QJs | 49.68 | 101.12 |
| J9s | 43.21 | 94.6 |
| 76s | 39.19 | 91.13 |
| A8o | 53.38 | 90.87 |
| 32s | 34.45 | 90.71 |
| KJo | 51.49 | 87 |
| T2s | 35.08 | 83.08 |
| 98o | 36.18 | 80.36 |
| QTo | 45.54 | 79.94 |
| T8o | 36.79 | 74.87 |
| K8o | 44.79 | 67 |
| Q6o | 39.26 | 60.88 |
| J3o | 33.55 | 59.43 |
| K4o | 40.19 | 56.94 |
| Q5o | 38.11 | 56.44 |
Simple Preflop Holdem
So if HRC doesn't give us a usable solution, how do we solve this problem?
Enter... Simple Preflop Holdem.
Simple Preflop Holdem is a preflop solver that factors in equity realisation by considering some of the postflop variables we discussed earlier - namely postflop betting and position.
I've used exactly the same opening range for the BTN and once again given the BB the options to 3-bet jam, call or fold. Here's the result from Simple Preflop Holdem this time:
Let's take a look at the calling and 3-bet jamming strategies side by side for comparison.
As you can see there are some big differences, mainly with suited hands. Simple Preflop Holdem does a lot more calling with suited broadways and suited Aces, hands that HRC likes to jam, but then just folds hands like 94o, 93o and 73o, which HRC likes as a call.
Again there are some differences here. Simple Preflop Holdem likes to jam the weaker offsuit Ax hands more frequently, but then flats hands like AA, QTs and T7s that HRC likes to jam.
What Simple Preflop Holdem is essentially doing here is telling us that it believes it's a higher EV play to just call Aces than it is to jam and the same goes for other hands like KQs, A5s and T7s.
You can clearly see equity realisation being utilised here to give a better strategy where the EV of both lines are compared and the better one is recommended.
Defensive Poker Strategy Game
In Conclusion
HRC is good for many things, especially push/fold in cEV and $EV situations at 8bb and under, but it can't give you solid BB defence strategies that you can use in your own game so please don't use it for that.
When we think about which hands to flat and which hands to 3-bet jam, we should always be thinking about which line will generate the higher EV.
Defensive Poker Strategy Tactics
We also need to make sure we're making +EV decisions in the first place and not blindly following the HRC readout and calling with 72o and 94o.
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