How to Beat The Maniacs And Bullies At Online No-Limit Hold’em Tables

Poker table bullies are those annoying semi-maniac type of players that you meet in your no-limit cash game or tournaments, and they often accumulate their large chip stacks by sheer aggression alone and sometimes catching someone off guard when they happen to land a strong hand amidst their relentless aggression. These players don’t like to show down a lot of hands, usually because most of the time the have nothing much, as they play to win by exerting immense pressure on their opponents with every hand they’re involved in a pot with, and when they occasionally get lucky and actually do hold the best hand they usually win a lot more than they should do.

Table bullies win over both weak players who don’t have the heart to put money into the pot, and tight-aggressive players who don’t like to put in their money without what seems to be a lock hand. Here is an example hand that to give you an example of how to use their uncontrolled aggression to your advantage.

Slowplay the maniac and trap him for all his chips.

Imagine that we’re at an online late-night $2/$4 no-limit hold’em cash game. The player directly to our left has decided to play table bully for the night and is making every hand expensive before the flop and then not hesitating to shove in the rest of his chips on the flop, turn, and river if necessary in order to take the pot from us.

Not wanting to turn it into an expensive coin flip, most of us are praying, “PLEASE let me pick up those pocket Aces before this guy dumps his money off to someone else”. But Aces don’t come often at all. In this example, this hand actually came up in a real game played:

I was dealt Ah-6d from the small blind. Certainly not a powerhouse by any measure, but with the maniac and two other limpers in the pot it seemed worthy of another $2 to see a flop. The bully in the big blind checked to a flop of Ad-6h-2s, giving me top two pairs – a great hit. Naturally, table bullies love to take control so I decided to check to him to let him start the betting. It was obviously an unconnected flop, with unsuited cards on the board and so I didn’t doubt that he was going to bet out here. To my disappointment, he just checked behind.

Play moved on to the early position limper who made a $16 bet. The late position limper folded and I just called the bet. Without delay, the table bully goes all-in! Jackpot city! The original bettor thinks for a while before finally folding. The bully had more than I did (about $300) so I already had the checkbox on “Call”. Normally, I might hesitate and worry about a set in this position but rarely (if ever) will I lay down top two pair on the flop with a board like that. I make the call and the bully is forced to show his 9-3 offsuit – a ridiculous starting hand in hold’em for a multiway pot. After that hand, the table bully was completely crippled and soon busted out shortly thereafter due to his much reduced chip stack afterwards.

I like this hand for its fun value and the truly awful bluff that the bully tried to pull, but there is a lesson to be learnt here. Such players are becoming more common in no-limit hold’em cash games or tournaments, especially online. When an ultra aggressive player tries to take control every hand, the rule is to let him do the betting for you when you have a monster of a hand. If you bet out big to try to build a pot, these bullies will often be scared away (unless they are truly stupid, but most of them aren’t that stupid). After all, they thrive on dominating the action and winning pots without showdowns… so they have to bet and usually bet big to achieve this.

This strategy echoes a comment that the infamous Doyle Brunson mentioned in his book “Online Poker” – if you’re playing heads-up against a highly aggressive player, let him do the betting for you, fire a second bullet, and then get him for a raise on the river. If you aren’t fortunate enough to get in all your opponent’s money on the flop as I did, you definitely should consider slow-playing table bullies on an disconnected, harmless-looking board. It works!

The Min-Raise or Min-Rerarsie: The Pro’s and Con’s of This Type of Play

Imagine this:

You’re playing in a 9-handed $1/$2 no-limit texas hold’em cash game and you make a typical raise to $8 with Aqs sitting in middle position. Everyone folds around to the original limper who decides to mim-riase you and make it $16 to go. This mostly happens in the lower limit online ring games, usually where the novice players are often misplaying their big pocket pairs. Almost every time you make a raise and get reraised by the minimum amount pre-flop at these stakes in a cash game, you’re more than likely facing a premium hand, namely pocket AA or KK.

Our aim here in this article is to convince you that making such a play is not a good move. Let’s look at 3 fundamental problems with this play and how you can use this knowledge to exploit your opponents who just don’t know better for their own good at the poker table…

1) A minimum raise or reraise preflop all but gives your hand away. While you might think that this play disguises your hand and helps to build a pot, the truth is that you’ve given observant opponents powerful information about your holding. You’re forcing your opponents to think, “I’ve already put in a healthy raise. What cards would he make a minimum reraise with?” Clearly, you aren’t trying to win the pot right now, which probably rules out hands like AJ, JJ, TT, or AQ, in which most sensible opponents are happy to take down a pot without seeing a flop or just smooth call with. You probably aren’t playing a small pocket pair like 88 or 44, since that would just be silly move. Your goal with these hands is to see a cheap flop and hit a set. If you were on a bluff with rags, you probably would have put in a stronger reraise to intimidate me.

This all leaves you with 3 possible premium pocker pairs: QQ, KK, AA. I don’t know about you, but with pocket Queens I’ll usually either just call to see if the flop brings overcards or reraise healthily to force out the tricksters and mediocre hands. Bingo! You’ve probably got pocket Kings or Aces. Sure, someone could be making a very savvy play and pulling a complete psychological false tell bluff over on you with the minimum raise, but most players are ignorant as to what this tactic means in the first place. It’s probably an ineffective tool in the arsenal of a player who knows a thing or two about the transparent book of plays from the typical online poker player. The fact is that this seemingly advanced play rarely keeps your hole cards a mystery.

2) A minimum raise gives your opponents excellent pot odds to draw out on you. Poker players, especially the online variety, love to bemoan about how their opponents sucked out on their pocket Aces. While you’ll find plenty of bad players who will routinely go against the odds to do just that, a player who makes one of these minimum raises has nothing to complain about because he has given his opponent excellent odds to do it. If I’ve got pocket 10-10 and raise to $10 in a $1/2 game and you reraise me from the button to $20 with AA, you’re giving me over 3 to 1 pot odds on my call (it costs me $10 to play and the pot is already $33). If, say, the big blind calls your $20 raise before play gets back to me, I’m now getting over 5 to 1 pot odds. That doesn’t include the implied odds of getting all your money in the pot on the flop when I spike my third 10. Raise less and it’s even more of a no-brainer for me. I would be more than unobservant if I didn’t call a raise like that with pretty much any hand. You’re simply giving too great of a price if you make the minimum raise play.

3) You miss out on a great amount of value with the minimum raise. When you make such a small raise, you aren’t building much greater of a pot. Since your goal, of course, is to make the most money with your premium hands, you should start before the flop when you definitely have the best hand. As we’ve established above, you’re almost giving away your hand with the minimum raise. If you reraise 3 times the initial raise or perhaps the size of the pot, your opponents will have less of an idea of what you have and you’ll be building a nice pot. Sure, you’re sending the signal that you have a big hand – but that could be something like QQ or AK. Your opponent will be more likely to blow off his chips when he hits a pair of Kings on the flop with Big Slick since he’s already committed a good chunk of his stack.

The conclusion here is that the minimum raise is not the best or smartest use of the reraising option. First off, you are giving away too much valuable information to the more experienced players at the table (which coincidentally is also unfortunately the exact same kind of players that you were wanting to trick), thereby offering excellent pot odds to the initial raiser to call you to try and hit a flop that will outdraw your hand, and usually you just won’t make as much money in the hand playing it this way. If you’re looking to be more deceptive in your play, you can try to smooth call a preflop raise with your pocket Aces or Kings (note that we very rarely suggest this approach this for online play… or any play for that matter… as it can often end up getting us into all sorts of trouble by beware!). If you’re going to take a risk, this method is much more effective at hiding the true strength of your hand, but only use it against weaker opponents as smarter players won’t fall for this often enough for it to pay for you. Regardless, we suggest and highly recommend a decent size reraise with your premium pocket pair as a matter of regular habitual play. If everyone folds, you still won the pot and your Aces didn’t get cracked!