Archive for July, 2008

When playing poker at fulltiltpoker.com there will often be someone around a table who seems a lot more loose and wild with the calls and raises they make.

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There can be a fine line between extreme aggressive play, and suicidal non stop raising, you are going to get called by a hand eventually after all.

The thing is with poker at www.fulltiltpoker.com, you don’t have to play this way every single hand to create a loose image, you just need to do so visibly and at little cost to yourself. One way to do this is advertising bluffs. This is somthing I like to use, in live play particularly you can do it maybe once or twice before making sure you show a hand on the next occassion.

One of the verteran great players of poker at fulltiltpoker.com used to show loose tendancies in extreme forms. ‘Crazy’ Mike Caro, was known for sitting at five card draw tables, raising and standing pat with the worst cards imaginable, then checking and showing his cards.

With the right sort of demeanour about you, your opponents are going to either think you are drunk, mad, or incredibly foolish, but the point is, when you get dealt the next few strong hands, you will recoup that small loss many times over from the action you will get.

It is fair to say that playing online poker like this for a short spell early in a game will knock players out of their usual controlled styles, and get them making calls they wouldn’t normally dream of. The profit in such play should come when you suddenly tighten up and make sure you show people made hands when they decide to call you.

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Aggressive betting can often pave the way to building a good chipstack, but it must always be used with great care and judgment. Alongside such tactics you must always be aware of when you are betting into a strong player who will call or re raise.

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The best thing about being aggressive is that you are always testing your opponents, and often they won’t be able to make the call. If they do, your aggressive play leads them to think they will have to call another bet on the next betting opportunity. This in turn makes them less likely to call the first raise.

When raising players often you must always be aware that other players know your image and aggressive nature and will be looking to set a trap if they make a strong hand. With this in mind, always look to push your opponents but read where you think their hand is at any given point.

If your opponent calls or raises there is always a reason why. In some circumstances aggressive play is crucial to closing out a tournament. If you are down to two or three players, you must be trying to press the issue and test your opponents, but I feel it is always best to do this in bursts.

The blinds will be big and coming round fast so if you make some good headway, sit back and fold a few hands. This gives your opponents the pressure of large blinds on their shorter stacks for a while which invariably provokes action and will eventually result in one or other going bust. If I am heads up, I try to be as aggressive as possible and look for half chances to get my opponent all in once they are short stacked.