Improvising a Strategy Against a Hyperaggressive Bluffer

I've concocted a new drink that I've been enjoying for the past couple evenings. Mix supermarket brand rum with Diet Vanilla Pepsi over ice, and add Almond Roca Torani. Not much; just a little for flavor. Mmm, liquid candy. After pouring myself one of these in a pint glass, I'm in no condition to gamble for actual money. Instead, I like to hit the play money SnG tables for crazy poker action.

So, last night, I find myself nicely buzzed and rocking out to Ozzy and Rage Against the Machine, when I slowly come to realize two things: First, I've got 40% of the chips with six people left with blinds at 20-40, and second, the guy two positions in front of me is starting to make a lot of raises preflop, and is winning most hands with minimal resistance. The buzz starts to come off as I realize I'm going to have to get involved soon if I'm going to win this thing. Typically, I like to cruise along until the money cutoff before opening up my game. In this case, however, I know this guy is going to be a real threat soon if he collects many more chips. The books I've read don't cover this situation, so I'm going to have to formulate a strategy on the fly to counteract this guy's aggression. So, how do I go about that?

I need a strategy that can do two things. The first is to slow this guy down soon before he catches up to me. After that, I need to be able to break him somehow. I don't foresee me grinding him down, pressing marginal hands, or value betting a made hand. This guy's playing way outside the published strategies for this point in the tournament, and is getting paid for it. I can disrupt his strategy for a while, but he's not going to get back to playing by the book. We're going to get our chips in before the flop at some point and that one key hand is going to decide the direction of the rest of the tournament.

Let me determine what I know and what I can infer from the situation. First, this guy is making a lot of aggressive raises. There are only so many preferred raising hands that he can be catching, so he must be bluffing quite a few times. Additionally, when he's not raising preflop, he's folding. So, we'll go ahead and infer that he's raising with the following: Any pair, any Ace, any King, Queen, or Jack down to 8, any connector, and any gapper down to 64.

That's a lot of hands, most of which don't warrant a raise. In other words, he's going out on a limb with a lot of hands that can't take any heat. There are two plays I can employ to exploit this situation. First, I can wait for two big tickets or a medium pair and backraise him all in preflop*. In this case, I'll chase him off of most hands, indicating that I know he's full of shit. If I get called, well, I reason that I should still have a decent chance of winning the pot in most matchups. Once I kick his ass out of the tournament, I'll be able to devour the rest of the table myself. Or second, I'll get dealt a monster and slowplay it, calling his bluffs pre and post flop, then raising him all in on the turn or river**, depending on my read of the board and his pot commitment. OK, I'm ready to get started. I'll fold all inferior hands to his raises and wait for my pair or big tickets.

In short order, I find KT in the BB. Marginal, but it meets my requirements. Three players fold to my mark on the button, who tosses in the pot sized raise. The SB folds, and I move all in with a hand that causes me to cringe when I see others move in with it preflop. The new strategy I've devised, however, dictates that this is the correct play. I wait while my adversary takes an excruciating second and a half before he decides to fold. Alright, so far so good. After a few hands, I realize that my plan has worked. The hyperaggressive asshat in front of me has slowed down, choosing to fold most hands and limp with the rest. Order has been restored at my table for now. I'll continue to play my regular strategy, but I now need to look for my opportunity to break his ass.

The tournament progresses on normally, and I find myself in the money with over 10K in chips. Mr. Aggressive is hovering around 4K, and the short stack behind me is nursing chip crumbs. The aggressive guy in front of me is starting to act up again, and the short stack keeps finding Queens and Jacks in the hole when I'm ready to try to bust him out. Finally, shorty is exsanguinated by the escalating blinds, and I'm heads up with my nemesis. I'm over a 2 to 1 leader going into heads up play with blinds at 150-300. The play goes back and forth 'til I have 11K to 4K when he decides to switch gears.

The guy makes a pot raise on every hand exactly when I start to get cold decked. I let go of hands like 63, 72, J2, 72, 84, T3, and 72s. Now what? I'm going to have to lay down The Hammer* again some time soon, if I don't find a premium hand first. My opportunity comes when he pulls within one big blind of me. I find myself in the BB with K9. Here comes the raise from the small blind. This isn't the black Aces I was hoping for, but I've got two (fairly) big tickets, and my concocted strategy for dealing with this guy dictates that I move all in here. I'm way out of my comfort zone here, but the rum helps me move the slider all the way to the right. I'm all in for the tournament with K9. "Fold. Fold. Please fold," I silently beg the aggressor. No luck. He's all in, and shows 44. Fuck! Well, I'm not a huge dog here (40-60, I estimated at the time), and, well, I knew I was probably going to have to take similar odds against this guy before the outcome of the tournament was determined.

The interesting question, I believe, is whether we made the right plays on this hand. In my case, I was working from strategy devised 20-30 minutes earlier. I assumed that I'd have to play an all in pot with about a 40 to 60 percent chance of winning it. I knew when the money went in and the cards were flipped up, I'd have to have a hand that was at least 40 percent to win, and my two big tickets satisfied that requirement against any random hand. I played correctly given my strategy.

Let's consider my opponent's strategy. His strategy was apparently to raise preflop with any hand and drive me out. Over the course of the previous dozen or so hands, he was able to win them all versus my cold deck, receiving a 100% win rate once he started playing this strategy. So, on this hand, he finds himself with a baby pair, raises, and is reraised. He calls almost immediately, and is actually a 53% favorite to win this hand according to the hand calculator at cardplayer.com. This is the classic horseflip situation you see on the WPT and WSOP broadcasts. Considering that he was winning 100% of the hands previously using his raise with any two strategy, I believe he made a bad call here, even though he had the correct pot odds and was a slight favorite going to the flop. According to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, this mistake is where my profit lies. Great, I've induced a mistake, and I'm still an underdog. In spite of my inferior odds, I'm satisfied by the fact that I devised a counter strategy on the fly, played it correctly, and induced an error by my opponent. Ah, the perfect confluence of circumstances that will play out to be a mere moral victory 53% of the time.

But then the flop comes to save my ass. My K9 vs. his 44. 9xx comes down on the flop, and two more blanks follow on the turn and river. Whoo! It's over! Real victory, not some weak assed moral victory, either! My win here netted me 400 play chips, bringing me to just over 910K. Now that you can't sell your play chips on eBay anymore, I still have exactly fuck-all in my account, the same as yesterday. The dispassionate observer might suggest that I skip the liquor in the evening and grind it out sober at the $1 SnGs, but that is a blasphemy I would never consider, especially at this early hour on St. Patrick's Day.

*In Harrington on Hold 'em, Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie describe this play as The Hammer. This has nothing to do with the 72 offsuit that I've been reading about on other blogs lately.

** Harrington and Robertie call this the Rope-a-Dope.