The Poker Mag

Whether you are on the receiving end of aggressive poker plays, or hoping to implement them yourself, you should try to develop a good idea of the reactions you will face, or present to your aggressive opponent.

To play online poker games click here!

The easy answer to defending against aggressive poker plays is to sit tight and wait for a big hand to trap them with. This can work perfectly in many cases, but the flaw with this plan is that blinds and the possibility of no strong hand presenting itself, mean that you don’t always get the chance.If you are short handed with high blinds or are simply too short to wait for a premium poker hand, you have to either carefully pick the best spot you can find with the cards you are dealt, or come out reraising when you sense weakness.

Playing an aggressive poker player at their own game and making an aggressive reraise is by nature, a risky thing to do if you aren’t picking up good cards. You might have to raise with weak poker hands, but usually you only have to succeed once or twice. The key point is that if an aggressive poker player thinks you will start reraising and fighting them for pots, they will start looking for easier targets. As the aggressor at the poker table you will usually find you are faced with the aforementioned trapping poker plays and smooth calls when someone picks up a strong hand. If you know players at the table are aware you are bluffing fairly frequently, be prepared to back off when you get called.

In the process of being faced with such trapping poker tactics, you should be aware that you can often manage to be given free cards when you are drawing to big hands fom position. Players might check to you, waiting for the inevitable raise, only to find you check behind. Suddenly your bottom pair turns into trips or you hit that gutshot Straight, where usually you wouldn’t have been given the chance because poker players wouldn’t be waiting to play back at an anticipated raise.