Types of opponents
Part 4 - The Clever Lag
Clever Loose Aggressive
The wolf in the Tasmanian devil’s clothing
At times it can be difficult to separate strong loose aggressive players from pure maniacs. Maniacs although they are losing players can be scary to play poker against purely because of their high variance style of play and the fact that you must actually have a hand to play against them. So it’s not hard to see that a much more solid, fearless and yet clever loose aggressive player can be a truly fear inspiring player to come up against.
Putting the decision on you
They will often put players to big decisions for theirr whole stack. They intelligently and actively seek out opportunities to exploit. Their hand reading abilities are very strong; so that they often ‘know’ just when is the right time to try to push someone off a marginal hand. They also are excellent at recognizing the times that they can get paid off for a large amount when they have a very strong hand.
The trade off can be worth it for this style
Of course this tendency to seek out every edge sometimes goes wrong and they lose big pots, but they make up for it by stealing lots of pots and also get their nut or near nuts hands paid off more than most.
Let the bully know they are easier prey than you
While I wouldn’t go quite so far as to advocate you try to mix it with these guys, you do however need to stand up to them at times, by either bluff raising them or calling them down relatively lightly. Your goal should be to do just enough to encourage them to pick on easier targets than yourself.
Play within your comfort zone
Perhaps the most important thing to remember when playing these guys is that part of their arsenal is to instill fear into their opponents. So noting that, it is important that you feel very comfortable at the stakes you are playing for when playing these guys; that way you ensure that the tricky positions you will inevitably find yourself in when confronting these players are not compounded by playing with scared money.
NO FEAR
That means decisions can be made purely based on your reads, rather than based on the fear accompanied by calling, i.e. the fear of losing yet more money. Similarly fear of losing money can even make a player fear folding as there is already so much in the pot that you might find hard to give it up even though your read tells you to fold. Playing well within your comfort zone will negate this fear factor and make playing loose aggressive players much easier.
Stack size matters
These players need to be in a game where people have large stacks. Those playing with a short stack are at an advantage when playing one or more loose aggressive players for two main reasons. Firstly the LAG can no longer uses his stack size to bully the shortstacker and also the shortstacker knows that the chances of getting all-in ahead either pre-flop of on the flop are far greater than in a regular game.
Moving up levels? Watch out for the clever LAGs!
Well the bad news is that playing against a strong LAG is at best a tough proposition if not downright frightening, the good news however especially at micro and small stakes is that there are precious few genuine strong loose aggressive players around, however when you move up stakes, particularly in high stake games they become more plentiful.
