How to Exploit Overly Aggressive Players?
When you see a player who wants to be the table captain and raise every hand before the flop, and win every single hand dealt, you will also find someone who has many exploitable qualities. One quality that is always exploitable of a table captain is the opportunity you have to win a huge portion of their chips in one hand. The swings of a table captains chip stack will be wild and out of control. Often times they will lose a ton of chips or win a ton of chips. The reason behind that is because when someone raises every single hand you will not give them credit for a hand. Top pair is good enough to call down someone who raises every single hand because more times than not it is going to be good. When you play a hand like top pair you are looking for one thing against a table captain, and that is value. If you look for anything besides value you could lose a big pot. You also have to feel out what they are going to do and determine right away if you are willing to put all of your chips in with that hand. Hands and spots are big parts of poker and if you want to be successful when dealing with overly aggressive players, you will have to find great spots and the correct corresponding hands.
Hand ranges for table captains can be almost any two cards. Most players will be so reckless to even play hands like 84 off suit just because they don’t want to fold hands. You can very easily exploit a table captain by trapping them and throwing them some rope and letting the sucker fall in. The only way that this will not work is if you have a marginal hand and you end up paying them off way too much when you should have just thrown you hand away on the flop. Often times you could have even made the mistake of playing a weak hand like J10 from the blinds, and now you are playing a massive pot, out of position, with a marginal hand. These are three things to avoid at all costs when playing pots against aggressive opponents. To play big pots with marginal hands is dangerous, and to do so out of position can be even more volatile regardless of a player and their image at the table. The reason you play poker should always be to make money and to improve every day. If you can improve every day, then you will be far better off down the road in a year or two.
Overly aggressive players are very common both online and live in tournaments and in cash games. Often times once a player gets a big stack in front of them they will play almost every single hand dealt. This is a great strategy at times because ideally building a stack and making money should be your goal, but it backfires more times than not. The reason it backfires is because you cannot run well forever. Eventually luck will even out and you may have very little chips left to show for it. This is a big reason why the player who is chip leader after day 1 in the main event every year almost never wins the poker tournament. There is a high level of variance when you play tons of hands from weird spots at the table. If you look to play more selective you can exploit these players at the table, and better your own chances of winning a decent amount. The best way you can exploit a table captain is by picking them off though. The more times you snap call them and you win, the more times they will not bluff against you, and the easier road you will have during a poker session. If you take pots here and there and chip away eventually you will win a big pot from them, and they will be broke and sitting on the rail. The table captains are more or less addict type players who get a huge rush from playing every hand dealt. These players either run really deep in tournaments, or bust right away. They either win a ton in cash games or lose a ton. There really is no middle ground when dealing with table captains.