I have one player type that gives me fits in MTTs. This player will cbet 100% of the pots that they raise. The size will always be full pot.
I know I can play back at them with hands that make for a good check-raise semi-bluff, but there aren’t enough of them in my range. I can’t continue as I usually would with decent but not great hands, because they’re betting full pot—I don’t have the odds.
These players just print money against me. I know their strategy is wrong, but I don’t know how to counter it.
Well, if you entered the pot with a stronger range than your opponent, you could profitably raise 100% of hands on the flop.
You can get closer to that by being more polar pre-flop. Raise some of the weak hands you are calling, fold the rest. Trap with some of the strongest hands you would normally raise.
You’ll be giving up some EV to anyone else who might enter the pot though, so how far you can deviate is going to depend a lot on position and the other players.
If you make it to a flop heads up as the preflop caller, raise aggressively - eg boards where you have the range advantage (regardless of how strong your hand is), anytime you have a strong hand or good equity. The hardest spots to play will be where they have the range advantage and you have a weak made hand or only moderate equity. If you think their range is quite wide, I’d raise these too, otherwise fold.
actually I realize I already did this against one such player today - I even told him in the chat “you are cbetting 100, i know you don’t have it every time.”
he limped my sb and I completed, bb checked. when the flop came out I said “we are both going to check and you are going to bet 1200.” he did so. I check-raised all in with bottom pair and he more or less snap folded.
I also forgot to mention donk betting. Most players have no idea how they’re supposed to respond to a good donk betting strategy, and will be wildly unbalanced. If they don’t respond with enough aggression you can start donk betting a lot and then you get to set the price on the flop and drive the hand on later streets. If they respond with aggression too frequently then you just go tight and polar here too.
very cool. yeah, this is the side of my game i’m most focused on: properly exploiting players doing dumb stuff. i am pretty confident in the part where i drive the action. need to have more tools in the bag for when i’m the passenger. thanks as always for the helpful feedback.
