Ur Cute 
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Do not forget that you are not playing alone against an agressive player !
There are 4 or 7 other players that will play against him.
With a top hand , you can go against him
If average or bad handsā¦trust the other players !
For sure, one at least will get a good hand to kick him off
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Well stated, hcgaia. In moments like that, I remind myself to just sit back and wait for the others to nail the player. And by the way: Welcome to the Replay Poker Forum. Come back often, and good luck at the tables.
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I still remember a line from one of Harringtonās book. Iām not going to get it right, as this is something I read 10 to 15 years ago, but it was something like: āyou see a bet from someone and feel almost certain it is a bluff, but you have 5 players to act still behind youā¦ let someone else be the police officer.ā
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Regarding your question of, āWhat is an aggressive player?ā
The OP defined an aggressive player as one who āwill generally make big bets, raise preflop and will often re-raise your raise.ā
I think we see them playing every day.
Your question, āHow do you play against players who habitually limp in and then donāt hesitate to flat call any preflop raise.ā IMO these are not aggressive players but another type of player and Iām not sure I would call them aggressive players.
But, I do agree with you in general, āif you have a hand worth calling, then you have a hand worth raising.ā But, Iām not sure how many raises Iād be willing to call.
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The highest rated players, if that means anything, arenāt terribly aggressive on the huge limit tables. Few call and most fold at any kind of significant bet, even a quarter or half of the pot. I played a 2K-4K table when a far higher and overconfident player kept raising and raising and raking in small pots.
Finally I got a great hand and slow-called his 1,000 post flop bet.
Everyone else was gone after his big opening bet.
Turn card he bet 8,000. I had just filled aces full over tens. Took a long time to call his 8,000 chip bet.
River was another ten which I think filled him tens over aces. He bet 30,000 quickly.
I went all in and he immediately called with his full house.
I raked in 480,000.
Did he learn?
I think there is a general trend toward aggressiveness as you move up toward the highest ranks, though it is typically forced by necessity toward a sort of balance. In general, having made a few recent runs across most of the different stakes here, my sense:
- 1/2 and 2/4 are just insanely aggressive. Itās not like every player is like that, but youāve typically got one or two complete maniacs that will go all in with every hand at one point or another.
- the rest of low and middle stakes tend to gradually get quite a bit tamer than that, though of course there is still a lot of individual variability
- at upper middle and high stakes, you start to run into a few players that bluff more, and actually choose reasonable spots for bluffs, at least some of the time
- players at 20k/40k tend to be split between very solid, tight players, some call stations, and somewhat more aggressive types
- at elite stakes you start to run into the top 100 players at a pretty high frequency, and almost all of these players will find spots to make at least some bluffs
- Above 100k/200k, you have the hunting grounds for the strongest players on the site. Some of these players play an unusually passive game, which Iāve never seen before in such abundance at such a high level on other sites, but then there are quite a few others that exhibit very high rates of aggression on pretty much every street (in the mold of Ivey, Dwan, and Polk).
So at the lowest levels you have a lot of aggression without discipline. That tends not to be very effective, and so that type of player doesnāt build much of a bank roll, and mostly vanishes as you move up the ranks a little. But as you climb more, new types of aggro players begin to emerge: ones that can be quite a bit harder to cope with, and that make threads like this potentially worth their while.
This is an important breakdown. Not all aggressive players are alike, and how to play against them varies accordingly.
I donāt see a lot of aggressive play at the 20K/40K level, so any open raise or 3-bet usually (though not always) is a reliable indicator of a premium hand. I donāt really consider this to be aggressive play, as it is pretty face-up and normal play, and these players are generally fairly passive.
As for the maniacs, as Yorun observes, itās only a matter of time before they bust out because their play is āaggression without discipline,ā which I interpret as aggression that is wholly untethered from basic concepts such as probability. These types are pure gamblers.
The worthwhile bit of this thread can be rephrased to āhow to play against the good LAGsā. I donāt have a lot to say about this as I am not in the same league as these players (thankfully, there are only a few on Replay), but I certainly can say that you canāt just sit around and wait for a big hand against these players, which will make you vulnerable and limit your ability to extract value.
As an example, I was stacked twice by a well-known LAG (currently ranked 12), precisely because I play too tight. The player in question showed up at the 10K/20K level, which was three-handed. He was raising every single hand at least 3bb and would call any raise. On one hand, I raised his 3X open to 10X with AK, he called and the flop came off AK2. This is where I shoved, and I will let you guess what his hole cards were. The second time I open raised 5x with QQ and went all in on the flop. I was ahead but the player called with 85s, as he had both flush and straight draws. He did not make either the straight or the flush, but a 5 came on the turn and 8 on the river.
Thatās the thing about the good LAGs. Their high frequency play is hard to read, and their constant aggression baits their opponents into bad decisions.
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LOL, this particular LAG has 5 bet me with K4 off before. Our #1 player on the site has also stacked me twice in the last few days with T4 off suit. Typically, playing hands like this is a recipe for disaster, as you need a sizeable post flop skill edge to be able to recover your equity disadvantage. I recall also being initially stunned years back seeing Ivey do the same thing with 94 off, or Dwan with 73 suited.
Around 15 years ago, I used to keep track of the performance of all of my starting hands, to try and better figure out what I could play profitably. I found that from any position, AA through 77, AK, and AQ suited and AJ suited were making money for me (though 77 and AJ suited only barely). As my position improved, more hands climbed slightly above zero. As my play improved, I found I could start playing even more hands, and also noticed that by including a small number of hands that were a little negative, I could further increase the value of my better hands.
The point Iām trying to drift towards: especially in a passive setting, players with a really substantial skill edge over the other players at the table can probably play every card in the deck profitably. This makes them look at first like aggro fish, and some players will hold to that evaluation and always just gripe about how āluckyā these players are, no matter how many times they lose all of their chips to them.
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Do you use an extension or a software to track your hand performance?
Iād initially only used an Excel spreadsheet (maybe the first 2 years?) but eventually switched to a HUD. I havenāt used a HUD here, both because there is no real money involved, and because I donāt imagine the site even supports it.
How to play against an agressive player ?
My two cents: patience. They usually dig their own grave if you let them. I mean, sometimes the cards are just with them and there isnāt much you can doā¦ but most of the time, hand them a shovel and just wait.
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There is nothing wrong with an aggressive player. As long as they donāt go ā all in ā every hand.
Weeds out the limpersā¦
Oh yeah - nothing wrong with an aggressive style at all - not saying that. Just saying thatās how I play them - others may differ. And thereās a difference between what Iād call āsmart-aggressiveā and, to be kind, ānot-so-smart aggressive.ā Most I run into are the not-so-smart agressive kind. The smart-aggressive ones are much tougher nuts to crack.
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Smart tight aggressive 
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all this talk about percentages how to play aganist other type players try playing the hand you are dealt no matter your opp rank whether they are a passive, a loose,or a bingo player or the best hand wins every time the trick to this is not a percentage not written about in any book its the gut feeling, and most of the time it is the right play. do not be afraid to fold but never be afraid to call bet or raise if you think you have the winning hand. experience is the best teacher playing poker. three out of ten times the unexpected will happen when it does accept your losses and praise your wins. rember the unexpected not only beats you it can work in your favor
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Agree, thatās where the patience and discipline comes into play to wait & decide when the faith in your cards are there, to make the challenge for the pot.
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