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"Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease."
-- Jimmy Carter
Due to the worldwide epidemic of the
Maverick Syndrome, the basic nature of correct
poker play has evolved since the beginning of the poker boom. This is because players as a whole, after seeing and being influenced by
both reckless and skilled risky play at the end of multi-day poker tournaments, have become more aggressive when playing in everyday
ring games.
While aggressive play is generally much better than passive play, thoughtless aggression is far worse -- when playing against truly skilled
opponents. Mediocre, weak-tight players have since the dawn
of online poker complained about how "tough" online games are. This was never the case, but rather more of a reflection of how
weak-tight play was not profitable against either tight-aggressive skilled players or even loose/maniac ones. This is even more true today,
and especially true in online 6-handed Texas Holdem games.
The consequences of all this though is a that a huge number of players base their play around nothing else but trying to be
more aggressive than their opponents. But blundering aggression is easily exploitable. For example, in a battle it is more
often than not advantageous to be on the attack, but if your army attacks the most fortified, least vulnerable part of your
enemy's line while NOT taking the time to reconnoiter and find a much more vulnerable place to attack 300 years up the road,
you will have made a potentially catastrophic blunder. You may in fact still win the battle, but you are far less likely to
do so in comparison to if you attacked the weak part of the enemy lines, and then outflanked the strong part of the line by
attacking it from behind.
Maverick Syndrome sufferers think they play better than they do, to a very unreasonable degree. They think they have all
sorts of really cool moves that will stupefy their opponents, and so they seek out types of games where they can more often
"make moves" -- head-up and short-handed games, especially limit games where a failed move won't cause you to lose
all your money, and so you can make move after move after move. Despite the high
rake cost in playing shorthanded, these games
present some of the best opportunity for profit online, NOT because anyone reading this is a super-duper player, but because
opponents make themselves play worse, make themselves more vulnerable for more bets, than they commonly do in full games.
Winning poker is about edge: getting
yourself in mathematically favorable situations time and again. We can create edges by our own actions (like hand or game
selection), but we can also gain edges by simply allowing our opponents to do things that are mathematically unsound. The
most obvious example of this is we want to play against an opponent who is
out of control, on tilt. What 6-handed
games commonly offer though (besides players more likely to be on tilt because they lose more hands because they play more
hands) are overly aggressive players who simply try to hard to win every hand they play. They do this largely because they
have an over-inflated sense of their ability and their "moves". I can't tell you how many times I have seen players
trying to bluff Q6 on the river after a JJ8 flop. They desperately try move after move to try and win pots they should have
surrendered long before. Fragile ego is
part of it, but more than that it comes back to thinking aggressive play MUST be the winning play. They think of some bold
move they saw on TV, or some bold move that worked six weeks ago for them, and they try it on the flop... then they try
something else on the turn... then they desperately try something else on the river. They might luck into winning the hand,
but more likely they just threw off their chips foolishly.
So what do we do about it? We LET foolishly aggressive players throw off their chips. We ENCOURAGE them to. We give them
opportunities to make moves. When we have something, we desperately try to show weakness -- which is like waving a red flag
in front of a bull to these thoughtlessly aggressive folks. Showing weakness, feinting weakness, is not weakness. In fact,
it is showing great confidence in your strength, but the hyper-aggressive guys won't get that (at least at first, meaning
limiting yourself to shorter sessions with hyper
aggressive players will often be a good idea). They are too wound up in their "moves" to notice they are blundering into a trap.
Jujutsu is the martial art of using an attacker's energy against him, rather than directly opposing it. The best way to
fight fire is with water, not fire. The best way to deal with overly aggressive opponents is not to try and be more aggressive
than they are, but rather to allow them to be overly aggressive in pots where you have the best hand, and they even know it!
Then, combine that with showing aggressiveness when you are weak and look weak -- for instance, on that JJ8 flop, if you
called a raise with Q6 in the big blind, don't checkraise the flop, check call instead. THAT will scare an overly aggressive
player more than a checkraise. If you checkraise, they likely will just reraise you. After the turn card, if you bet
regardless of the next card, you are much more likely to win, AND get the bonus of having the over-aggressive player think
you played the hand poorly and they made a good "move" by folding the turn. I'm not saying that move is always the right
move. I'm saying an extremely aggressive opponent will often not understand what APPEARS to be non-aggressive play, and will
react in exactly the wrong way -- just like they will react in the wrong way when you show weakness when they are betting.
Use Jujutsu. Use your opponent's reckless aggression against them. Don't try to out-do them at their game. Make them play your
game. Happily allow them to be suicidally aggressive when you have the best of it. If they want to put in the last bet on
the river when you have the nut hand, let them, and be glad as your stack their chips.
See also Texas Hold'em Basics and
Schooling in Texas Hold'em
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