Aggression: Do You Prefer Betting or Calling?

You may get a strong hand and still wonder what the best way to play it is. Sometimes you want to slow things down, other times you just want to keep putting pressure on the other player.

The nice thing about aggression is that you don’t always need the best hand to win the pot. They might simply decide they’ve had enough and fold.

How do you normally play these spots when you have a strong hand?

I slo play but it doesnt always work

bowserdon said:

I slo play but it doesnt always work

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I play kinda slow too, especially when I’m not confident about the spot. It works sometimes, but I’ve also learned that being too passive can let opponents control the hand.

It's almost always better to be the aggressor. When we are the PFR and leading out all streets, we don't necessarily have to rep something obvious on the board. All overpairs, and therefore sets, are in our range. We could have any hand better than a pair here. It can be scary as hell for someone to play against. Furthermore, if we actually do have value, all of the calling stations will pay us at least 2 streets.

Semprini said:

It's almost always better to be the aggressor. When we are the PFR and leading out all streets, we don't necessarily have to rep something obvious on the board. All overpairs, and therefore sets, are in our range. We could have any hand better than a pair here. It can be scary as hell for someone to play against. Furthermore, if we actually do have value, all of the calling stations will pay us at least 2 streets.

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That makes sense, especially with overpairs and sets in our range. I’m still learning to stay aggressive for value without betting so much that weaker hands just fold.

Das991992 said:

You may get a strong hand and still wonder what the best way to play it is. Sometimes you want to slow things down, other times you just want to keep putting pressure on the other player.

The nice thing about aggression is that you don’t always need the best hand to win the pot. They might simply decide they’ve had enough and fold.

How do you normally play these spots when you have a strong hand?

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When I have a strong hand the thing I think about is how can I get the maximum value out of it? I need a worse hand to hang in with me and call. The best outcome is if we can fire all three streets and get them to call all three streets. Or can we get them to give us their whole stack, so what’s the plan to make that happen?
It’s going to be very dependent on who we are playing. If they are a calling station then great, they are going to call us down with everything because they hate folding. Maybe they know we are capable of bluffing them and they hate getting bluffed. Sometimes they are just curious what we have because “we can’t have it every time!” These are the players that we can really bet big for value when we are strong so go for it, never slow play these players, especially if they are passive. Don’t rely on them to bet for you, just bet when they check.
If you are playing an over aggressive maniac, this is great also. Now we can check and let them bet. We become the calling station when facing a maniac. They will bet for us, and if our ego gets in the way and we play back at them, they just might fold now. So let them bet and then we can call and then make the raise at the River if it goes that far.
Yeah so just think ahead, think of all the mistakes this player has made in the past and now that we have a value hand how can we most profit from it.