What do you call good hands? Playing against these guys (which are usually very weak players - a maniac fish) you should be ready to play all the chips. So play with them your best hands. And play all-in! Do not let the fish dump. Take everything and gut its bankroll until the fish becomes wiser.
I play cash games instead of tournaments. This helps because I can immediately come back and they will feed me their chips next good hand no problem 😉elton015 said:
If they run away with the chips, still no worry it's about what works most of the time. No stress in cash games to win there and then, always about the optimal play most of the time. 😀
elton015 said:
Maybe you are a weak player, your opponent realize of it. You must be ready to win or lose. In the cash game, it is important to bring a full buy-in. It does not matter to call a re raise your 3bb or 4bb preflop with a strong hand depending on your position against an aggressive player. If you miss the flop, fold it. There are more chance in the next hand.
What exactly are you fearing?elton015 said:
Losing a buy-in/money?
It's impossible to play any game without the risk of your BR dipping down a bit. In MTTs, with higher variance than other games, seeing downswings in your BR is not uncommon and is to be expected. Good BRM is the best way to counter this. If losing buy-ins is scary, have a stricter BRM plan. 100 BIs for MTTs is pretty standard, but you can make it 150-200 if it's more comfortable.
Losing with a strong hand?
It's inevitable. No matter how much of a favorite your hand is preflop, if your opponent has some equity, they can beat your hand. Even 27 vs AA is winning 1/5 of the time. That's nothing to be afraid of as you can clearly see that AA is winning 4/5 of the time. You are never going to win every hand you play, but hands with better equity (favorites) preflop will win more often in the long run. Win more than you lose and you'll be fine.
Getting knocked out from a tournament?
Again, it's inevitable. While it does suck to sometimes play for hours and end up not having anything to show for it, you're going to bust out of MTTs a lot. Get used to it. A decent ITM% for decent MTT players is ~20%. This could be lower if players give up easy bubble cashes in exchange for deeper runs or it could be higher at the cost of a lower ROI%, but 20% is pretty decent. That means, 80% of the time you're busting without cashing at all. In 100 MTTs, you're only cashing in ~20 of them.
That's nothing to be afraid of if you have a good ROI, which comes from running deep and making final tables/winning MTTs. If your ITM is 20%, but you have a negative or break-even ROI, then you have some leaks in your game that need plugging. That's a completely different topic, but the main point is, you don't need to cash in every MTT to show a profit (because that's impossible), so don't fear busting out of a few MTTs.
Think of it this way: whoever your favorite MTT player is, they've busted out of more MTTs than they've cashed. They still do well because when they do cash deep, it makes up for those losses.
Everything ties together.
You're going to bust out of a number of MTTs as you play; possibly going on some pretty bad downswings, because variance. But if you're playing hands with good equity preflop and maximizing your value when your big hands hit/hold, then you'll find yourself running deep, where more profit is made. Remember, you only need 1 good, deep MTT run to negate the downswings. Having strict BRM helps you handle the downswings since you're only putting a small amount of your BR at risk each time.
I used to fear aggressive players quite a bit, yeah. And to some extent, I still do. It's natural. The thing is that you should not let it cloud your judgement. Be in control of your emotions by acknowledging them and move on.
It's especially scary when you don't know what you're doing. But remember that if you have a good hand, then your opponent's aggression will only work in your favor. They are voluntarily putting chips in the pot. In this way you can get them to raise your bets when you have good odds, or you can even shove and they will call, whereas more passive players would have folded.
It's especially scary when you don't know what you're doing. But remember that if you have a good hand, then your opponent's aggression will only work in your favor. They are voluntarily putting chips in the pot. In this way you can get them to raise your bets when you have good odds, or you can even shove and they will call, whereas more passive players would have folded.
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If it is the first time you play with this aggressive player, pay for information, or wait for him to play with someone else at the table and analyze his cards and how he has played them. If you analyze it for a while, you will notice your pattern of increases and you can make a better decision when you have a good hand. You can also put yourself in their place and think, how would my strong hand play. And there you will have your answer.
Be more aggressive than him in situations of advantage and you will take the lead. In the long run, his aggressiveness when he does not take the lead will make him leave the table, I assure you.
Be more aggressive than him in situations of advantage and you will take the lead. In the long run, his aggressiveness when he does not take the lead will make him leave the table, I assure you.
