You built your bankroll and increased your stakes.  As you entered the larger games you encountered better players.  These guys and gals were not so easy to beat.  Some of them rapidly adapted to your tight/aggressive style,  folding quickly against you when you played one of your few strong hands;  and playing their mediocre hands more aggressively against you to get you to fold your mediocre and drawing hands.  Your mechanical style was easy for them to read,  and they took advantage of this knowledge to your detriment.

So now you’re wondering what to do to throw these opponents off the scent,  so to speak.  Should you abandon your generally tight and aggressive style of play?  Should you just mix in random play so no one will ever be able to figure out what you’re doing?  Should you,  perhaps,  abandon the higher stakes games and retreat to the comfortable winning circle of the games you know you can beat with your mechanical style?

In general,  you can play against better players;  and you still want to embrace that tight/aggressive style that was profitable among the bad players.  But you need to start varying your play  --  allowing some deception to enter.  Here’s one particular way of doing just that.

I call it drafting.  It’s based on motor sports and cycling.  Here’s how it works.  You get behind a faster car.  He expends a lot of energy leading the pack.  You save energy by staying in his slipstream,  right behind his vehicle.  You fool him into thinking that you do not have the speed to pass him.  As you near the end of the race,  when he has been lulled into thinking you are not a threat,  you use the energy you have saved,  pull out and pass him,  winning the race.

In stud,  it works the same way.  Although your hand is powerful enough to bet it aggressively,  you let someone else be the aggressor while you passively call from behind,  only revealing your true strength when the hand has progressed enough for him to be unlikely to give up on his hand.

Let’s say you have a split pair of Aces.  Your opponent raises in front of you with a pair of Kings.  You do not re-raise,  as you would have done were you against a loose/passive field of players.  Instead you just call.  (Now if this were a low stakes game with lots of loose calling stations you’d be apt to re-raise to make sure that you got the hand heads up.)  On Fourth Street,  assuming neither of you visibly improves,  you check.  He bets his Kings.  You just call.  On Fifth Street,  however,  when you check and he bets,  you raise:  a check-raise.  Similarly,  you bet out on Sixth Street and the River.

Depending on how your hand develops you can delay your raise until Sixth Street.  The idea is to use your opponent’s false sense that he is in the lead to get him into trouble on later streets.  This is not the typical slow play;  your hand isn’t strong enough for that.  You’re not afraid that he’ll fold if you bet.  But rather,  you want to encourage his aggressive instincts during the play of this hand while at the same time plant some doubt in his mind the next time you have an Ace up and call.  This will slow him down in the future,  if he thinks he’ll always be able to tell what you have  (and run over you if you aren’t betting aggressively).

This drafting also gives you some ability to knock him out on later streets,  if you’re up against a relatively tight player.  If you check-raise on Fifth Street and don’t show a pair,  your opponent may conclude,  wrongly,  that your Fifth Street card gave you Trips.  A skilled player may incorrectly deduce that you called rather than raised on Third and Fourth Street because you had a pocket pair with an Ace kicker  --  which your Fifth Street card just turned into Trips.  Rather than call you down to the River he may well fold right there to your check-raise.  You're happy with that,  since your Aces vs. his Kings are only 2:1 favorites.  He will assume by your strong check-raise on Fifth Street that your 60:40 underdog hand  --  your wired pair  --  just became the huge 90:10 favorite of Trips.  And being the good player that he is,  convinced he now has a great read on you,  he’ll gladly concede...  making a large blunder.

Of course, &nbps;you wouldn’t make this move if you improved to Aces up.  If that happened you would just bet out and expect a call on each street until the River from a player who is unlikely to give you credit for your hand.  You,  however,  can check and fold if he makes an exposed pair or,  of course,  if he hits a King.