But with your success came ambition.  You weren’t content to win two or even three big bets an hour at the low stakes game.  You wanted action and excitement at the higher stakes game.  And so you moved up.

One problem,  though:  The players are better.   You’re against people who really know what they’re doing.  So your strategy of just waiting for their mistakes isn’t nearly as effective.

You’ve also noticed that your opponents are putting moves on you.  You’re not used to this.  It used to be that you were the aggressor at a table of calling stations.  How do you deal with aggression from others?

There are generally three ways to deal effectively with aggressive opponents:  You can avoid them,  neutralize them with passivity,  or use their aggression against them.  I’ll deal quickly with the first two and focus on the last.

Avoidance is the technique you used at the lower stakes games for the most part.  You stayed there so you wouldn’t be facing a bully.  And if the game you sat down in seemed to have some tough players,  you’d go to a softer game.  This was and is a perfectly respectable way of dealing with aggression:  To avoid it,  if you can.

You can also neutralize the aggression by playing neutrally in return.  (I will write a future article on this.)  But leave it to say that you are less reactive than you might normally be to the moves of the aggressive player  -–  countering with passivity rather than with strength.  It’s a tactic that works especially well against the wild,  loose-aggressive player.

But I’d like to focus on the technique of aggression against the aggressor  -–  beating him at his own game.  Let me give you some specifics to consider.

A semi-bluff is an effective weapon used by good aggressive players.  Just for review,  it’s a bluff with a back-up plan.  You hope that your bet or your raise will get your opponent to fold.  But if it doesn’t work,  you still have the possibility of improving to what is likely to be the best hand on the next card.  I covered it in some detail in my last article. ...(more)

So the semi-bluff is a good weapon.  What’s an effective counter if it’s used on you?  Let’s say your opponent raises in early position with a King up.  It’s the highest up card on the table.  You’ve been watching him and you suspect that he is raising as a semi-bluff  -–  probably with another high card and another suited card to go with his scary King.  Maybe he has a low pair in the hole.  Either way,  you suspect that he doesn’t have much to go with that King.

Let’s say you have a pair of 8s in the hole and a suited ten up.  You have a relatively tight image.  The observant opponents,  among whom you’d include the guy with the King,  would surely have noticed that you don’t play many hands.  Typically,  you know,  you would fold that pair of 8s,  knowing that they were behind what appeared to be a pair of Kings.

Let’s look at other options.  If you suspect that the King really was not a pair of Kings you might be tempted to call  -–  since your pair might well be the high hand and you wouldn’t want to fold for a single bet.  Maybe he’d give up on the bluff attempt on Fourth Street if you showed a little backbone and called on Third.

Yeah,  maybe.  Sometimes that call makes sense,  especially if you’ve read your opponent for the type of player who will make only one stab at the pot and then back off if the bluff fails.  But there’s another move that I think generally works better.

Next time you’re against a player whom you suspect of semi-bluffing,  semi-bluff him back!  He raises with his King?  You raise with your 10!   What you’re doing is giving yourself two ways to win.  First of all,  he might fold to your raise,  assuming that you have either read him correctly or that you are really loaded.  With a hidden pair of Aces or trips.  Either way,  he might back off for the additional bet  -–  something he surely wouldn’t have done if you just called.  And,  if you hit one of those five cards on Fourth Street that really improve your hand,  you could be far in the lead  (with one of the two 8s)  or look like you could be far in the lead  (with one of the three 10s).

The addition of the possibility that he will fold to your raise with the possibility that you will hit a great card on Fourth Street if he doesn’t fold make this an excellent play much of the time. ...(more)

That being said,  you don’t want to overdo it.  First,  keep this move for those situations when you really do have some value to your hand  -–  when it really  can  improve to a superior hand.  You don’t want to start doing this recklessly just because you can with any card.  There needs to be the chance that you’ll improve to a very strong hand on the next card.

Second,  you want to pick your opponents.   This move works on your fairly tight-aggressive opponents,  the ones who are also careful with their aggression.  There needs to be some chance that the move will succeed initially as a bluff  -–  that it will get your opponent to fold.  If your opponent is just a wildman who raises all the time and will surely call your reraise  -–  or re-reraise you  -–  then the move doesn’t make sense.

Consider what hand you’ll be representing to your opponent with your raise.  Think about what your move makes your opponent think you have.  This can become a very heady game.  In this instance,  for example,  when you raised his King with a 10  (if you have had a very tight image),  your opponent may think that either you have a hidden pair of Aces or trip 10s,  or that you are reading him for overplaying his hand  -–  failing to give him credit for the Kings that he is representing  –-  in which case he might read you for only a pair of 10s or a hidden pair.  If he is a particularly skilled and observant opponent and he puts you on a hand less than trips or a hidden pair of Aces, he might even raise you back again,  saying in effect that he really does have the Kings.

Against an opponent like this you might wish that you had chosen another time to make this move,  like maybe when you had at least an Ace up.  With an Ace up you’d be representing a pair of Aces  -–  a more likely hand,  given that there are more ways for pairs to be split than to be hidden.  Your tight-aggressive opponent might be more likely then to think that you really do have him beaten with a pair of Aces,  and that he should fold.  But if your opponent is particularly insightful, and knows what you know about poker,  he might assume that you know that he knows this and might be more likely to represent a stronger hand when you have something that looks like it might be stronger.  Hence,  with your Ace up,  he’d know that you’d be more likely to be bluffing than to actually have the pair of Aces.