A new breed...

I'm seeing a new, or revised, style of play in online poker. Players are hyper-aggressive often shoving up to 40 or 50 big blinds from various positions. They play the exact opposite style of poker to small ball. They raise 5X, 6X and up to 7X or just open shove even in the high blind levels.

Why this blog post? Because I'm having trouble adjusting to this type of player. I let them put me on tilt and because of their erratic style of play it's very hard to put them on a range or figure out any pattern to their actions.

Last night in the women's league game I was at the final table with one of these players and I let her put me on tilt and busting her became more important to me than winning the game and because of this I ended up finishing in 4th. There was no excuse for this, at one time at the final table I had 3 times more chips than everyone else. I need to learn how NOT to let this type player tilt me and how to best play against them. This is my very biggest leak and this is the big question, why does this style of bullying, hyper-aggressive play tilt me so?

I believe there is definitely merit to this type of play. The erratic style makes it hard to get reads on them. Their aggression tends to put others on tilt. They are able through their aggression to get and maintain control of the table thus giving them a real advantage.

Admittedly I creeped on this player and found her by googling her username. It seems she attended "The Maven's" bootcamp and this is where she learned her hyper-aggressive style. However, the way she plays is like she learned lesson C and D on being hyper-aggressive without learning lessons A and B on hands to play and basic betting techniques. As I said, she is a big ball bullying type player. With her huge raises 3 betting her without getting it all in is difficult. So question one for anyone reading this, how to combat and adjust properly to this type play when I'm a small ball player. And question two, how can I incorporate some of this playing style into my game while still using the overall small ball concept.

Everyone is talking about how much tougher the games are getting online and I think this aggro-style of play is some of the reason. There is definitely training of this type going on and it's so opposite of small ball style (not that I'm not aggressive when necessary but just not all the time) it's hard to know how to adjust to these players. If I don't learn I can't expect to win long term.