Playing Against Overbettors in Sit and Go Tournaments
by Dougie Goguen | Feb 16 2012
Dougie talks about his game and how he makes sure to make the most money from aggressive players.If you're like me, you may have a major leak in your tournament game: heads-up play. I mean, I can win, but it's not nearly as often as I'd like, even if I go in with the chip lead. Something fouls me up and I end up whiffing pretty hard. That said, though, I seem to have a single ability that makes me some sort of poker mutant: I can take on the overbettors.
Play in Bodog's online poker tournaments today!The overbettor is super-aggressive after the flop with any playable hand. It doesn't even have to be a monster hand: if he hits a pair on the flop or wanders into a decent-ish draw, he's gong to overbite the pot, maybe even going all-in to protect his meager hand. He will pretty much always raise pre-flop in position, even more than a good player normally would, and will try to beat you into submission with continuation bets after the flop. Really, unless the board looks ultra-scary, he is not likely to take his foot off the gas once he becomes the aggressor.
And this is the guy that I'm pretty good at taking down. The firs thing I do is open up my game a bit since it's heads-up. I raise with powerful hands, but I'm less aggressive with small to medium pairs and marginal hands like connectors, whether they're suited or not because I'll need the board to do the heavy lifting for me. The last thing I want is to get three-bet with connectors and then have to call even bigger bets after the flop if I want to keep chasing a draw. By keeping the pot small early in the hand, I'm able to play more hands, hoping to hit big, while still being able to get away from them if I need to without getting critically wounded.
In the meantime, I let the other player bet for me. I let him bet and raise without worrying about my cards, so I let him. He'll keep trying to snatch the pot and eventually, he's going to get called out, and I'm going to be pretty clever when I do it. I play a bit passively, check-call the flop and let him make his continuation bets that drive up the top. If the board is still quiet, I check-call the turn and then go crazy on the river, making sure he regrets being pot committed.
Play online poker at Bodog today!You'll see a lot of overbettors in higher-stakes online poker tournaments and I've found that they're remarkably easy to disarm. Now, I need to spend time getting my win ratio with everyone else above 50%.
