NL Home Game with 1 LAG

R18A1I4 · #1 08-24-2007, 03:11 PM

I taught a group of my close friends back in high school how to play poker. For a couple years now since coming to college we've had a bi-weekly game of 5 cent 10 cent blind NL... buy in for between 5 and 10. Between 4 and 7 people play, just depends but there are 3 people that are always there including myself. Now one of the regulars I don't worry about, he plays the game pretty straight forward, based off of his experiences and maybe what I gave him as guidelines for starting hand requirements a long time ago.

The problem is with the other regular. This guy I have known for about 8 years and we're great friends. He's incredibley intelligent; valedictorian in high school and soon to be summa cum laude. His real poker strengths are in his abilities to recognize patterns of play and read people. He has never read a poker book, and to my knowledge he has never actually considered outs or pot odds at any time. I'm fairly certain he's not aware of what they are.

The problem I have is that he is a lagtard before the flop and just hyper aggressive on the flop. Now after that he slows down but I'm usually gone by then anyway and if I'm not gone, he knows I have something so I can't extract much more. The method I used last year was just rope-a-dope... I'd let him bet and just call it down, then raise the river to get everything in the pot. That did work for quite a while, but he picked up on and I'm fresh out of strategies for playing against him tomorrow night.

Any thoughts are welcome especially ones that involve using the way his play affects the other fairly tight players to my advantage.

vhawk01 · #2 08-24-2007, 03:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I taught a group of my close friends back in high school how to play poker. For a couple years now since coming to college we've had a bi-weekly game of 5 cent 10 cent blind NL... buy in for between 5 and 10. Between 4 and 7 people play, just depends but there are 3 people that are always there including myself. Now one of the regulars I don't worry about, he plays the game pretty straight forward, based off of his experiences and maybe what I gave him as guidelines for starting hand requirements a long time ago.

The problem is with the other regular. This guy I have known for about 8 years and we're great friends. He's incredibley intelligent; valedictorian in high school and soon to be summa cum laude. His real poker strengths are in his abilities to recognize patterns of play and read people. He has never read a poker book, and to my knowledge he has never actually considered outs or pot odds at any time. I'm fairly certain he's not aware of what they are.

The problem I have is that he is a lagtard before the flop and just hyper aggressive on the flop. Now after that he slows down but I'm usually gone by then anyway and if I'm not gone, he knows I have something so I can't extract much more. The method I used last year was just rope-a-dope... I'd let him bet and just call it down, then raise the river to get everything in the pot. That did work for quite a while, but he picked up on and I'm fresh out of strategies for playing against him tomorrow night.

Any thoughts are welcome especially ones that involve using the way his play affects the other fairly tight players to my advantage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Play tight and checkraise. Win. Brag so that he continues to lag. Win more.

Triantafylidis · #3 08-24-2007, 03:49 PM

become more aggressive on the flop and bet into him/raise him when you have a good feeling you have a better hand. For example, say you have Jx10x in the SB and you complete and he checks the BB, flop is JxJx9x. Dont slow play, just bet about half or 3/4 pot and let him be the aggro man. He won't expect it considering he "figured" you out to slow play all the time. Keep your game mixed up so he second guesses his reads from that point on. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
I have a similar player in my game. Sometimes the only way to beat the lagtard is to become a lagtard here and there.

pfapfap · #4 08-24-2007, 06:00 PM

It's a tough opponent, and also the best thing you could ask for. I assume you don't want to stay at 5/10c forever, so use this to improve your game.

I'm a slow-moving student of the game, but I had one hyper-aggro guy at one of my games who used to fluster me to no end. It's a long-term strategy to beat these people. You need to be able to mix up your own game, keep him confused. You need to grab onto your testicles and make the three-barrel bluffs.

It sounds like you've figured out some of his patterns, so try to figure out more. You say he slows down after the flop, try to figure out in what situations he does this. What does he do with certain hands against certain players? How does his play change depending on who's in the pot?

Experiment with sitting in different positions relative to him. Me, I often find great profit sitting directly to the right of the hyper-LAG.

This is nothing you'll crack in one session. It just takes time. What's worked well for me in one game is simply playing a tight, nut-peddling game for at least a year. As I became more knowledgable and skilled, I mixed it up, and in fact am quite loose these days. But these guys still see me as that tight nut-peddler. Except for those guys who always suspect I'm bluffing with my big bets. It's fabulous.