A General Question on how to counter TAG player

[barabe]

I am sitting at a table right now agaionst an opponent who is 17/16/5. I raised my AKs, he reraises me, we are the only two remaining, and I call, he re raised form 20 to 80 cents by the way. I am in position against him. This is 5-10 cent. Then into like a 2 dollar pot with the dead money, post flop that I miss, he bets half pot. I fold. After I fold I am at a loss of how to take this opponent. His stats are a lot like mine, so I wonder if that was a steal. Even if it was he could've easily have had AK, which is same as me, or AA-QQ. So, what do I do? Should I be trying to steal more blinds from these opponents? Make myself seem looser? Maybe even limp with a few extra hands to screw my stats up? He is likely to see my stats and paly tight against me, unless I manipulate m stats...

[Eric Yang]

playing out of position against a preflop aggressor TAG is one of the hardest things you can do. Unless you want to check raise him with air (which is not a good idea) you can't do anything about it. Try to be in position as much as possible vs tags and also try to be the aggressor as much as possible. it makes your hands easier to play.

[vixticator]

Position matters here, if it's button vs blind, UTG vs CO, etc., different story. In general you want to 4bet AK against almost everyone. Especially if you raised on button or in SB.

[mookboi]

So you are playing a TAG heads up?

I don't know much about heads up, but I probably get it in preflop.

[thoman8r]

[ QUOTE ]
I am sitting at a table right now agaionst an opponent who is 17/16/5. I raised my AKs, he reraises me, we are the only two remaining, and I call, he re raised form 20 to 80 cents by the way.


[/ QUOTE ]

Don't min-raise PF ever at these stakes. If this tag is competent he is 3betting a pretty wide range here, probably AJs+,88+ - or something along those lines. Even more if you were on the button, because that min-raise just looks like BS.

As played, you gotta 4bet this pre-flop because your original raise was so gross.

A hand history would help immensely.

[Khumalo]

This is a $10 buy-in table and it's heads-up, am I understanding this correctly? You should realize that a decent TAG will have adjusted to heads-up play and his reported stats will change. Why are you opening for the minimum with AKs heads up? Is this part of a specific one-on-one strategy? Your minimum raise, typically speaking, looks weak (you're under-representing your hand), and he is naturally going to re-raise you with quite a few hands, say, 88-AA, AJ and better, maybe KQs, maybe a few other hands, and that's a conservative estimate. He is, in part, reacting to your non-standard and soft-seeming raise.

AKs heads-up is a monster, I would re-re-raise here sometimes (say, to ~$3) and probably call a push. You said you're in position, so calling the 0.80 is also fine sometimes. Once you miss the flop, though, it's hard to continue, and folding is okay, although he's likely to have missed too, and you can occasionally try to take it down by raising his flop bet 3x, or calling the flop and betting the turn if he checks it to you.

So, for this hand, I recommend raising more like 3 to 4 times the BB pre-flop (unless you have a very good reason no to) in order to charge your opponent correctly, read his responses more accurately, and so on.

In general, when playing against TAGs, yes, you should steal their blinds a lot if they're on the nitty side, stay out of their way without a big hand or excellent position (and implied odds, if they're a bad TAG), and remember that AKs is a huge hand heads-up -- and heads-up itself is a whole new ballgame, wherein labels like TAG and LAG change in relative meaning.

[barabe]

sorry i mis described i did raise 4 BB

[barabe]

Thanks I probably do underestimate it heads up, but it seems as though before I kept getting it in against like AA and KK all the time...