Letting an Aggressive Player Bluff
Many online poker players, in the face of confronting a very aggressive player at their casino table, will experience the urge to want to “pin him to the wall,” or thereabouts: to get a hand strong enough to go to war with, and then put the aggressive opponent to the test. More often, though, it can be valuable to allow an opponent with an itch to fire the chance to do just thatcontinue firing right at you. Getting an opponent to bluff is just as valuable in the mix as is getting called down with the winning hand. The range of hands with which one can allow a hyper aggressive opponent to continue attacking, though, is an issue that could be debated. While some players would say that one should “defend” a vulnerable hand against getting drawn out on, others would say that feigning weakness even with hands that are ‘probably’ good, thus increasing the frequency of chances for that aggressive opponent to bet himself broke. Holding Q 10, for instance, when the board read Q as a top pair, can seem to many a moderately powerful hand at bestand yet, if you are willing to put that hand to war raising on the flop with top pair, when not let your opponent keep firing with their second pair and worse? Sure, they may draw out on you sometimes, but more often, by the odds, they won’t, and the money you’ll make in the meantime as they try to convince you they’re ahead will easily make the slightly more risky but against-certain-players highly profitable poker online play of inducing the bluff on and on.
