How do you deal with someone who fishes a lot?

[RHCNNN]

I am pretty new to hold e'm, I've been playing with my friends for a couple of months, mostly just for fun with no money. When I play one on one with one of my friends, a thing that stings me alot is that he goes fishing all the time. Like the other day the flop was 6AA, and i didnt have anything on the board, and he ends up checking all the way to the river, then when I raised him he reraised me and it turns out he had another A. He always does shit like that, and I'm not sure how I can stop falling for it. How can I distinguish between when he is not aggressive because his hand is weak or because he is fishing? Or how can I otherwise lose less frequently to this style?

thanks

[lonnie]

Here's my rule:

If there is an A on the board and I can't beat a pair of Aces - I refuse to invest a lot of money in the hand. If I make a small bet and get played back at, I'm probably setting it down.

If there are two A's on the board, I'm definitely not making any substantial investment in the hand, unless I have a pocket pair and end up with a full house.

Likewise, if there are 3 to a flush on the board - I won't lose a lot of money on a straight. If the board is paired, don't go crazy on a flush if someone is giving you a lot of action, especially if you find the pot is 3 way at the river.

On the other hand, you need to get more value out of the raggy flops when you hold top pair, etc. It's all about knowing which flops are safe to proceed with your hand and which flops aren't. Don't pay this guy off when the flop is bad for you.

[Manomanman]

That's a great story! You're facing a player that is unpredictible and hard to put on a hand. You can learn a lot from the way he plays, about how TO play and how NOT to play.

What is about him that gives you so much trouble? Why can't you beat him? (These are introspective/rhetorical questions.) Ask yourself what he's doing that is so irritating.

I'm willing to bet that he plays a lot of hands and bets a lot. Maybe he plays too many hands, bets too much, and wins a lot of small pots. Then sometimes, he has a big hand and he feigns weakness and suckers you into bluffing the river.

There is no single strategy that will work, but if you use your head, you can figure out how to counter his strategy, which is to "fluster" you. Read up on some Sklansky, especially (I can't remember which book it is) where he talks about the 3 levels of poker. 1) What do you think he has. 2) What does he think you have. 3) What does he think you think he has. Application: a) You don't think he has the A. b) He KNOWs (ie pretty damn sure) you don't have the A. Or at least he shouldn't care. [ie. he doesn't bet AAA here because he's pretty sure you will fold] c) He thinks you think he doesn't have the A. [He has somehow picked up on what you believe he has] What is he going to do? He's going to check his trip and let your hand improve on the river, maybe catch a K or Q on the river. He knows that you can't put him on the Ace AND he knows that you'll bet if a K or Q comes. So he extracts maximum value out of the pot, and he lather, rinse, repeats all night long. I'm willing to bet that he fishes a lot because you're folding a lot when scare cards (flushes, straights, Aces) come up and he bets big.

I will leave the solution up to you. If you know that he knows that you don't know if he has the Ace, how should you act? (Hint: how do you beat a pat hand AAA? There are only a couple of ways.)

Try out different things, against him. In particular, if he likes to see a lot of flops, then put a ton of money into the pot with strong hands early on. That way, you're making him make a greater mathematical mistakes that a loose player can't get away from.

[Fnord]

I am pretty new to hold e'm, I've been playing with my friends for a couple of months, mostly just for fun with no money.

So what's your problem? Without stakes it's just not poker...

[RHCNNN]

well sometimes that does **** up plays and make us do things we wouldn't do in a real game, but for the most part we are both playing with the best effort to win

[FlyingSaucy]

I agree with Fnord. I've played with buddies who are about equally as serious about the game, and we all decided to play "for fun" just for the pride of saying you beat the other guys. And that's fine, and we did take our play pretty seriously, but there was something missing in the end. I think emotionally there is less invested because there's no real punishment for losing. And no matter how much I'd like to be noble and think it doesn't affect my play, I'm sure it does somewhere. Whether it is a loose call early in the game or whatever....

I'm not even going to attempt to answer your question about how to beat LAggy play, 1 because a few decent responses have been posted and 2 because I have a hard time with this myself!

[dalecooper]

The #1 thing that I think gets people burned by a slowplayer is lack of aggression. Here's my rule of thumb - not always followed even by me, but probably 80-90% of the time I do this. If the board is scary (pair on the board, three suited, three to a straight, etc.), I don't have a piece of it, and there's three or less people still playing (including myself), I will raise it right there on the flop. I want to find out where I am. It has to be a substantial raise, pot-sized or close to it, but I think it pays for itself in the long run. What does it tell you?

1 - If you get raised, you probably should just muck it.
2 - If the other players fold, good for you - profit. It happens more often than you'd believe. With two or three players in and a scary flop, there's a decent chance not one of you got a piece of it at all, or maybe somebody connected with it kinda sorta (a draw to a good hand, or in the case of a pair on the board, two pair with an undercard).
3 - If you get called, proceed with the strictest caution. Check the turn and get ready to fold. Check the river and get ready to fold. I am assuming at this point the last two cards don't help you, in which case you are just waiting for the first opportunity to get rid of your hand.

The main reason IMO to raise on a scary flop, in a situation with only a couple of players in, is that you will take down more than your share of pots right from the start, and if you don't it's cheaper in the long run anyway. If you don't know where you are and end up calling a bigger bet on the river just because you think he's bluffing or something, it costs you more than that one bet on the flop. Raise on the flop generally sniffs out the slow play. Not always and not with every player, but it's one approach.

Footnote: this works better when the board is scary in interesting ways. You might not bet into a pair of aces, in this example, as often as you would bet on a pair of 7s on the board. Assuming the pot was raised pre-flop by at least twice the big blind, it's much less likely that one of the remaining players is playing a 7 than an ace. A 4-5-6 on the board with a pre-flop raise almost certainly means no one made that straight, and probably no one is drawing to it (although you never know). If anyone at the table is going to be swinging at that pot, it ought to be you. Just limit yourself to one bet and resist the temptation to keep re-raising people (or push all-in) in an attempt to scare them out.