Bully on your direct left - best strategy advice?

Some of the advice here is laughable. You are not going to outplay a solid LAG post-flop who's on your direct left, and waiting to flop monsters is what every other clueless TAG attempts.

It's for situations like these that GTO is designed for, since it helps you be unexploitable when OOP. Essentially, it means that you need to call down often enough with your "best" marginal hands so that he can't exploit you by simply betting you off hands.

If there is no other seat available, there is nothing wrong with taking frequent breaks until other seats open up or even simply leaving.

Wait for him outside.

The only real answer is to tighten up. If you're getting 3bet constantly, you need a range that can either defend postflop OOP or 4bet. You can either do this by opening stronger linearly or by opening more polarized. You can develop a polarized 4bet range to exploit him if you think he'll overfold to them or just defend/4bet linearly if you think he won't be folding enough.

Calling wide preflop but playing snug postflop?

I’m opening my normal range, removing some hands from the bottom of that range, and then c-betting them to death on the flop. Then I would look to start trapping more frequently on the turn and river.

With marginal hands I would be trying to mostly check-down and putting in thin blockish sized bets on the river so he has a harder time just blasting any river that I check.

In general I would be sizing up most turn and river bets if I am deciding to bet.

I would add more hands like low pocket pairs and suited connectors to my range, because knowing that this player will be calling preflop wide means you can effectively treat his money as already in the pot, which means you’re getting de-facto pot odds to set mine. Keeping in mind reverse implied odds of course. Not sure if this is theoretically sound but I’ve used this successfully.

Ranges are ranges, and you can make their life a living hell if they are calling very wide, even OOP.

If he's raising you way too much preflop, then you can also exploit by flatting premium hands, knowing he will 3bet anything playable to try to isolate you. Then you can make the decision whether you want to 4bet or just slowplay it, depending on exactly how he has been playing vs you.

Exploit it. If they are playing with too wide of a range, make decisions based on that range.

Basically no need to have much of a raise fold range. Ppl who call and raise too much get destroyed by equity advantage

It's a tough situation with a LAG targeting you whilst sitting on your left, and an unfortunate factor that the default game mechanics allow - it would be fairest if seats were reallocated every orbit, but of course that wouldn't be practical.

The most important question you have to ask yourself in such situations is: how is this player deviating from the GTO baseline? By the sound of what you said, he is calling and 3betting wider than he should preflop, as well as perhaps over-floating, raising and attacking any weakness postflop - in other words, overbluffing. So you need to make the necessary adjustments in protecting your checking range more, 4betting him wider, and being willing to call down light (with pretty much any pair and sometimes with ace high etc) if you are certain he is overbluffing. Of course this isn't going to be comfortable, and his whole goal with a LAG style of play is to take you out of your comfort zone and into the branches of the game tree with which he is more familiar that you - but you can't back down and, on the contrary, should be happy to have a player in the game who is making so many -EV decisions and handing you chips. It's going to suck when he has a hand and you pay him off, but that's an unfortunate factor when dealing with these players, and you can rest assured that you will crush him in the long run.

Another important factor when playing out of position is that you have to play more defensively in any case - many players don't even consider this. For example, even against a "normal" player you are meant to c-bet about half as much (35% vs apx. 70% in a normal pot, heads up against the BB). You need to have a lot of decent hands (like your worst top pairs and your pocket pairs immediately below top pair) in your check-calling range, because as we all know in NLHE, you are simply going to have to check-fold a fair amount when you miss, and having these stronger hands in your check-calling range means that villains can't relentlessly attack you every time you check. Against a player like the one you mentioned, I would also consider having some overpairs in my check-calling flop range (and check-jamming turn range).

Good luck, it's never easy with a LAG on your left, but at the end of the day - it's an opportunity. Let us know how it goes!

In general you want to tighten up in this position configuration in 6-9max because villain is polarized and presumably trying to chase draws to stack you or bluff you off with huge sizings on later streets.

Basically the counter is to have a stronger range than villain that can get to showdown.

Il be honest my preferred choice would be to leave the table if my stack is being targeted by 1 or more players.

Good luck.

How many hands have you seen to determine this person is targetting you?

Tighten up, seat change, or table change.

• 4bet shove once or twice with air
• Show the bluffs
• Tighten up
• 4bet shove with QQ+
• Stack him and laugh at him.

Let him know that you are the alpha male and exploit him preflop since you have no edge post.

Most people say tighten up. I completely disagree. It might be a good strategy to tighten up but the better answer is to loosen up in my opinion. You asked for the best strategy.

First of, let me point out that your villain may very well just be playing fairly straight forward theory based poker. Most people at live low stakes are used to passive play. When someone sits down and plays "normally" in a theoretical sense, they seem like they are being overly aggressive or bullying. When in fact, the rest of the table is just playing passively.

This is much, much more common than someone sitting down at live low stakes and just blasting away. As those guys are pretty obvious maniacs.

That being said, if this player is actually being significantly more aggressive than a standard theoretical preflop:

The easy answer is to just play a solid GTO like strategy until you are able to start constructing a range/strategy for them and deviate exploit. Easy answer as easy to say.

The real answer is, you need to be studying a decent amount of hours off the table. This will allow you to understand what dynamic is supposed to happen, and then what happens when someone like this changes that dynamic and in turn the best strategy to combat this.

In live poker however, unless you're going to be playing with this person a lot, it's going to be hard to develop a strategy with 25 hands per hour or so. Which means that sticking to a more neutral GTO style is going to be the easiest way to combat this. If the table is looking good, then just play as unexploitable as possible to buy time until another seat is available or the villain leaves.

If the table isn't good, just leave. Take the amount of time you planned on playing that day and use it to study.

Anyone giving you hyper-specific advice is likely not of the knowledge/skill level to be giving such advice as you really need to have some fairly specific range construction and such for anyone to help you develop a strategy other than playing as unexploitable as possible.

use them as cover. if they're reliably raising you, you can bet lighter and see what the rest of the table does behind him, he's going to raise for you. Then you can strand him in hands with stations that call, and take the money from OMC instead of him when he has to fold in a couple streets... or you can repop him to maximize your advantage spots, etc.

You turn him into a raising tool for you, in other words. it's like you get to raise with free chips.

how it affects your opening range is going to depend on how the table reacts to what he's doing. Generally you want to play tighter, but if you have some donk action looking him up routinely, you can really stress good drawing cards, like high suited connectors, because when you get a five-card hand, you're gonna knock three or four people's dicks in the dirt at once. you just want to watch it with things like 89s because you don't want to BE the donk in 2nd or 3rd in that 800bb 4 way circle jerk.

Seat change/table change

Play gto

This is when you slow roll AA and the like

battle fire with fire. sounds crazy but you want to 3 bet them a lot when they open. barrel wider postflop and apply a lot of pressure. if V is going to show up with a wider range on the river, start putting in some thin value bets; that doesn't mean they have to be small sizings. if they stab too much on the flop, defend by check raising frequently and for large sizes.

Play tighter and ask him how his mom is doing.

I doubt they are actually “bullying” you. People take this game so personal, when it’s not.

I don’t think someone calling your raises a lot can be considered a bully or aggressive. They probably are just playing speculative hands.

You will beat them by playing a stronger range and cutting out some of your more borderline hands since you know your steal won’t go through. Other than that you will just get to the flop with a stronger range and initiative.

bluff less. remove anything that raise/folds from your preflop range.

The opponent is not a skilled LAG or bully. They sound like a fish tbh.

Good LAGs don’t flat a bunch of trash hands pre flop. They 3 bet you constantly with a wide range and make you play big pots OOP with marginal hands. Constantly putting you to the test through aggression.

Someone who flats a wide range pre is a loose/passive player and one of the best player type to play against. This is the style of most whales. These are the guys you just value bet to death because they’re calling pre with so much dominated trash. You also want to up your cbet frequency but reduce bluff frequency on later streets if they call, because they’re usually playing a fit or fold style post flop.

This is one of the reasons why GTO is a thing. No matter what anyone else does, they cannot squeeze EV out of you if you follow it against them and do it well. Happens regularly online higher or even mid stakes. Very good players always try to get into spots and positions, where they can bleach you and if you don't know how to respond, leave until you're more studied. After that, the sickos will pretty quickly find new and more profitable target players.

Open tighter pre trap more post.

Wait for a good hand, hopefully hit the flop top pair or better, check / call and hang onto your balls

If you are losing too much, simple advice would be to buy in shorter and play a bit tighter preflop, lower SPR gives your opponent less room to maneuver.

Obviously if you have a big stack you can't just go south, I'd probably play a more passive style when OOP to make sure your checking range is strong enough, and so you don't build big pots against an opponent who is IP and out skills you

I’d fuck his mom and become his stepdad then ground him

Doesn’t the fact that we don’t have much info on villain we’re supposed to be countering, and the fact that OP seems terrified of this villain, suggest that OP maybe isn’t that good? I interpreted OP as not being a great player based on how this post was written. There’s probably a lower winrate differential between a 2/5 crusher and a breakeven 1/2 player, as between that 2/5 crusher and the HS reg of your choosing.

End of the day I think we have to agree to disagree on the likely skill differential here. OP seems cooked IMO based on how they wrote the post but whatever we’re just two randos on the internet

switch seats, or even tables. No shame in getting outplayed, it's part of game selection. Someone on your left will always and forever have an immediate advantage over you, it's up to you to determine if it's worth combating. But if you simply must, or if there is some whale that you think is worth staying for, then employ lots of x/c and x/r against him. He needs to know he cant just bluff when you check. He'll stop eventually when he gets tired of spewing.

There's something to be said for playing the best and safest option which is to just play your game, be observant and adjust accordingly.

There's also a convincing argument to play some eff-you poker, using your tablemates (that hopefully you have some book on) as unwitting patsies. Pick a scattershot range of strong hands and questionable hands that can improve with a good flop and limp. Yes. Limp. Don't do it often but often enough to set the hook early in position where bully's raises can be targeted for squeezing by the rest of the table. When you feel like he's playing aggressively at your limps (not hard to imagine) and the squeezes are also coming in nicely, you've turned him into the table target. You also have a just-under 100bb stack to shove-n-scoop to rid the field of those looking to exploit the little interplay you've set up. If your villain is just a really good player (esp with a lot of PLO+ time) they may just call down whatever shoves come their way but it's possible the more judicious ones will balk a bit at playing pick me over and over again.

Obviously if you're a single buy-in or two-bullet player then perhaps recognizing you're not going to match up with a good table like this easily would mean tread water and watch for the waitlist to change tables. If you're willing to mix it up, even if you think you've opened up your range too much as a TAG/Balanced player, this could be one of those nights, especially if this great player isn't used to insane stuff happening like that on a regular basis.

Whenever this happens to me, I begin limping with my monsters and turn on the “oh gosh should I call?” theatrics.  The bully doesn’t know me personally, so likely thinks I’m an easy mark.  I might even shuffle my chips badly if I really want to take it the extra mile.  

   The goal is to have a monster hand where he does his best to bully you out of it, and you just keep on calling because maybe you’re chasing something? Meanwhile you actually have the nuts or near-nuts and are letting him dig his own grave.

The payoff when you turn over a killer hand at the showdown that you’ve had since the flop is always magical.  Then hopefully he learns that your checks, calls, and limps don’t always mean weakness.  If he doesn’t get the hint the first time, he almost certainly will by the second.     

Knowing you’re not gonna knock him out of a hand with intimidation, just show him good cards. That’s all you really can do.  

Open smaller and tighten up.

At a live table I would open 3bb. If they 3bet too large they lose value. If they 3bet small then you have room to play post flop oop if necessary.

Play super tight, limp/call limp/ big reraise preflop. When you get good combos bet big (pot) on flop and all in on turn when he is not likely to improve. I don’t like trapping, instead I would go the straight forward way and just use intense aggression to force him to gamble when I have a premium hand. Use his aggression back at him. For example if he always raises/3 bet after you, you can limp AAKKQQAK. When he raises to 5bb and some other players call, you reraise to 30bb and then all in on any flop that is favorable, basically just no overcard if you are 100bb deep. For other premium hand like AQ AJ AT JJ TT, you can call his 5bb raise and then just play check call unless you get 2 pairs/set.

Leave

Limp/raising is an idea but really is exploitable, even maniacs limp. The real theoretical adjustment I think is to widen your 4b range accordingly, however, this is a simplistic deviation because there are others at the table and one player should not dictate your strategy unless they are really bad. This also increases your variance.

Generally you can widen your button calling range when you can speculate profitably IP. Raise/fold SB/BB tightly. 3B HJ/CO wider to attack his button. Also just table/seat change if the guy is following you in the room, lol, pretty weird. Ask him to buy you dinner first.

Turn to the oldest man and grab a cup of coffee. Just sit there and watch other people play until you pick up AKo+ raise big let him believe when he 3b! you he might have to commit his stack.

Move seats