This article is complemented by the "Taking Notes" article. In order to correctly adjust to your opponents, you will need two things:

1. Notes on your opponents, whether they be detailed written notes or just a mental note on some new guy at the table

2. You need to adjust correctly and stick with it

It’s fairly easy to recognize what type of player your opponents are, but sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how you should adjust to their play styles. And then, once you finally have all of that figured out, it can be a challenge to stick to the adjustment. For example, I used to constantly try to bluff calling stations even though I knew they rarely folded.

The most important things to note are the quality of hands the opponents are showing down and how far the opponents take certain hands. If you see someone call a preflop raise with pocket fives then call a flop bet, turn bet, and river bet then make a mental note that they don’t necessarily fold missed sets. Definitely note this if the opponent in question is calling down with fives on a board that has two or three face cards. That might not be the best person to bluff when the board misses your AK. Just make sure you don’t make rock-hard assumptions based on single occurrences.

The next section will identify some common player types and explain some basic adjustments that can be made to exploit their play styles for your benefit

Opponent Types

 

If your opponents are calling stations:

1. Play a straightforward game against them

2. Do not bluff

3. C-bet them less

4. Value bet them to death

The best style to play against calling stations (aka fish) is to just play tight, smart, straight-forward poker. There’s no need to get tricky or make fancy plays. Just sit back, wait for good hands, and bet them. The calling stations will hand you their money with a smile.

The second item on the list is pretty self-explanatory. It’s stupid to bluff people who call too much. On the other hand, you should be betting these guys into oblivion when you have anything decent. If they call too much, you can get away with betting the river with slightly questionable hands because their calling range is larger than that of a decent player’s. Does that make sense? Here’s another example if you’re interested:

Say you are up against a solid opponent with whom you play every day. He doesn’t make stupid calls and he plays his hands fairly straightforward. You get AK preflop and make a preflop raise. You then hit top pair top kicker against him. He calls your flop bet on a drawless board. The board pairs (say its looking like 28K8 now) and he calls your turn bet. The river brings another blank and you have to act first. We can get into all sorts of discussion about whether you should value bet here, but it is safe to assume that a river value bet in this situation will be much riskier than it would be in the same situation against a fish. That’s because the good player is either going to fold a worse hand or raise a better hand. The fish has a wide calling range and he may call you with some pretty trashy hands.

A c-bet is a continuation bet. It’s the bet you make on the flop after raising preflop whether you hit or missed. It’s called a continuation bet because you are continuing the aggression, the motion, the flow that you started preflop. You want to c-bet less against fish because they will be calling your c-bets more. The goal is to get them to call when you have a hand - not to hand them your money with what are basically bluffs.

If your opponents are TAGs (Tight-Aggressive)

Wait, what the hell is a TAG, an aggressive what? TAGs are, for the most part, the good players at the table. They pick and choose their starting hands, they wait for good spots to make money, and they are harder to squeeze money out of than fish. They are tight when choosing hands to play, but they are aggressive when they do play.

Anyways, if your opponents are TAGs:

1. Run them over

2. Bluff and semi bluff more

3. Play tricky

The best thing to do if you’re up against TAGs is to just find new opponents. TAGs are boring and won’t make you any money. If you must play them, then you can get a little more aggressive and push them around. Since TAGs actually have a fold button, you can bluff a little more often and throw in the occasional semi-bluff to keep them off guard.

It’s also safer to continuation bet against TAGs because they play their hands a little more ABC and will fold more often than fish will. When you totally miss the flop and throw a c-bet out there, you’re more likely to take the pot down.

Most of the TAGs you run into in small stakes games aren’t the best of players so don’t get too wild trying to represent special hands or make fancy plays. Save that type of stuff for high stakes players. If you just increase your bluffing frequency, raise your showdown standards, and avoid big pots against TAGs, you’ll be fine.

If your opponents are LAGs (loose-aggressive):

1. Reraise them more

2. Don't let them run the show

3. Find an easier game if they are making you play poorly

LAGs are the hardest opponents to play against correctly. They are loose on their starting hands and they play their hands very aggressively. It’s always hard to tell what a LAG is holding because of the style.

Since they are raising a wide range of hands, you can increase the range of hands that you 3-bet them with. Your AQ, KQ, AJ start looking a lot better when the opponent’s preflop raising range includes J9o, 45s, etc.

Against completely psychotic, drugged LAGs, you just want to be patient and wait for a good opportunity to take him out. TPTK or better should work just fine.

Other Things

Remember that all players can change during a session and that it’s up to you to keep up. Some opponents will change their entire play style and others will only change when they are playing against you so it will require a lot of attention for you to be able to keep up with what’s going on.

The other main thing about adjusting to your opponents is adjusting in time. Don’t wait until you’ve bluffed off half your stack before switching back to TAG mode.

If you’ve been playing LAG and your opponents start playing back at you then hunker down, raise with the normal TAG hands, and wait for a good opportunity to break someone who thinks you’re bluffing again. Depending on how hard the table is playing back at you, you will either want to go find an easier table you can dominate (if you’re playing LAG) or play back at them and force them to gamble a little with you. If you select the right hands vs. the right opponents, you can come out ahead in the preflop raising wars that sometimes break out.

Your opponents won’t always fit nicely into one of these three categories so don’t worry if you can’t quite decide how to classify someone. The main point of changing gears is exploiting your opponents’ tendencies. With enough experience you can spot certain things they do and come up with ways to exploit it on your own. A quick example is if you don’t usually bluff on the river but you notice an opponent folds way too often on the river so you start bluffing him more on the river, you have just exploited him by changing gears.

Good luck at the tables.