Online poker has gone 3 bet mad at this point, and what I am finding is a great deal of loose players shall start to call a lot of your 3bets when they will be in position. So, just how do you play against these sort of players when they will not fold to a continuation bet on the flop.

Firstly, you may need some form of poker tracking software with a heads up display which can inform you of their stats in 3 bet pots. This really is probably not as important if you are playing less than 4 tables when you should be able to spot their tendencies through simple observations and note taking. However when you go over 4 tables I definitely recommend using Holdem Manager to help you spot the habitually 3 bet callers. It’s also good to track your own 3 bet stats when you might be 3 betting a bit too frequently and thus giving your opponent ample reason to start playing back at you either through flat calling or 4 betting light.

So should you have notes or stats on your opponent that he is calling 3 bets light and rarely folding to any aggression on the following streets, this simple means you must tighten your 3 betting range to value hands only. Check out his 4 bet stats. If his 4 bet stats are 2% or lower we can safely claim that when he only calls he is doing this with hands like AQ, AJ, maybe ATss and 22-JJ, 87ss+. He will 4 bet QQ+, AK the vast majority of times which accounts for the 2% 4 bet range.

Therefore if we can narrow his calling range to this we can begin to 3 bet value hands from KJ+,JJ+ up as when he calls we are going to nearly often be in front of his range. If he is calling with pocket pairs, we’re going to at least have 2 overcards once we 3 bet Broadway cards and once we do hit top pair we can safely get all of it in as we tend to be more information than likely going to have our opponent dominated.

Also keep an eye out for bet sizing tells. One of my regulars has a fairly bad bet sizing tell. He only raises preflop to 2 big blinds with small pocket pairs and suited connectors and raises 3.5 big blinds with big Broadway cards when he plays from the Cut off or even the Button. He folds to all 3bets when I 3 bet his bigger pre – flop raise but he 4 bet shoves AKss, KK+. He always calls when I 3 bet his smaller preflop raise and can min – reraise when he connects with the flop, and when he connects he connects hard as its either a set, a flopped straight or an open ended straight & flush draw. This really is a good tell to have upon an opponent and I urge all of you to keep track of weird bet sizing as people get in to a habit as well as you can make use of it.

However getting back to the original issue, of a player that will also not fold to post flop aggression. You need to determine your perceived strength brought on by the flop texture before you decide to decide your plan for post flop when you actually miss the flop. In the event the flop comes dry with one high card, in which case you must at least double barrel. There is absolutely no point just continuation bet the flop then check fold the turn as that is how he wants you to play and he will exploit this until the cows come home. If the flop is low and wet then it sometimes is within your best interest to just look into the flop and hope for a cheap showdown and fold to his steal. By doing this every once in a while, it will also add a great deal more weight to your continuation bets in later encounters.

The main piece of advice to take from this article is to plan your hand before you play it based upon your opponents tendencies. The greater you do this the more natural it’s going to become and before you decide to know it you will be swiftly moving up the stakes in the online poker world.