How to Play Against Tight Players

You’re on the button and dealt KQ of diamonds. Aaron is first to act and he makes it $20 to play. Everyone else at the table folds because they know that Aaron is a very tight player. When he makes a bet, everybody runs because more times than not he’s holding aces or kings.

You, however, decide to see a flop by calling the bet. Why not? You have good positioning on him and he must act first after the flop.

The flop hits K, 9, 4 with no diamonds. Aaron doesn’t even hesitate before firing out a $50 bet. The action is on you and you’re not feeling very good about your top pair. You know that Aaron doesn’t bluff and that there is a good chance that he is holding Aces, Kings, or Big Slick.

If he has any of these hands, you’re in big trouble. You decide to see the next card because you are stubborn and want to see a queen hit. This is where you’ve made the mistake. You’ve just become pot committed and didn’t even think about the action after the turn card hits.

If you had thought about what was to come, you would have realized that Aaron is going to make an even larger bet. He always does. He’s probably going to fire at least $100 at you. Then what do you do?

You will be invested for $70 and $100 more won’t seem like much to pay. And even if you do hit your queen or king, you may still be in big trouble.

These are the types of hands that get players in trouble against tight players. They don’t think about the price they will have to pay after the turn and the river.

In this example, we decided to call the $50 after the flop. If we had played the hand out in our head, we would have seen how ugly it could get.

We knew that Aaron would fire an even larger bet after the turn card hit. We are not prepared to call another huge bet against a tight player like him.

Here is how we should have played the hand‚Ä¶

Yeah, we all love KQ suited. Aaron made it $20 to play before the flop. I would call his bet even though I’m sure he’s got a monster hand.

Why not? If diamonds hit you’re going to rake a large pot. The flop hit K, blank, blank. We just hit our top pair but Aaron came out firing.

Here is where we have to lay the hand down. Don’t commit yourself to the pot by calling another bet. This will make it even harder to fold after the turn and river. Take your $20 loss and catch Aaron when you flop a monster against him.

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