An old piece of strategy from poker is that you should always pay attention at the table so you can identify different players. But even if you do follow this advice, it can be hard to identify the tight players because they don’t make a whole lot of waves at the table. Instead, they sit back and wait until they have a great hand, then take advantage of those great hands by betting and raising as much as possible.
They’re not trying to steal pots and blinds by playing overly aggressive with marginal hands. Instead, they hope to trap those who haven’t been paying close attention into betting wars. Here’s how to avoid falling into those traps, and beat the tight players.
Putting Tight Players on a Range
Most tight players fall into the tight-aggressive category in that they won’t play many hands, but when the cards do come, they bet and raise like crazy. With this being the case, identifying the tight player allows you to put them on a small range of hands. Generally speaking, tight players aren’t going to play many hands which means they’ll only bet with big pocket pairs or two face cards.
Post-Flop Play
You’re not going to beat a tight player before the flop with second rate cards. So if they’re more than willing to raise before the flop, you can pretty much tell when they are holding a premium hand. That’s why you need to limp in before the flop when isolated with tight players, and wait for the flop to land. Once the flop is on the board, tight players will let you know if their hand has hit or not through betting patterns. If their cards didn’t hit the board, there’s a good chance the pot is yours if you bet aggressively.
Show Good Hands
It’s true that you’ll be able to pull off a lot of bluffs on tight players when they don’t hold premium cards. That’s because they will be very likely to fold to any raise or bet in this situation. However, they’re not going to fold superior cards if they think you are bluffing every time. With this being the case, you need to convince them that you hold better cards in most situations.
For instance, anytime you force the tight player to fold while you’re holding better cards, show them the cards. This will create the mindset that you only play premium cards as well.
In deepstack, the best way to beat tight players is to isolate them with high implied odds hands (small pocket pairs and small to mid suited connectors) from position with their range fully defined, which is a given if a player plays tight.
If you know based on his tightness that his range is as tight as AA, KK, QQ, AK, you know you can break him if the flop goes 4-5-8 and you have 6-7.
My point is you should loosen up pre flop against an early position tight player if the stacks are deep, you are in position, and you have a loose aggressive image.
the only problem with that theory is just how aggressive the T.A.G is, you really cant get involved if he always 10x-20x the bb pre flop with his hands,by the time you hit your flop he might already have all your cash.