Taking him down

A lot of times with wild or aggressive players, if you are tight, you want to give them the opportunity to burn themselves.

Usually they are going to notice a tight player and try to attack them, a perfectly solid strategy, especially if the tight player is in the blind.

So letting the aggressive player trap themselves becomes a solid defense for the tight player. And again, you have to pay attention to betting patterns.

From the same tournament as the previous post, the table is down to five players, and I have 1,658 chips in the big blind, putting me in for $40.

I'm dealt 3 of diamond, 6 of spades. Ugh. Wild Man calls and everyone else folds.

Flop: 6d Qs 6c

He bets 100. This tells me he hit a queen. Most of his bets have been about 3x size of the pot when he's trying to steal with nothing, about 2x pot when he hit a medium pair but there's an over card (say the flop was 6, Q, A and he had a Q) to his hand, and pot sized when he hits top pair and slightly less when he hits the nuts (not that that's happened a lot).

So I call my trips encouraging him to bet again.

Turn: 8h

That eliminates any flush draw he might have had, and likely didn't help him any more. But since he saw me call, he has to figure I too have a Q and that didn't help me either.

He bets 340. At this point I could have just called, but it seems obvious he's convinced his queen is good so he'll play whatever I bet. What I don't want is to call and then see a A or K on the river which might discourage him from a final bet, so I go all-in.

He calls and turns over a Q and 8 for 2 pair.

The river is As and I take down the pot.

But four hands later Wild Man has rebuilt his stack and is over 5,000 chips again because the rest of the table hasn't been paying attention to his patterns. (For example, after almost every time he loses a decent pot on the showdown, he bets strong preflop the next hand....this time was no exception as he raised to 100 and everyone folded to him)

Wild Man's downfall was that he got arrogant. He started raising and showing when people folded. His ultimate plan was to set someone up.

He raised his stack to over 6,000 but chased an all-in with a j/10 off suit and fell to pocket queens. When he battled me on this hand I had 4,112 chips and he had 1,516 and there were still three other players.

I was dealt A 10 off suit in the small blind. He was under the gun and moved all in. Most of the time I would respect an early all in. But his reputation said he simply was trying to steal. And if he had a legit hand I would still be ahead of him chip wise and would still be in second place. So I had no problem calling with my hand. He showed J 10 off, and after two pair on the board, my ace took the hand and the lead in the tournament.