When Your Opponent Adjusts

I don't know at exactly what stakes you'll start playing opponents that you not only know from before but that also are good enough to adjust to your particular playing style, but I know that the $1/$2 tables at Party have a fair share of them. And when that happens, you have a problem: you're being exploited. What should you do about it?

I can't say for sure that this is universally true, but it at least seems to me that you have two - and only two - ways to counter-adjust: the offensive or the defensive way. I was originally going to call them the "aggressive" and the "tight" way of adjusting, but decided that that wasn't entirely correct for all situations I could think of. However, no situation I could come up with when I was out for a walk earlier failed to be solved by adjusting defensively and/or offensively. The two examples I thought the most about during the stroll were these:

The guy on your left starts 3-betting your blind steals

A huge part of playing winning poker is aggressively stealing the blinds in late position. My average for the button is somewhere around 55%, but for certain opponents it's 100%. However, it happens once in awhile that one of these opponents - that on average fold their blinds very, very often indeed - realize that I'm relentlessly opening any-two when I have the button and they post a blind, so they adjust. If they're good, their preferred way of adjusting is to start 3-betting me when I open on the button and for quite a few rounds they'll get away with it before I start to notice. Once I notice that they've broken character and are now exploiting my very wide opening range, how should I counter-adjust?

Coaching videos and many forum posters will say "start 4-betting him light." I disagree that this is the complete answer to the question, however, because if it is you're just trading one exploitable tendency for another one that is much more expensive. I'll explain what I mean by that by way of explaining what I think is the better adjustment:

1. Tighten up your stealing range. If you up until this point raised 100% of your buttons, his 3-bets will be massively profitable. If you instead only open 30% of your hands, you've taken away the very tendency he's exploiting. What you miss is 70% of the chances to steal the blinds, but he's already denying you that. Exactly how tight of an opening range you should go with (30% was just an example) is outside the scope of this post. This, however, is by far the most important re-adjustment you can make, and this is the defensive one.

2. Open up your 4-betting range. This is not the same as 4-betting "light." This is widening the range with which you're willing to get it in. Because - and this is why I think 4-betting light is a bad "complete" strategy to deal with wide 3-bettors - when you 4-bet you leave your opponent with the "last bet." He can 5-bet bluff but you can't 6-bet bluff. At the point when he shoves you're down to calling or folding and that means forfeiting all the equity that your bluff-range has. But if instead of 4-betting with trash you 4-bet hands like 99 and JJ (and maybe AQs) with the intention of getting it in, you've opened up your 4-betting range by a lot - and with a range that beats his 3-betting range - without opening yourself up for another exploitment. This is the offensive adjustment.

I think what most people intuitively dislike about these adjustments is that they don't help right now. The guy just 3-bet you and you have jack-nine offsuit. You think it's very likely that he's bluffing. And changing your ranges for the future won't help you at all in this particular deal, but that's what it means to adjust your ranges. And I think adjusting your ranges is a much better way to deal with exploitative opponents than to offer them more rope with which to hang you.

My opponent has started raising the flop a lot

I c-bet very often. In fact, I probably c-bet too much, if anything. And it happens, quite often, that one of my more observant opponents decide to start raising virtually any flop and for awhile that's going to be profitable. After I pick up on it, I'm going to counter-adjust though and my counter-adjustment will, again, be two-fold:

1. I will start to c-bet less frequently, and I will make my c-betting range more polarized. That way, when he raises me, my hand will be either strong or very weak and I will either be perfectly happy to fold or have no intention of folding. This puts a serious dent in his adjusted strategy. This is the defensive first measure.

2. I will start to 3-bet the flop more liberally (picking somewhat equally from both ends of my now polarized range). This is the offensive second measure.

What I can't do - or shouldn't, at least - is start 3-betting the flop right this instant just because he check-raised me again. Not if my hand is not in the polarized range that I want it to be. This is similar to the idea of not necessarily 4-betting light preflop from above, because you don't want to be in a position where you have to fold a marginal hand because your opponent shoves over your 3-bet.

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To sum up, I think people think too much about how to deal with this particular hand when what they should be doing is adjusting their own ranges and not let one specific deal bother them. Yeah, you just lost $6 on a blind steal to someone who most likely is bluffing. No sweat - just adjust your range for the next round and you'll be the exploitor, not the exploitee. Sadly, you won't get the immediate satisfaction that 4-betting and watching him fold brings you (then again, nor will you have to do the figurative walk-of-shame that is folding to a shove). But poker isn't a game about immediate satisfaction.

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That last sentence is probably the truest thing I've ever written about this game. I wonder what word should be used to describe poker satisfaction? Extramediate? Supermediate? Eonmediate? Everediate.

Or maybe EV-ediate.