Playing good players

Ok so you learn poker the regular way, you give the fish bad odds, you bet the ranch with your hands when you have them, you maximise your value against the worst players.

Now though, im starting to notice that there are loads of players who are just as good or better than me where i play.

They can beat me by disguising their hand well, and this is usually because i can distinguish which hands are good by the fact that i've not been raised a lot.
For example, i raise with Aq and get smooth called by AA. I bet out on the flop and he calls. Now against average joe i might bet out again and see what happens but long story short he beats me. (i was shortstacked and a little on tilt but thats not the point).

Stuff like that is usually performed by the better players, and i'd hopefully be able to do that myself to him next time and be even better at it.

But im just wondering what transformations there are to a fairly competent players game in order to beat the players who are good at their respective levels.

There are always at least 2-4 solid players per table where i play, and usually when im involved in a hand with them unless its a monster most of the time i get beat because they outplay me or have a bettter hand which sucks cause it could be something difficult to lay down. They are also looking to get a set and stack me, which is again like my play.

Does this stuff just even out in the end or is there some other ways of coping with the good players, such as to tighten up, bet less, play passively and wait for monsters etc.

Like if i get QQ and raise, get called by a good player, rag flop, bet and get called should i really slow down a lot of the time?

I've also heard the theory of playing laggy and it works sometimes, such as raising with 76s and catching a lovely flop. It makes you harder for the better players to read you.
And even still, most tight aggs will do this now and again anyway.
So to be a Lagg at say full table of taggs what does it take? A load of bluffing, or what?

Im not really educated upon the finer aspects of LAggs i guess, but i tried raising with suited cards a lot more and eventually they all jjust called me down. Maybe then i should switch back to good cards i dunno.

But anyway the main point is beating these players who are able to appropriately disguise their hands a lot better and fold without the odds etc etc.

And thats another thing, dont you find rebuys much easier? maybe there are more lucky chumps there than usual?

I mean everyone learns to beat the crap guys but where can you look to beat the guy who (hopefully) you are or thereabouts?

What game/stakes/site are you playing?

Originally Posted by bearing

(i was shortstacked and a little on tilt but thats not the point).

It should be.

maybe lol, maybe i have difficulty laying down hands that i know are beat by these players in general.

Its everest poker, great site, im one of those who's built from nothing using their free stt's where you win like .05 cents for first lol.. great fun.
Plus hardly anyone knows about it, its a gold mine.
(wait maybe i shouldnt be telling everyone this *in comes the rest of ftr to take away their money before i can*)
Loads of crap players which is the main thing, and i love their interface some how, gotta love the 'bet pot' button

Kind of shifting between 50Nl holdem and 100NL, bought in for half stoday and raised say $7 with Aq get called by some guy with only like 23 bucks, ace on the flop, Im not folding to a short stack but he flops 2 pairs with A5 or something.
BR about 1700 atm, and theres a better bank of good players at 100Nl than at the 50NL so i think i need some tips.
so that puts me to 30 dollars maybe? i raise again with Aq and the smooth call with aces scenario occurs. After a bet on the flop i've pretty much committed myself (this time with nothing, great) and yes i lose money.
Im not always buying in short, and no not always tilting either, just most of the time. hehe j/k its like 2:30 am sorry

um so no im not always gonna be shortstacked and tilting so dont worry about that, i buy in for full at 50Nl and do well. (except against some of the better players which is why im curious and eager to learn ways of kicking their ass)
jeez i do ramble

If your shortacked and your up against an opponent who has a full stack : YOu hold AQ he holds AA (Maybe even AK, KK or AK). Of course there is not way he is letting this one go. even if you went all in on the flop. Good players are too smart to know that your the small stack, you are going to raise with high cards. The only thing I would've done differently from that smart player your referring to here is to reraise you postflop. That way if you call and you hit an ace on the flop and I made my set(AA) or TPTK(AK), you would feel commited with your shortstack and might not be able to get away from your hand.

thanks for the reply but we've kinda wandered from my original intended topic. This was to find out about and discuss the strategy used by capable players, such as fnord perhaps, to beat capable players and that hand was just an example of capable play.
sorry for raising this from near death but im still interested and would really appreciate any discussion or advice

Sounds to me like it's time for you to start adding character reads into your game. You're probably just looking at betting patterns and playing them too text book. It's easy to figure out who the solid players are pretty quickly. So study them. Because they're studying you and that's how they keep handing your ass to you.

Would he play certain hands? How did he play that last set? What was on the board? All that good stuff. Just because you can't look into the opponent's eyes doesn't mean he doesn't have any unique tells.

So focus on that. I came to the same spot as you a little while ago. I stopped playing for a while and when I came back, the "crowd" was better (or I was worse?) Anyway, once I put focus into who was who and who does what, that's when I started winning again.

Originally Posted by bearing

my original intended topic was to find out about the strategy used by capable players to beat capable players.

I think you're raising a wide range here. There is no answer to this question. You have to introduce a whole host of elements to your game that you aren't yet familiar with is my general guess.

Knowing how your opponent thinks is the key after you master the odds and all that. So I can only assume that the higher up you go, the utterly more complex this becomes.

Like a recent game at 6max, 10NL.. a guy was sitting there with $65.. from his play-style I saw quickly that he was actually better than your average run-of-the-mill 10NL player.. but I ended up making most of my profit on that table from that guy! Because I knew that he would play me like all the other suckers so I stayed calm and nailed him when I had the chance

Another example would be when I got slowplayed on an MTT by a guy holding a set. Managed to overcome it later, but it was a major draw-back at the time as he triggered my 'let's bluff him out' reflex. I simply hadn't seen this before on 10NL :P.. so now I'm a lot more cautious in MTTs.. and will be too when I should go up in stakes, as no doubt people will become craftier.

Originally Posted by bearing

my original intended topic was to find out about the strategy used by capable players to beat capable players.

Read Theory of Poker.