i am having great sucess recently by selectively calling tight players raises in position with suited connectors in small stakes sngs and multi table tournaments, the key is to identifying the preflop raisor carefully and smooth calling his raise. ill give an actual example. i was playing 8 handed and a tight aggressive player who likes to mix it up occasionally and to target my big blind raised on the button when i was in the bb, i looked down at 4/5 spades and knew i was out of position but as i thought i had a good jist of the guy i decided to smooth call. the raise was to 4 times the big blind and i had a larger chip stack then he did but he was not the shortest stack. i thought he might be playing a speculative hand for a raise but to be honest i didnt care if he had a top hand because if i didnt flop to my hand i was out of there unless i had good reason to try a bluff. anyway i decided to smooth call the raise after a moments pause. the flop came down AA9 off suit, i waited about a minute before i checked to give my opponent something to think about and maybe giving me a small chance of staying in the hand when he also checked behind me i smelled a rat, although he could be slow playing it looked as if he was very curious about what i was up to. the turn came down a deuce of clubs. that was the end of my back door flush draw. but i now had an inside straight draw so a glimmer of hope as to maybe making the river, i decided to check with the intention of check raising if he bet as i didnt think he had the ace, but i was perfectly happy to see a river and maybe just maybe complete my straight. he also checked and i was now completely confident he didnt have the ace. the river came down a trey and alas i had made my straight. i decided to make my bet into him look like a bluff so i overbet the pot and he immediately called turning over pocket KK. he kept silent but i could sense the rage in him. thats the beauty of this theory, it mixes youre game up, drives the other players crazy as they find it more difficult to read you and when you bust someone with it you look like a pro! but beware if you are not careful with it you can burn up a lot of chips, as i said earlier i thought the raiser had a speculative hand not KK so my initial read was incorrect. normally my reading of opponents pre flop when using this strategy is better, but arguably that is the beauty of the theory. you are not trying to play the raiser at his own game, youre hoping the flop comes low and connected to make youre straight, if the flop comes high then dump it. any feedback on this article would be much appreciated?
