Online Poker Hit and Run Tactics

The ability to be able to move into and out of a poker game very quickly has opened up many doors for people. They can play during work time, they can play when they are fresh or whatever. Playing in real card rooms and casinos essentially means travelling which is a far more serious commitment. Also by the sheer act of having to face your opponents, this precludes you from doing certain things.

It is far more difficult in a live bricks and mortar card room to sit down for a few hands, raise and re-raise all over the place and get a few hundred dollars ahead and then leave. You will have to run the gauntlet of disdain from your fellow players and if anyone ever sees you do this then they sure as hell will remember your face for next time.

But with online poker then you are completely anonymous and you don’t have to risk upsetting anyone when you are face to face with them. This has led to certain players utilising what has become known as “hit and run” tactics. They sit down and play very aggressively for a few hands hoping not to run into a powerful hand or maniacs.

It is also worth pointing out that hit and run merchants may resemble maniacs but they are far from that. The true maniac plays that way all the time and actually gets a tremendous kick out of making other poker players fold their hands. The hit and run merchant only acts like a maniac for a very short space of time!

Before their opponents have the chance to get an angle on them then they are history and usually at the expense of someone else’s stack! This style of play is hyper aggressive and is favoured by many tournament players. They use maximum aggression to instil fear and induce folds. They try and seek out what a players level is and how far they are prepared to go with certain hands.

They are after one thing and one thing only and that is fold equity. Because they are so aggressive then their style of play is both difficult to combat and very expensive when they get called! Hit and run players prefer six handed and short handed games as well as heads up encounters.

You don’t tend to see them in full-ring games as their style of play is often countered by the tight nature of the game. Even then though their style can still be effective! Some of the very best tournament players in the world are hyper aggressive. In fact the process of having to wade through these huge fields in relatively small time frames dictates that this style of play is probably optimal in many online poker tournaments.

Players who use hit and run tactics simply do not back off. If they flop a pair or a draw then they are going with it. On the days when variance smacks them in the face or when they don’t run into huge hands then they can amass chips very quickly. The types of players who are vulnerable to this type of strategy are the types who are passive and tight or maybe under bankrolled.

This means a very large percentage of the poker playing population or at least at the lower limits. In cash games it is often difficult to know how long a player is going to hang around for. If you have never met him then it may be impossible to tell. The only sure fire way is to have data on them from the past and that means having tracker data like with Poker Crusher or your own personal notes.

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