We're going to look at what happens to the flow of a poker game when your opponent goes into tilt. What kind of adjustments you should make in order to obtain the most profitable game tactics and strategies.
There's so much stuff you need to know outside of basic poker mathematics, unlike many seem to think. Gaining mathematical advantage is one thing, but because this is a game where people play against each other, there are so many factors to consider.
Understanding the flow of the game is definitely an important part of poker especially when talking about heads-up poker. This is where you take what has happened before into consideration... or if nothing happened before, you take that into consideration, too.
It's not easy... to play winning poker. You really can't foresee the flow of the game unless you know your opponent well - and even still, there's the famous luck factor. If you don't know your opponent yet, it's usually wise to play him like you would "generally" play (in case this general style has worked well), because that's all you can do. When a poker game begins, play with the style you're familiar with and find out things about your opponent.
First, before we know how to adjust to your opponent's game, we need some information. So let's say he's a tight/passive player, although he will bet on flop if he raised pre-flop, but he doesn't continue betting on turn too often (unless he's got a good hand).
This player, we'll call him Tom from now on, doesn't re-raise pre-flop too often. His hand range (before tilting) for pre-flop re-raises is JJ+. If you both checked the flop and Tom hits something on the turn, he'll check from out of position. If he's in position, he'll bet after you check the turn 50% of the time, and just check behind hoping to get you to bet on the river 50% of the time.
If you think about this particular description, he isn't that good of a player, right? Well, we don't care about that at all. What we care about is, how much more money we can extract out of him now that he has changed his style, now that he's tilting. There should be more money up for grabs.
Oh, and remember, there are different ways to go on tilt. One can be bad play on his end, one can be your great play, and one can be his bad luck (this is easily my favourite kind of tilt). Tom is tilting because you just won a 4,5 buy-in pot by getting lucky, whereas he was unlucky which leads to tilt. What are the symptoms of unlucky-tilting players? For one thing, he won't believe that you can get lucky again. If you do get lucky, it's just something that shouldn't happen in this world because it's too cruel.
What we need to remember here, is that your tilting opponent wants to make "his" money back as fast as possible, which usually leads to loose all-ins, too. It leads to desperate decisions and very straight-forward poker or extremely "tricky" plays *depending on his personality*. And we're talking about games on max. $5/$10 stakes because most players who play higher don't let just losing money change their game.
But, they might change their game because you might change your game now that they're losing. Just to make it look like they're tilting. Or because they know you'll change your game if they do. I'm just trying to go through as many factors as possible. This player isn't a professional player anyway, so we don't need to worry about that (although you'll have to in future).
When he starts to 3-bet (re-raise) more pre-flop, by definition, something just changed. He started playing loose poker pre-flop, wanting to get more money in and obviously he hopes to get even bigger return for his money - and fast.
Against a tilting player like Tom is, you don't necessarily have to widen or lessen your range, but rather choose cards that play well against someone who's ready to bluff a lot and go all-in in questionable situations.
You either want to have hands that hit well or are easy to get out of. This is of course individualistic for every player, you have to study your game and think what hands you can throw away easily and what hands cause trouble situations more often.Your opponent is now going to play most of his hands like he's got something huge all the time. So you don't want to go out there with hands that "semi-commit" you to the pot. Rather have a monster or a hand you can throw easily out. And this, of course, is the ideal situation generally in poker. But, it's even more important now because like I said, he wants his money back, and he wants it fast!
Expressing Disbelief
A typical scenario for him expressing his disbelief (this example is for No-limit Texas Holdem games, but you can easily transform it into Pot-limit Omaha, for instance) would be when he's got a big pocket pair (JJ, QQ, KK) and you call his re-raise (or 3-bet, whatever you want to call it) pre-flop. The flop brings an overcard. Why I love to call with hands like KQ is because tilting players will mostly overplay their hands, and you'll get re-raises all the way from 33.
He's got JJ and the flop brings Qs 4d 2d - this is usually a clear sign of money for you. He simply cannot believe you would flop an overcard JUST when he's got this monsterous hand. Tom decides to play this one aggressively, just in case he could push you off your flush draw, or 65 suited, or whatever it is that you have (that is not Qx).
This is a very, very typical situation for tilting players. So now, feel free to play some mind-games. If you're out of position, checking is definitely the right thing to do. If you're in position, well, bet a small amount - like 40% of the pot so he gets a chance to re-raise.
And what can he have that threatens your hand... really, only these hands: AA, KK, AQ, QQ, 44, 22. While these hands are definitely part of his range (well to be honest, he might just call your raise pre-flop with AA and KK because tilty players tend to get tricky at the wrong time), there are just so many hands in his range that didn't hit and that he would continue (he probably continues any hand if he's enough on tilt) betting with.
Generally, you want to let the tilting player do the betting, and if he's got you beat in a situation like this, then there's nothing I could do about it. Sometimes that happens, but through my experiences, I've noticed that tilting players really overplay their hands and want to get the money in fast.
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