When the WPT aired its first season, a new poker superstar was born. His loose aggressive maniac style captivated the poker world. He is Gus Hansen from Copenhagen, Denmark. His megalomaniac style of play, which won him two WPT titles in the first season for 1.1 million dollars made him famous and spawned a new breed of player.
Gus has applied math skills acquired from a background in backgammon to poker: Equity, the calculation of one’s winning percentage in a given hand; and Expected Value (EV), the pre-determined hypothetical result in a given hand, or session in relation to one’s equity.
Gus’ style is to raise pots pre-flop (2.5-3.25 x BB) and continuation
bet the flop when checked to him with any two cards (40%-75% pot). If called on the flop he will often “double barrel” the turn, which means fire a second huge bet if the turn is checked to him (50%-80%pot). Also done with a wide range of hands, this a very tough playing style to combat, due to incomplete information and limited physical tells.
The most common defense to counter an aggressive player of this nature is one that absolutely does not work – the “weak–tight” version, where we call out of position, and fold often to continuation bets. This allows our villain to raise pre-flop, continuation bet the flop; basically, run us over. We give him free cards, do not get value for our own hands, and allow him to dictate control and the betting lead in the hand, which is obviously negative EV.
Another defense is the “Kill Phil” method: re-raising him with a wide range of hands such as suited connectors, small pairs, J10o, AJo, KQ, and big hands like AK, AQ, JJ, etc . This forces “Gus” to play large pots, basically pushing him off his hand every time he enters the pot
with “light” holdings. (Light = very weak hand, or marginal holding).
The downside is you give “Gus” the opportunity to beat you out of avery big pot, as he just might show up with a monster hand. You are overlaying yourself at too high a price by risking a large portion of your chips, while Gus risks only a small opening raise or nominal
continuation bet.
But we can formulate a plan to beat his style using his aggression against him. It lies in the fine art of floating. To float means to call a bet on the flop, without a hand, with the sole intention of stealing the pot on a later street with a light raise, or simply betting If checked to us on 4th street. The key is we must have position, acting after our opponent. If we float out of position, we might need to rely on a check–raise, thus overlaying ourselves and falling into “Kill Phil” problems. Position is essential.
We can have some kind of hand while floating, i.e. gut shot draw, bottom pair, or over cards. If we are not calling for value, we can assume that player is floating. If we do not improve, we can still raise on later streets to pick up pots that we might have otherwise just check-folded. If we do improve, we continue accordingly by betting our made hands for value or trapping Gus for another big bluff. We can mix it up by flat calling with our monster hands, disguising our hand by giving the illusion of floating. We are actually flatting with a flopped set, or flatting pre- and on the flop with AA or KK or the like. We can set this up by showing Gus a
bluff on our previous float-raise attempts. Doing this will definitely slow Gus down, add some deception and swagger to your game, and turn you into a world-class player.
The truly polished player is like a mixed martial artist. He or she must build an arsenal of styles to unleash on an opponent on any given hand. Whether check–raising, trapping, betting our hands for value, the classic over bet, floating or Kill Philling, one thing we don’t want to be is an old school, weak, tight, conservative, negative EV player. |
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