If your foes are playing short-handed Hold’em correctly, they should be raining down raises on you from late position, early position, any position at all. How do you defend against such rampant bully behaviour? Here are some effective ways…

Look to trap
Lay back a little with your strong hands and try to tempt your hyper-aggressive foes into pushing marginal hands too far. On a flop of K-J-3, say, when you hold a bad King, your opponent may be tempted to push hard with a good Jack or even nothing at all. Let him push – he’s just pushing his chips in your direction.

Don’t get too loose
It’s easy to fall into the habit of calling a lot of raises and then folding when you miss. That’s a bad habit! For one thing, you invest too many chips pre-flop, when you haven’t made a hand. For another, if you define yourself as a call-then-fold type, the more observant and savvy opponents at the table will know when you have a hand – and run all over you when you don’t.

Play back at them
Short-handed Hold’em is a game of control, and just because your foe has it, doesn’t mean you can’t take it away. Let him attack your blinds a couple of times, and then come back over the top with a big raise. If you can do that a couple of times (especially on a bluff you can then show), he’ll decide to direct his aggression elsewhere. It’s called operant conditioning, and it really, really works.

Above all
Stay flexible and stay aware of your aggressive foe’s patterns. You can’t always trap and you can’t always play back, but you can always ask yourself, ‘What’s the right tool for the right job, right now?’ Once you know, act on it.