Against opponents who will call raises with weak hands, you want to do your best to see how much they’ll call before the flop and maximize your edge by raising as much as they’ll call. You’ll see some players that will call 5xBB––8xBB and occasionally even more with weak hands in the hopes of catching some fluke flop and busting you. In order to make their play as unprofitable as possible, you want to raise continually when they’re in a hand with you, especially if you have position. There are a lot of CRW players who will limp and call large raises with weak hands like J9o, T7o, 56o, etc.
When you notice that a player is calling a lot of raises, pay particular attention to the hands they show down and note how much they called with those hands. When you have a big hand and raise, continually try an increase the size of that raise until you can find a size that will fold them out. Then do your best to stay within the range that will keep them in the hand with you.
Don’t just go on auto-pilot with your normal pre-flop raise sizes. This is leaving money on the table when you have fishy players that will pay off with weaker hands. Don’t worry so much about giving away the strength of your hand, because you’re doing this against the CRW player, and not against the regulars at your table. When there are only regulars left to act, then do your normal raise sizing. But when isolating weak CRW players, or open raising with good hands, don’t be afraid to adjust your open sizing. Just make sure to keep it consistent throughout that round at the table. Don’t bump your open raise size up to 7 BBs with KK against a weak player, and then isolation raise a CRW limper to 4 BBs with A7s. Keep the sizing consistent, and look to discourage the other regulars from getting into the pot with you. If and when they adjust you can change your sizing again.
Most importantly, just make sure you are aware of this type of player and know that they will have a wide range of hands that they’ll play in missed flops. That means that if you raise with AK and miss, and the flop comes something like J95, it’s likely that it may have hit your opponent. If they have position on you, it’s still ok (if it’s heads up) to take a stab at the pot, but shut down if you’re called. On some even more draw heavy flops such as Th9d6h, you’ll often want to give up and not continuation bet when out of position.
Another major advantage you’ll have over this type of opponent is that they’ll commonly go too far with top pair and sometimes middle pair hands. They tend to be somewhat on the more aggressive side generally, and also don’t believe opponents have the hands they’re representing. If you hit a nice flop, you can pummel them with big bets and win a nice sized pot. Even top pair and weak kicker is good enough to get a good sized pot formed against them.
