Solid Sam: how to beat a tight-aggressive regular

1. Who Solid Sam is

The app describes him in six words: balanced, skilled player. TAG type with good fundamentals. Sam plays about one hand in five and raises nearly all of them. He never limps in, he notices which opponents are weak and which are loose, he opens far more hands on the button than under the gun, and a bad beat has no effect on the next one. He is not trying to be clever; he is trying not to make errors, and he mostly manages it.

You have met him. He is the regular who is in the 1/2 game three nights a week, folds for twenty minutes and then takes a stack off somebody who did not notice he had woken up. He is not the best player in the room, but he is the hardest one to get money from, because he does not give any away. Against Sam the win comes in small pieces: the pots he gives up on, and the fact that he plays the same way every time.

2. Solid Sam at a glance

It adds up to a disciplined game with no obvious hole in it. Avoiding your own mistakes and going after somebody else's are two different skills, and Sam only has the first one.

3. How Solid Sam plays a hand

Preflop. Raise or fold, with no third option. He opens tight from under the gun and much wider from the cutoff and the button, and he attacks the blinds a little more often than a neutral player would. He prefers raising to calling, so a hand worth continuing with against your open usually arrives as a three-bet. He does not overvalue small pairs or suited connectors, so he is not the one calling out of position with 76 suited. Facing a three-bet he continues on hand strength and price, not on the size of the bet.

Flop. He bets more often than the baseline and his aggression tracks his hand strength closely, so his continuation bets are real and his checks mean something. He hardly ever slow-plays — a set gets bet — and he hardly ever floats, so when he calls your flop bet he has equity rather than a plan to steal the pot later. His sizes, though, are close to uncorrelated with what he holds.

Turn. He notices scare cards: one that hits your range slows him down, and one that hurts his own hand stops him. He rarely fires a delayed continuation bet either — if he checked the flop he has usually given up rather than set a trap, so that check is close to honest. His draw math is good, so the half-pot turn bet that talks a recreational player into a bad call does nothing here. In multiway pots he tightens up noticeably.

River. He value bets when the pot is checked to him rather than taking the free showdown, and he bluffs often enough that folding everything to a river bet is not a strategy. He check-raises about as often as a neutral player does: occasionally, and with a real hand. The missing sizing tell costs you most here, because there is no later street on which to find out.

4. How to beat Solid Sam

Take the pots he gives up on. This is the main edge, and it is small and repeated. Sam rarely floats, rarely fires a delayed continuation bet and rarely traps, so a flop he checks as the preflop raiser is usually a flop he is finished with. Bet it. Bet the turn he checks behind. These are not big pots, and that is the point: he will not pay you off in a big one, so the money comes from the twelve-dollar pots nobody remembers. Modest sizing, high frequency, and give it up when he raises.

Treat his early raises and his late raises as different hands. His range moves with position more than anybody else's here, so the same raise means two different things. Give his under-the-gun open full credit: fold the marginal broadway hands you would call an average regular with, and do not set-mine at a bad price. Do the opposite in the blinds against his cutoff and button opens, where he is stealing and knows it. Three-betting him there wins the pot outright often enough to be worth doing with hands you would otherwise fold.

Use his consistency, and keep the pot small when you are behind him. His randomness settings sit near zero, so he is not mixing to stay unpredictable: he plays the same spot the same way. Once you have seen what he does with a flush draw on a wet flop, that is the answer next time, and the hand history and replay are there to help you catalog it. Meanwhile, stop trying to win a stack from him: he does not tilt, and the hand where he is happy to play a 200-big-blind pot is a hand he usually has.

5. Mistakes people make against Solid Sam

• Treating him like a nit. He plays a fifth of his hands, not a tenth, and he folds for mathematical reasons rather than out of fear. The relentless pressure that works on Tight Tom gets called here.
• Reading his bet sizes. Anybody who learned to read sizing against the recreational seats carries the habit over and gets it backwards. Read the line he took — which streets he bet, which he checked, from what position — and ignore the number.
• Waiting for him to make a mistake. He is built not to make the obvious ones, and a session spent waiting for him to spew is a session spent folding. Take Sam's small pots while they are cheap and spend your attention on the seats that are actually losing money.

6. Practice against Solid Sam

Sam has a seat at Online Grind — a nine-handed 1/2 no-limit game with $200 stacks, alongside Basic Ben, Agent Arthur, Optimal Olivia, Tight Tom, Aggressive Andy, Loose Lucy and Calling Carl. You do not need an account to sit down: the guest session asks for nothing. Playing small pots well is a habit, and habits need repetitions rather than reading.

Try without an account, or create a free account if you would like your hands, the coach's verdicts and your own numbers kept so you can look back at them.

7. The rest of the table

Sam is one seat of nine, and the adjustment that beats him is nearly the opposite of the one that beats his neighbor. Calling Carl pays off every value bet and folds to nothing, so the thin betting that prints against him is a donation when Sam is the one calling. Loose Lucy arrives in far too many pots and gives them up after the flop. Aggressive Andy makes you defend instead of attack, and Agent Arthur does what Sam does with fewer leaks still. Working out which of them you are facing inside twenty hands is the skill the roster exists to teach. The full list is on the opponents index.