GEN : little lost with it, adjusting/readjusting situations. » Medium Stakes No Limit Discussion

Hi,

So I sat down with a reg on 2 5handed 2/4 tables, one of them being only the two of us, to get a game started. I noticed early that he was playing really tight, folding most buttons and to most buttons opens. The game filled pretty quickly and he was directly on my left, and seemed to have the fold button checked everytime he was on the bb. But I quickly noticed that he was ALWAYS 3betting me from SB when I opened my button.

So it's weird to me, and I start thinking. 2 things might have happened here :

- he thinks I'm opening more buttons SH than I'm opening from SB HU, so he's 3betting a lot to get me to fold. This is obviously weird but you never know.

- he thinks I'm calling more in position so he is 3betting a ton for value in those spots.

- he just happened to have good hands when he is oop.

Both 3 doesn't really makes sense, except the last one. So I decided to adjust immediately and just tighten up a ton so I could have a very strong range when I got 3bet, and open mostly from SB and CO to get his blinds since I was getting more than enough FE (especially from SB, weirdly).

But the real question is, once that is done, how do I really find out if I'm right ? I've tightened up so it's really unlikely that I will get a showdown soon, and so it's hard to find out if he is re-adjusting. Because if he is, then I should open more, or I'm giving up my button way too often right ? And how do I know my strategy is good, because it could very well have been the 3rd case where he is just running weirdly, or some combination of 2nd and 3rd case right ?

So the main question is this : once I adjusted (and especially by tightening up, since it's the hardest to get infos on frequencies), how do I find out if he is readjusting or not, and how to be sure I'm right ?

And another question : against this guy and after all this, I raise my button with AQo. He 3bets me as expected most of the time, and I decided that my hand was good enough to 4bet since he would probably call with a lot of dominated hands, and he would shove with them sometimes too (and I can call a shove). But instead of shoving, he makes a min 5bet, which to me from my micro/small stakes experience often means AA or KK. And I get really confused here, does he expects me to bluff often enough to make a shove profitable ? What type of hands is he 5bet/folding with ? Is he ever 5bet/calling with worse than AQ, with that history ? (note that by "history", I mean weird/aggressive preflop action but no showdown).

like feitrr said, it´s easy to find out whether he readjusted or not. you said that he 3bets every time from SB vs BU open. after tightening up just look whether he continues with that - if yes he´s not readjusting.

by the way another adjustments you could make are smaller raises from BU with the intention to call a lot and play postflop in position. you still can 4bet (bluff and value) when minraising the BU and it also has the benefit that a 5bet bluffshove gets less attractive since there´s less dead money in the pot.

now when you 4bet AQ (after folding to several 3bets, right?) then it´s a standard shove/shove-call.

if he is a thinking player he can easily level himself into "hmm I 3bet all the time..he notice that..now he don´t want to get pushed around and this is likely a 4bet bluff..so I shove my T9s and collect dead money or got decent equity when called."

his min5bet doesn´t matter and isn´t an argument for not going broke.

With 100BB he probably never 5bet/folds (if he does be happy cause he made a huge mistake..)

With that history you can call 3bets and play postflop or 4bet/call with hands like AQ, 99, 88