I've called a few more of these monkey bluffs than I like at the $100 game lately with AK or JJ to a scary but A free board. Invariably it is a Swede with a gutshot or a even more invisible running draw in my raised pot after my continuation bet, I'm running good against this aggression either way.

Maybe 2/3 pot isn't enough, or they assume I raise QJ and A3 is good, or that I'm overly weak tight and can't call that bet with out the stones. I have no real clue as to what Scandanavian poker players are thinking when I stack them by four times and they play into my raise, but it must be, "He didn't come here to gamble, I did!". Maybe my username is listed as a soft spot on an European poker forum, but it has happened enough to me lately to note it.

The same type of person enjoys making weak hands like small pairs and suited connectors 7x the blind but under-raising/betting very strong hands, I think the key to recognizing this as a bluff is an opponent that normally plays for value goes ape with all in. Since they normally would wait for the turn or make a reasonable raise the all-in is a steal. This would be a bad LAG that isn't playing his good hands fast enough and making calling with either 6 outs or having to dodge 3 outs a better than even money proposition.

I see some of these monkeys that are on the verge of being very good LAGs once they learn to use folding in someone else's raised pot with out a hand technique and play the good hands the same as the bad. I think the majority of them will go broke fast and it isn't from a lack of action 7x raises.

Have you seen this move yet:

New player sits down to the table and posts up the new player blind (after the button, of course). Action limps or weak raises to the new player who... bets 5x BB or more. Typically that's gotten the Button to fold, so they've bought position.

Now almost regardless the flop or the action to them, they raise and raise big. This is typically enough to get everyone to fold to them. They're new to the table, so no reads. They're representing a big hand and nobody's got the stones to not believe them. So they pick up a nice buffer and keep playing LAG with it.

Yet if you happen to have a hand and wind up calling them down (or trapping them all-in), they typically have somewhere between jack and squat on the flop, and usually on the river, too.

I see this happen all the time at the limits I play ($10-$25 buy-in). I've taken to calling these jokers down every single time as long as I have at least a pair and nobody else is tossing chips around. My goal every time is to get their stacks in the middle on that first hand.

I see this so much that there is no way I believe that a new player in CO can possibly have that good a hand that frequently. Heck, I figure that I only have to be "right" about 50% of the time I get their stacks in if I'm to break even. I'm right a lot more than that.

The ending of this move is that they invariably leave the table right after I bust 'em.

Sit down, bet hard with any 2 random cards, run into an intelligent player who has you beat, foolishly keep betting for whatever reason you keep betting, lose your stack, and leave the table. That's good poker!

It is good practice to raise any two you are willing to play when additional money is in the pot from people posting or straddling. J9s with two people posting is an open raising hand for me, and has been fairly successful on the whole playing this way. I never post to play, but I do straddle sometimes, and raising your own post or straddle is a fair enough play to buy position or iniative.