Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 95
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Part 3:
Opposition
The mix of opposition you will face varies greatly on location and stakes, but the players themselves can be grouped into a few categories.
Type A: Very good (including pros and semi-pros)
Yes, there are pro and semi-pro players lurking around even the lower limit games in Vegas, especially the $200 buy-in NL games. They are the prototypes for the TAG style promoted here on FTR and other places. These guys are the little bags of money in Poker Tracker and you’d like to stay away from them if you can. You can usually tell who they are because they make a strong effort to laugh and have a good time while concealing the fact that they are playing almost no hands. And in NL games, expect these guys to come in with a 3X BB raise on almost every hand they play to limit the field (and this works because a large number of players at the NL games are playing with scared money). Tight-aggressive-aggressive.
Type B: Seasoned casino poker players
These players have been coming to Vegas for years and pre-date the internet/TV poker craze. They are generally smart, thinking players (they will actually pay some attention to how you play), but tend to be conservative (they wouldn’t consider playing suited connectors that aren’t face cards, for example). Tight-passive-passive or tight-weak.
Type C: Seasoned home game players
These folks also understand the game well, but have received most of their poker experience playing at home with family. They tend to be older and are conservative, but they have relatively wide starting hand requirements and will take low pocket pairs too far. They will play any ace and will call with low pocket pairs that don’t improve to a set. These are the people that feel their pocket 4’s improved when the board paired aces because they now have two pair. Beware when these people raise after the flop, because they don’t it very often and when they do they generally have the nuts or close to it. Slightly loose-passive-passive.
Type D: Newer home game players
These players are the typical Saturday night poker game guys. They generally play pretty well, but they may be thrown off by the game structures available in the casino (many home game players play odd varieties and the strict structure of casino poker might bore or confuse them). They are used to playing shorthanded, so while they are generally pretty aware players, their starting hand requirements are extremely wide and not well suited for a full table. They also watch too much TV (more on that later!). Loose-aggressive-passive
Type E: TV Junkies
This majority of this player’s experience is from watching TV and perhaps beating up on their dorm-mates in 4-handed home games. Hyper aggressive and willing to make ‘big laydowns’, they outthink themselves often. These guys play any two cards and play them aggressively. They will beat you just as often with 53s by hitting a wheel as they do with aces up. They bluff frequently even in very low limit games. Loose-aggressive-aggressive
Type F: Never played before
There is a faction of players at casinos who have literally never played before. Ever. These people play 90% of the hands dealt to them and call literally everything, probably not even raising with nuts. They might just be starting their poker career and you have a good chance of winning all of their chips, so be nice to them! Loose-passive-passive.
The various limits and games attract a different mixture of the above types. The lower limit games on the strip seem to feature a disproportionate amount of Type E and F players, but don’t be surprised to sit down at a table where everybody is a Type E. The places that attract younger clientele (Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and Aladdin, in particular) seem to be a magnet for Type E’s. And if you have even one Type C player at your table, be very concerned with hands like pocket queens and kings if an ace is on the board. There is a high likelihood that something like A6o may be in the lead.
Small Stakes Hold 'Em talks about not intimidating your opponents in ring games, and I completely agree with that. Many of the TV-fans wear sunglasses, hooded sweatshirts, and stare intently at their opponents trying to get a ‘read’ and it really just doesn’t work in these games. I recommend dressing normal, smiling, having fun, and winning their chips before they’ve had a chance to realize that you’re always showing down a better hand than them.
It’s interesting to note that many players (mainly types D, E, and F) will acutally remember that you have hammered them in the past and may give you a bit of respect on future hands. However, they are generally unable to stop thinking about their cards for very long, so expect to get calls from these people on the earlier streets, but you may actually be successful bluffing them out of pots on the river. But only once you’ve dealt them a serious blow. Generally bluffing is a near impossibility in these games, but this is a rare circumstance where it works occasionally.
When you hit a low limit game on the strip, you need to be prepared for a wild ride. Imagine a Party Poker .5/1 table with 7 or 8 fish and you get the idea. While it’s good that these people are overplaying their mediocre hands and paying too much for their draws, the shear quantity of people in every hand reduces your winning chances by quite a bit. You will win fewer pots than you’re used to, but they should also be larger than you’re used to. I’ll let the experts go into detail on strategy in obscenely loose games (these games are often even looser than the ones SSH models), but suffice it to say that it’s difficult to rely on top pair top kicker as a winning hand. The games can be frustrating because the same player will win a hand with a monster and then come back and win the next hand with second pair and a 2 kicker. It’s very difficult to get a read at any given moment, so strong draws have a lot of value because you can simply play your cards and not try to figure out your opponents. If you don’t hit your draw you can just fold, but if you do hit it make everyone pay you off.
With that in mind, each session in these games seems to either go very well or very poorly, not usually somewhere in-between. I can personally attest to this pattern, and it really does seem consistent. I believe that a good player can generally beat these games consistently given enough time, but the fact that you will lose a larger number of moderately strong hands (things like TPTK) than you would in a tighter game and you are relying on draws that may or may not come in means that you may spend a long time bleeding chips until you hit your one big hand. If the game conditions don’t tighten up, it’s usually a good idea to keep plugging away even if it feels like you're banging your head against the wall every time your pocket kings get cracked by 85o.
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