How do you beat very bad players?

I've read these boards for a while now and other various poker sites, played a lot of poker online with marginal success, and read several books and lots of information on other sites, and i feel i'm a fairly decent NL Hold'em player at this point. I can hold my own against another player of my skill or better, but for some reason when i play home games with some of my friends here at school- i find myself losing way more than i should. Good hands that I raise with before the flop typically see 4 or sometimes more callers with garbage to mediocre hands, and almost inevitebly will not hold against all 4. The majority of them will call pot sized bets with things like gut shot strait draws...Trying to explain things like pot odds gets me no where. I can't tell you how many times i've made a 5$ raise at a 5$ pot (with a 3 card gap on the board) with something like trips or two pair, only to have it shot down by someone who called with a gut shot strait draw and hit it. Having 1 fish at a table is a dream come true...but playing against 5 is almost impossible. If any of you have ever played regularly against these kind of players i'd be interested to know how you beat them.

If they're calling everything, pairs are now virtually USELESS to you. Play for better hands (trips, flushes, and such), since they'll probably be betting to allow you to draw to these really cheaply and profitably. AA and KK? You'd better raise to like 7x the BB and hope for only one caller. )

Oh yeah, that raises another problem. We typically play tournament style with 10$ buy ins and .25/.50 blinds. So thats 20x the big blind to start with. Bets that big like 7x are so enourmous that its almost like equivelent to moving in with it, until later in the game wh en a few people are eliminated and you have more than 20x bets in your stack.

Well if you're playing with such short stacks to the point that everyone only has about 20x the BB...then...well...go and watch TV for a little while or just talk with your friends. FOLD EVERY HAND until half the competition is out. You'll be shortstacked, but you won't be facing 4-5 opponents every time you have a good hand.

With money that short just play a move in game and muscle the hell out of them. If you hit TPTK and you got 4 callers to the flop, and more importantly the flop does not look too dangerous, move in. You'll be surprised how fast you will wear them down and build your stack picking up that dead money. If you get called, you are likely ahead and should make some $ in the long run.

Basically, if you have a bunch of passive chasers you are looking to drag the pot on the flop without a showdown. You will wear down the other guys or bust them if they call. Once in a while you will take a beat but that's how it goes.

Get trickey and limp once in a while with AA and KK and then move in on the flop.

Push, push, push. Keep pressure on your opponents when you have a hand.

This strategy assumes that you catch some good starting hands or hit a solid flop. Don't try to bluff.

Don't stoop to their level and play any 2 cards as that will only get you in trouble. However, if they are that passive you can play you sooooted A's and sooooted connectors and hope to get lucky if you can see a cheap flop.

The difficulty in playing bad players is that it is impossible to put them on a hand but they don't necessarily realize that.

Finally, you absolutely want people calling every time with those gutshot str8's, that's where you will make the most $$$.

Originally Posted by PokerPatNEU

Oh yeah, that raises another problem. We typically play tournament style with 10$ buy ins and .25/.50 blinds. So thats 20x the big blind to start with. Bets that big like 7x are so enourmous that its almost like equivelent to moving in with it, until later in the game wh en a few people are eliminated and you have more than 20x bets in your stack.

Then your tournament is more of a crap shoot. The higher the blinds are in reference to the starting stack the less you are playing poker and the more you are play 'who gets dealt the best cards.' I could win half the time heads up against any poker pro in the world if the blinds started at 20,000/10,000 and we both start with 5,000 chips. Try to convince them to start with more chips or with lower starting blinds. That will increase the chance that skillful play will determine the outcome.

My home game is often the same. Two or three people will call any pre-flop raise, and see most hands to the river. This is because they have no idea how to value their hand or how to calculate their odds of improving it. They must see the cards to find out the value of their hand.

They're almost always playing with 7 cards, while you are playing with 2, or maybe 5 cards. You know the value, odds of improving, size of the pot, etc, and can calculate the right move is to fold. Of course one of them will actually have a nice hand with 4 people taking it to the river.

Just tighten up, like the others already said. At my last game, I only played one hand (I folded it on the turn) until two people were eliminated. I had a shorter stack, but still had plenty of chips to get back in it.

The other tactic is to push a lot. TPTK? Push. It's the only way to isolate a player in these circumstances. And if you get a caller, he probably has TPLK.

you just have to wait around for more solid hands like straights, trips, etc. Something like a set of 2's on a non-threatening flop is a huge money maker.

"I can hold my own against someone of equal skill or better."

That's paradoxical. What makes them better is that they beat you.

You meant to say:

"I assume I'll have less variance against a better player. I'll lose slowly, but still play respectably."

The actual truth:

"Against bad players, the variance is too high. Though I'm profiting in the long run, I'm having difficulty coping with the way poker rewards me for my good deeds.

Against weak/tight players who will fold against big bets without proper odds, my variance will be much lower but so will my win rate. I want that becuase what I've got now sucks."

-'rilla

i'd just push all the time myself, why the hell not. solid 2 pair and up i'ma pushin, at least until i double up once and have a nice stack advantage on them.

I've played in games like the one you are talking about (large blinds compared to the buy-in and increases every orbit), and it often does boil down to "who gets the best cards".

The key is really to just turtle up and push your premium hands. Fish only come in a few flavors, so it is often easy to figure them out quickly. There's always going to be at least one rock, a couple of idiots who think poker is all about bluffing with nothing, and at least one maniac who wants to see every flop and push anything with bottom pair or better (heck, even overcard or better). Many fish do not like to raise pre-flop unless they have a monster hand or they are on a stone-cold bluff. See the previous sentence for getting a read on who is doing what. Also, most fish have no clue about other players' betting tendencies, so you honestly can just fold everything and then mega-push your monster hand and still get paid off. Finally, most fish have no clue about slow-playing a monster hand. If the board is showing a flush draw on the turn and then all of the sudden, someone starts firing at the pot, put them on the flush and don't pay them off.

I realize that with escalating blinds and a short stack that you are going to have to hit something within the first couple of orbits to maintain your stack, but that is really the only risk in this kind of game. The key is to maintaining your discipline and really only going after pots that you know you can win. Chances are that you will always get at least one fish to pay off your big hand, and that is the other key. The nice thing about fish is that they are often very easy to read. The crappy thing about fish is that they have no clue about EV or betting for value and will sometimes outdraw you on hands that they have no business being in. They will overvalue any pair on the flop, any pocket pair, and they will rarely muck a pocket ace pre-flop, no matter how hard you push. Those are some of the axioms that guide my home-game play against the fish. Oh, and never "tap the aquarium", but that goes without saying.

You want them making these stupid calls. It helps you in the long run. Just keep playing good poker and punish them for playing bad when you have a good hand.

Case in point (bar tournament last weekend, filled with fish like you're describing; I think 4 people out of 30 have any concept of starting hands beyond "high is g00t"): I'm on the button with AJs. Limped to me (5 callers). Raise to 500 (initial chip count = 2500; current blinds = 50/100; my stack = 3000 or so). 3 callers. Board comes K 8 4 - all of my suit. Checked around, so I bet 500 (this is a standard "I have nothing" bet to them). SB counters by pushing. Folded to me (later learning that one player was disgusted at throwing away a pair of 8s, but didn't want to risk it all...would have called my bet). Naturally I call. He turns over Kc4c. He called a 5x raise preflop with K4. Because it was suited. Board didn't pair. MHIG. That one pot was enough to let me hang around 'til the final table.

It does go both ways, so realize when there's danger. Same player previously called my 5x raise (smaller blinds) with 45o (5x wasn't expensive to him then). Board was A23 rainbow. I held AA. After he called my pot-sized flop bet, I thought about his style, realized he could have anything, and check/called (small bets - barely fractions of the pot) to find that indeed he had hit.

If you can't raise to isolate don't bother, outplay them post flop. Play hands that can develop into monsters cheaply (pp -> set, Axs -> nut flush, connecters 7,6 and up -> straight), dont commit too much of your stack until you have a monster and then make them pay.

Don't bother too much with making them pay for their draws unless you have built up a stack already (bear with me) with mediocre hands like TPTK since a) its a tournament and not a cash game and b) the blinds are high compared to your stacks so you have to commit a lot of your chips to do this and c) they're gonna call you anyway.

Nut flushes, sets and straights (high end ones) is what you want and from my experience fish will let you draw to those.

Once you have managed to build a big stack then you want to start making them pay for their draws.

Just wait for that flush, street or fullhouse to come..

It sucks I know, Im playing a similar home game with about 6 players, 3 of them will run out there money in about half a hour cause they simply call anything (unless they hit that fullhouse or carre they where chasing for)

Wait let them illiminate eachother and get those chips back at the end

Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

"That's paradoxical. What makes them better is that they beat you.

That's completely inaccurate. By that rationale, everyone who is ever beaten is beaten by someone who is better than them. There are a few active threads about luck right now and about whether it's a significant part of the game or not. In this case, it very much is. The term "bad beat" would not exist if players only lost to people who were truly better than them.

Originally Posted by hagakure

Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

"That's paradoxical. What makes them better is that they beat you.

That's completely inaccurate. By that rationale, everyone who is ever beaten is beaten by someone who is better than them. There are a few active threads about luck right now and about whether it's a significant part of the game or not. In this case, it very much is. The term "bad beat" would not exist if players only lost to people who were truly better than them.

I believe luck always is a significant part of the game, I also believe everyone playing poker once made it till the river untill that one winning card fell while the odds where deadly against it. I surely know I had those games.

BTW otherway around 2, the games where after the flop you hold 4 cards for street and a possible flush, 2 cards later you still havent got a thing...
its what makes the game exciting, isnt it?

Originally Posted by hagakure

Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

"That's paradoxical. What makes them better is that they beat you.

That's completely inaccurate. By that rationale, everyone who is ever beaten is beaten by someone who is better than them. There are a few active threads about luck right now and about whether it's a significant part of the game or not. In this case, it very much is. The term "bad beat" would not exist if players only lost to people who were truly better than them.

No, by 'rilla's rationale, better players are better than you because they beat you in the long run. He never said anything in that post about "only" losing to better players.