Playin BAD players.....

As Sklansky says, you play differently against a bad player than you do a good player. What are the main strategy changes?

Good players play you, you can use your table image to make elaborate traps and bluffs. What they are reprasenting might not be what they have.

Bad players play their cards, work out what they have, see if you beat it, and make them pay as mush as possible. Don't try anything fancy, they won't get it as they are only looking at what's directly in front of them.

Value bet them to death. Don't bluff. Position is always handy.

A bad player is someone with one or more glaring weaknesses. The way you play against them depends on what the weakness is.

Against a typical low stakes newbie type bad player the weakness are:

1) Calls too much with weak hands + always thinks you are bluffing
2) Doesnt raise enough with any hands.
3) Overvalues Ax
4) Pays too much to draw (similar to 1)
etc. etc. etc.

Looking at these weaknesses it is obvious that you should never bluff (because of 1), you should be very careful when this player raises you and should usually fold without something very close to the nuts and you should also be comfortable playing slightly weaker Aces than usual for value.

A sample hand.

You: AJo

You PFR to 4 times
Villain calls

Flop comes A65

You bet, villain calls.
(thats ok he probably has Ax because he likes that hand too much)

Turn comes 9

You bet villain raises big.

(Uh oh, I musthave run into something here. He slowplayed a set or he called too much for his straight or he hit 2 pair with an A9, A6, A5 etc...)

You fold.




Other types of players can be bad players for other reasons. If you notcie a player is too tight then keep raising them and stealing blinds + small pots, but get the hell out of the way if they raise you back.

The key is spotting the weakness. After that, figuring out how to exploit that weakness is pretty much just common sense.

define bad.
'one mans fish is another mans shark'

then i might make a post

Originally Posted by Miffed22001

define bad.
'one mans fish is another mans shark'

then i might make a post

Ok Miffed 200 words on each by 9 tomorrow
Bad player 1: Multi-tabling rock
Bad player 2: Calling-station
Bad player 3: Decent allrounder but remembers the first 2 cards he sees you play all night and assumes you play the same every time.
Bad player 4: Thinks it's limit. Only ever minbets/ minraises unless he has the nuts. Pretty tight.
Bad player 5: OMFG Itzzz liek teh WSOP on The TV. WtF he He Raised BeforE tHE FloP??? He mUst Haev Liek AK or sumfink or nuffink. The FloP missed Me But Its Liek Wot ThaT gUY Says WhER Pok3R Is All AboUt Playing ThE players Liek So im ALLIN.

Originally Posted by The K1ngpin

As Sklansky says, you play differently against a bad player than you do a good player. What are the main strategy changes?

Exploit their favorite mistake for the max. Usually this means slowing way down, stop applying pressure beyond the "did you hit this board?" point (I think "you can't bluff a calling station" advice is often misapplied because really loose players need to cope with horribly missing most boards and when they do hit, a tighter opponent will suck out more often than looser opponents.) Show them hands and hope they hold up.

On Fnord's theme of mistakes, bad players will simply make more, larger mistakes on their own, so often you can just play correctly and take their money. Or you vary your play and commit some small mistakes (e.g., play speculative hands), to turn their small mistakes into larger ones, but sometimes this isn't even necessary.

Good players will make small mistakes but avoid most big ones. So you MUST vary your play and use deception to force larger mistakes. The better the player, the more they vary their play, thus the more situational your decisions.

Trapping bad players is mostly useless, since they already trap themselves. All you're doing is giving away odds. I trap good opponents, aggressive opponents. The type who like to sniff weakness and make a play. I trap them to neutralize their edge and make them honest. Bad players are naturally honest.

No deception, no bluffing, really tight play. Just basically showdown good hands time and time again playing as straight-forwardly as possible.

Originally Posted by Pelion

Bad player 1: Multi-tabling rock

As a multi-tabling rock, I take offense to this.

I'm just kidding, and I understand that good/great players could run me over to a degree. I don't usually make big laydowns, because my read is not as strong as my hand...so basically you'd have to set my overpair, for instance, to get paid off. I don't feel like I give up a lot to good players, because they really have to hit a big hand to beat my big starting hand. It doesn't really happen that often. The one instance I could see is playing AK after a miss.

Regardless, I believe this is THE style to beat 25NL at a good clip. Are you really trying to outplay players who are clueless? I'm just trying to show them a good hand.

Yes, I probably mis-judge the best bet sizes at times. Yes, I sacrifice some profit by playing less hands against wildly loose/passive opponents. But I'm making up for that by multi-tabling.

I do see where this could become an issue at the 200NL level or so--but at the lower stakes, I think this is a mis-statement.

I didnt say all players who multitable are bad.

Read it again from the top.

Originally Posted by me

A bad player is someone with one or more glaring weaknesses

A multitabling rock has strengths and weaknesses. Their strength is the volume of hands they play. Their weakness is generally a lack of attention to reads and their unwillingness to play marginal (yet profitable) hands. Clearly this can be exploited in some way and exploitation = profit.

edit:

I don't feel like I give up a lot to good players, because they really have to hit a big hand to beat my big starting hand.

But they know that when you raise, you have a hand so they dont pay you off as much. Chips saved are just as valuable as chips earnt.

Originally Posted by Pelion

I didnt say all players who multitable are bad.

Read it again from the top.

Originally Posted by me

A bad player is someone with one or more glaring weaknesses

A multitabling rock has strengths and weaknesses. Their strength is the volume of hands they play. Their weakness is generally a lack of attention to reads and their unwillingness to play marginal (yet profitable) hands. Clearly this can be exploited in some way and exploitation = profit.

edit:

I don't feel like I give up a lot to good players, because they really have to hit a big hand to beat my big starting hand.

But they know that when you raise, you have a hand so they dont pay you off as much. Chips saved are just as valuable as chips earnt.

Can you give an example of some mediocre hands that you play at the 25NL tables while multitabling that you wouldn't normally play at higher limits or say a tournament?

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

No deception, no bluffing, really tight play. Just basically showdown good hands time and time again playing as straight-forwardly as possible.

Exactly.

Bad players think that their middle or bottom pair is da nutz. They figure that if they hit middle pair, they probably have the best hand every single time because chances are, you didn't hit the queen. Bad players will chase gut shot straight draws against all odds. Bad players will check when they have nothing and overbet big hands OOP when they are first to act. Some bad players trap with TPBK. I love and notice bad players live, I find it hard to sniff them out when online.

Originally Posted by Pelion

I didnt say all players who multitable are bad.

Read it again from the top.

Originally Posted by me

A bad player is someone with one or more glaring weaknesses

A multitabling rock has strengths and weaknesses. Their strength is the volume of hands they play. Their weakness is generally a lack of attention to reads and their unwillingness to play marginal (yet profitable) hands. Clearly this can be exploited in some way and exploitation = profit.

edit:

I don't feel like I give up a lot to good players, because they really have to hit a big hand to beat my big starting hand.

But they know that when you raise, you have a hand so they dont pay you off as much. Chips saved are just as valuable as chips earnt.

The weakness of the 'rock' is post flop play. A rock isn't paying much attention to who they're playing or the table they're on. They have a 'formula' and they follow it. E.g. they will always raise certain hands, limp others (PPs) and fold the rest. They will cont bet certain flops (or all flops).

Is this a rock who will play strong hands only and pretty much never put them down? Is this the tight passive rock type who plays tight pre-flop and is basically honest post flop? Makes bets with TPGK+ and not much with anything else?

If you're looking at a player who plays tight pre-flop, knows how to raise in position, plays well post flop with or without position, mixes up cont bets (even though they're not playing *you*, they're playing the board), reads betting patterns well, and has the capacity to make good laydowns or take a stab at the pot in certain situations, you're not looking at a player that you can exploit.

The fact that a player won't play KJ, QJ and suited connectors and folds KQ and AJ in early position, and folds his AQ to a raise is not in itself exploitable