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Getting to the question:

I sat and played for 7 hours in the same seat. For the first 5 hours, the table had very little turnover. I was able to create the table image I desired, and it worked to my advantage. I'd estimate the average age of the players to be 30 years and all seemed moderately to very experienced. I was able to determine this through the number/quality of hands played, speed/decisiveness of decisions, discussion about hands afterwards, etc. On average, 4-5/10 people saw the flop, 2-3 would showdown. I was successful during this span of time, and accumulated an additional $100 in chips through solid play and an occasional bluff.

The problem:

As it approached dinner time, my opponents one by one left the table and were replaced by married couples in their 70s, single men in their 60s, a frail man in his 80s, and of course the half blind and half deaf man who had to sit directly in front of the board. This turnover happened very rapidly, and I quickly began to notice a drastic change in play. Aside from the fact each hand took twice as long to complete, we now had an average of 8 people per flop and 5-6 people per showdown. This game had now shifted from respectable to a lottery. ((prime example: I raise preflop with AK, 5 callers, flop K 10 7 rainbow, turn 5, river 3……I lost to 3 5 offsuit!)) Needless to say I began to lose huge $60+ pots to rags, as people were literally playing every hand and calling down to the river whether they had anything or not. I was too inexperienced to know to just get up and leave before it was too late, and over my final hour my hard-earned profits from the day went up in smoke.

The question:

At what point do you determine that the quality of your opponents is so poor that it's more profitable to just get up and leave the table, or do you illicit a new strategy and continue to play against them?

Thanks in advance for your time,

Matt, 24, Philadelphia PA

Answer:

The answer to the first question is never. You never think that a game with inexperienced players is a bad game. It is the exact opposite. You make money in poker because other player's make mistakes. The better they play, the less you'll make in the long run and the more you'll have to not make any mistakes just to eke by.

What you are encountering here is what I assume a lot of online players are as well when they try to play live: the games don't resemble online games. Online games are made up of much tighter players, some of whom do their research. This means less action. And you want action. You look at any online poker site for the percentage of players seeing the flop at a $2/4 game and it will be in the 30 percents if you are lucky. Offline, multiply that by two! (And that's just the norm.) The games are loose with multiple players calling the whole way with next to nothing.

Make no mistake, this is what you want. I overhear new players sometimes making comments like, "there is too much chasing in limit, you have to play no limit to win," as if chasing were something you didn't want. Then you hear things about low limit holdem and bad beats, as if there aren't bad beats at bigger limits. (Trust me, bad beats exist everywhere.) At the live games you'll have plenty of bad beats, what seems like more so than online, but what matters is how much you make. What is happening is that with so many players drawing against you, their collective force is huge, so much so that you lose the majority of the time with any hand. Even with AA, you are only going to win a fifth of the time. That's ok though. Again, you care about money, not how many pots you win. Online, most the time if you raise you'll get one or two callers, win and take down a little $20 pot. Offline, you may take down a rack pot sometimes, even at a 2/4.

I encountered this same problem when I first started playing when I was 18. Back then, there was no online poker. I had to play in live games at an Indian casino. It was $3/6 holdem with a kill. Before I went in, I had read some books, but even then, the literature was really limited. What I read taught me enough so that I wouldn't lose a lot. I had no way of winning, no way of beating those really loose games. The problem was that the books that I read, my fundamental way of beating poker, wasn't suited for games like this. I look back now at how I was playing and it would have taken a miracle for me to win. I was doing what the books said and it wasn't working. The problem I had was that I didn't know enough about the game to adjust. I knew how to play cards based on position and hand strength alone. My post flop skills were weak and I didn't know how to play extra cards. Only looking back now do I realize how steep the learning curve can be for a new player. Loose games are the most profitable, but they can be tough to beat.

Before I get to strategy, it is important to understand the opponents. Why do players play so badly? First of all, at a 2/4 holdem table, you are going to be encountering new players. The less experience you have, the more likely you are to make mistakes. That's the biggest reason. After that comes a whole host of other legitimate reasons for why people are so loose. Some players come to just gamble. They realize that they are most likely going to lose, but they like the action. Other players just don't care. They have money and they like to play, not wait for cards. Winning isn't the goal, having fun is. Other players are there just to socialize.

Now for some tips on beating these games. Coming from an online, book read player perspective, you have been taught this:

- hand selection is key -- key meaning you are trying to always be ahead preflop

- position is a function of hand selection -- meaning you play looser in the back than up front in hopes of minimizing the times when you limp in with a weaker hand than opponents

- drawing isn't that profitable since the number of players in online games is usually just one or two postflop

What you need to learn is this:

- different gears -- gears are speeds/looseness/aggressiveness/passiveness that you switch to based on the game type.

- different gears have different hand selection

- hand selection in loose games doesn't have much to do with position

- post flop odds (implied odds)

- value betting

- draws

- variance

Having different gears means that you have the ability to adjust. You adjust to the game. It is very important to understand that you can't beat all games playing only one way. For example, in your question above, you mentioned a change in table state: some tighter players left and some looser ones sat down. Ideally, after you have picked up on this, you adjust your game some to accommodate their play.

How you adjust your play is of course firstly hand selection. Secondly, you adjust by how aggressive you play. You've been taught up to this point that position matters a lot. It does matter, but not in all games. I have a fundamental rule for hand selection that can be summed up in one sentence: The value of a hand is a direct function of the amount of players who call preflop and we estimate that number by the previous hand history.

This is much different than what is taught in most books. Let me give an example... Say the previous five hands have had five plus players calling the flop. Our previous book smarts suggest that we don't play small pocket pairs, suited connectors or Axs in early position. Our new rule says we do limp with these hands. ("Limp" means just call.) If the previous five hands had five plus players calling, chances are that this pot will too. And if it does, we get a nice price for our weaker hands. See the goal to beat the loose games is to give yourself as much opportunity to outplay your opponents as you can. You outplay them by making better decisions.

You can get away with playing many more hands than in a tight game, because the bad players butcher postflop play. Next, to use the rule well, we have to know what a good hand is based on the looseness of the table. In a tight game, hands that do well are high card strength. Now when I say high card strength, I don't mean AA. AA, KK and AK are always good. What I'm talking about are other hands like 55, A8, etc. When the pot is heads up, you want hands that do well when no one improves on the flop, hands that win showdowns when no one gets anything -- having Ace high is much better than King high, for example in heads up games.

This isn't true in really loose games. In really loose games, you want hands that if hit, will be big, because you know damn well someone will have something by the river. With lots of players drawing, chances are one pair won't hold up that often. That doesn't mean we stop playing AA, it just means we start playing more hands too. Let's go over a few groups of hands that are playable, ones that you may not have played before:

Axs - Ace rag suited is a good hand for these games, especially the A2, A3, A4, A5. The reason is that you have a nut draw for the flush. Also, when the flop comes back low, and you have the wheel, players often keep chasing with their big cards, when they are drawing totally dead.

JT, QT, KT, AT - these are considered trouble hands in most books. I would play them in really weak loose games though. You can make the nut straight with any of them.

22, 33, 44, 55, 66, - again, these hands are ones that books suggest only playing in certain spots. I would recommend limping in from any position with them. If you catch a set, you have a very strong hand, one that you can raise and reraise on the turn or river with these hands. You'll hit a set on the flop around 12% of the time. That is very generous considering how much you'll make on the set when the bad players call. Notice also that your chances of hitting a flush or straight draw with a suited connector is around the same as the set. The set though is a made hand, while the connector still has to complete to win.

Middle Suited Cards (2 gaper max -- T8s, not T7s) - Q9s, J9s, J8s, T8s, 97s, etc. - these are strong hands in the loose games. They do very well in volume pots. You play them to the flop and try to hit a good draw, then go from there. Much of what you do in loose games is just see a lot of flops as cheaply as possible, then ream the opponents when you connect.

Kxs, Qxs - in the above hands, I would play them from any position in a really loose game. With these hands, which are bad even for the loose games, I would only play them when I was near the dealer button. The reason is that you want to have a lot of callers just limping in. If I had four or five callers, I would limp in on the button with K2s even. The key to playing this well though is to know what you are looking for. Hitting a King on the flop is not what you want. You are looking for the flush draw. (But you wouldn't mind hitting the King high flop and having everyone check to you.)

* suited connectors aren't listed here as I assume you are already playing them. One tip though, is I would play them from any position too. Example: limp in with 98s. These do well in volume pots. Likewise, the strongest hand in loose, volume pots are big suited cards -- AKs, AQs, AJs, etc -- since they have the biggest drawing potential. You can hit a straight with them, and have the nut straight, you can hit a big pair or two pair, or hit a big flush.

Now let me just jot down some other random notes for beating loose low limit holdem games:

- Be prepared to lose racks and win racks. You'll lose more hands and win more hands. Online you aren't used to losing a full buy-in. Offline, get used to it. If you play $3/6 or $4/8, be prepared on any given day to be in for two or three racks and still pull off a win of two or three racks. Everything is just more. When you win it will be bigger and when you lose it will be bigger. This is normal for loose games, and a good thing. Remember that in the loose games it isn't unusual to see a pot that is a rack (100 chips) or even sometimes two racks in 4/8 structure games (4/8, 20/40, 40/80, 80/160). See, you don't care if the bad players run you down all day, as long as you pull a few good pots. This is important to understand because it is very different than online. Don't panic if it takes 4 hours to win a pot offline. Everything can change very quickly.

- With your strong hands, like sets, two pair, flushes, etc, learn how to maximize their earnings by raising on the turn.

- Raising with big draws. If you have hand like the nut flush draw, don't be afraid to cap the betting on the flop if there are many players in the pot -- many would be 4 or more. This increases your overall winnings. Also, as the pot gets larger, players won't fold as much on the turn and river. I would do this with nut flush draws and also open-ended straight draws that are to the nuts. See this goes back to odds again. If you are going to hit your draw around a third of the time but you are getting 6:1 on the money you are putting in on the flop, it makes sense to put in as much as you can.

- Occasionally, when there are lots of limpers, raise in late position with hands that don't normally merit it, hands like small pocket pairs and middle suited cards -- the hands that do well in volume pots. What you are doing here is putting in one extra bet, but you are getting a lot of return on your money. Also, on the flop many players will just check to you and you can take a free card. This is raising for value and building a pot. You don't want to do this if it will cut off players from calling, as your hand would prefer that they were in.

- See that turn card. When it only costs one more bet, and there are lots of players in the hand, see the turn card if you can. This is something that I didn't do for a long time. I would look at my hand and throw it away, since most of the flops I missed and I didn't think the odds allowed me to call. And I'm talking about really loose calls like 33 when the flop is J - 9 - 2 or when you have T8s of spades and the flop is Js - 4h - 2c. Often times that turn card brings a draw that is worthwhile by the odds, just getting to that part wasn't. With the T8s, the turn card could be a spade, or a 9 to give you a good draw to the river.

These draws are profitable because the flop bet is so small and the return is so large when you can checkraise 4 opponents on a big street. You can't really prepare yourself at home for these odds calculations because you don't know in advance how much the bad players will pay you off if you hit. You can make generalizations though, like "if I call this one bet and hit a flush draw on the turn, I'll have an 18% chance of winning a pot that could be at least $40-60." If you look at it in those terms, it seems "more correct" to put in that two bucks with next to nothing. Another tip is to see the turn if you have a pair or a gutshot and it only costs you one bet.

Say you have A4 and the flop is J-9-4. You have five outs that are most likely good and if you miss, it only costs you one more small bet. Also, many times players will bet the flop and everyone will call, then everyone will check the turn. This free card can be big, but you can only get it if you called the flop. Another situation is like this, 87 with a A-9-8 flop. Here, you could catch a Ten on the turn, or a 7, or an 8 and continue. Again, all these draws are profitable only if the game is loose. You wouldn't want to chase this much when the game tightens up. So the point is to consider a single flop bet to be negligible in a loose game.

- Calling multiple bets preflop. Say you have a hand like J9s, one off from the button. If someone raises in early position, even if it is a tight player who you know has a strong hand like AA, you call the raise based on how many players also call it. If you get four or five callers, you call too. This goes for all the hands. Again, you base whether you call or not on how many other players are in. Your hand doesn't have to be the best preflop to make money, as long as you have a lot of opponents who play poorly postflop. Even if the opponent who raised has AA, all the extra money in the pot buffers you from his edge.

- You still need to pay attention to tight players. Loose play, especially calling raises with weaker hands, won't win unless you get that extra money in from the other callers. You don't want to turn into a player who is calling everyone's raises in heads up and three-way pots with weak hands. Also, against a preflop raise, in a multi-way pot, you would prefer to have a hand that is "out-of-the-way" of the raiser. You would want 76s before you would AT. The AT may look nicer, but it will just get you in trouble. The 76s will do well in the multi-way pot and you won't lose much with it -- either you'll connect with the flop, or muck. If you are less experienced with hand reading, I would suggest avoiding tight player's preflop raises when you have hands that might be in their way, even in volume pots. Those hands would be the trouble hands above like KT, AT, etc.

- Open up out of the blinds more. If there are lots of players in, and it only costs you one more bet or a fraction of a bet, see the flop. Even the trashiest hand gets good odds out of the big blind when there are six players in with two bets.

- You can tighten up some if you feel like you are playing too loosely. Just because you get a suited connector, doesn't mean you have to play it. If I've taken some nasty beats in the past few hands, what I sometimes do is slow down the pace for a bit to make sure my head is on straight before I enter into another hand where I might not be the favorite.

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