Learn Texas Holdem

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1) Some guy makes a raise of about 5x the BB with position. Everyone folds but one caller. Flop comes up A-5-3. Caller checks, raiser makes a big bet that gets called. Next card is a something unimportant. A check and the raiser puts the guy all-in with a $2 and change bet. The guy calls. The raiser had AJ. What did the caller have? A suited 75! And what hit the river? A 7! The guy shouldn't have been in there pre-flop after the raise, he shouldn't have called on the flop, he shouldn't have called on the turn and he won it on the river with one of his 5 outs (he wasn't on a flush draw).

2) I make a pre-flop bet of 6x the BB with KQ spades. One caller. The flop comes up A-3-7, no spades. Leading off, I make a half-pot bet to try and steal and the guy immediately goes all-in. I fold. He shows what he had - a 43 off-suit. This was a different guy too. When I asked him about why he called a huge pre-flop bet, he says "It was only 60 cents!" Again, the guy never should have even limped in with that garbage, never should have called a raise, and never should have went over the top with low pair, yet I was an underdog to win had I called.

My brain sufficiently hurt, I left even though I left turning the $10 I brought to the table to over $25. Most of that was when someone with nothing kept on betting into me with two Aces on the board when I had one in my hand (I almost folded that one because I thought I might have been out-kicked with my 7 - the concept of being out-kicked eludes these people as well.)

Here's my question: How does someone play with bad players? I don't mean a little bad, I mean complete morons (as you can see above). Is it worth even trying or did I do the right thing getting out of dodge? Do I need to get into the higher stakes to apply what I have learned about position, implied odds, semi-bluffing, table image and check-raising? I feel like I went to college to get a degree and I'm working at McDonald's unable to put any of what I learned to use.

Thanks,

Brian

Answer: When you play good players you can use semi-bluffing, bluffing, position and betting various amounts to make it tougher on them because they have some semblance of rationality. On the other hand if you use those same tactics against an unthinking player, it can be surprising how quickly and how much money you can lose to them. Does that mean that you shouldn't play against really bad players and look for better players?

Absolutely not. You'll often hear people complaining in live cardrooms about how bad players are at a certain limit and how it is somehow easier to beat a higher limit because people are playing "correctly." That just goes against logic. Clearly, the person who you want to play against is the person who can only beat you if they get lucky. You don't want to switch roles and have to rely on luck to win, for example if you were up against world class competition. The key to beating any game is using the correct weapon from your arsenal.

Generally speaking, you should always start out by playing a straight forward style and only get tricky when you have to. At the .05/10 level you'll need to show the best hand everytime to win and semi-bluffs, bluffs and betting based on position only won't turn much of a profit. On the other hand if you were playing 50/100, you couldn't win if you didn't start playing more aggressively and tricky. The best advice I can give to beat really bad players in no limit holdem is to play more cards against them preflop and try to hit a big hand then make them pay.

If there is a lot of raising preflop then you will have to tighten up but if it only costs you a nickel to see the flop and the pots are over a dollar each time, you'll get a very good return on most hands you'll play. What we are trying to do here is exploit the player's biggest weakness. In the case of no limit holdem and novice players, the biggest weakness is calling too much money postflop with weak hands. To maximize our return, we will try to put ourselves in more situations where we can take advantage of this weakness( and hopefully their whole stack).

You want to be able to trap them in a hand and extract the maximum amount from them. You'll do far better with that strategy than you will with raising in late position with a hand like KQ and then trying to bet them out of you miss. You can still use some of that strategy if you like but you won't make much money against them doing it. Be careful though, because the more hands you play, the more tempted you are to continue with marginal hands that will actually trap you. Be very clear what you are looking for with the hand before you call with it.

For example, if you played a hand like 56o in the back in no limit holdem after no one had raised, you wouldn't be happy with a flop that came back 5 or 6 high only. You are looking for two pair, trips, a straight, or straight draw. The same goes for hands like JT, 87, J9, 46, etc. Top pair can get you in a lot of trouble if you can't let it go. Patience is essential against the bad players. And if you get frustrated waiting, remember that in holdem, a whole day can be made up of just a couple key hands.

Sometimes it takes a while to hit one, so just keep waiting for the one big flop that you can stick it to them on. Note -- you wouldn't apply this strategy to limit holdem because the pot in relation to the preflop bet isn't large enough. In no limit you can call for a little preflop and double through.

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