12-21-04, LearnTexasHoldem:

Playing Against Unskilled Players

Question/Comment: I would consider myself an average player and pretty much play whenever I get the chance. Which is actually very often. I read anything I can get my hands on and like you said do not dwell on following these books in doing everything they say. I recently have come across a problem in my game and have not been able to come up with an answer to my problem. I'm not even sure there is a real answer to this question. How do you play against unskillful players? Ignorant players that watch to much WSOP, think that anything can come up and that odds are B.S. For example in a game i was in last week. It was just a friendly game $10 buy in, but nevertheless I wanted to win. I knew I was playing with people that never play and really have very little concept of the game. Anyway I have KQs and I'm on the small blind. A player in early position raised, no callers and the button reraised, so I called and the initial raiser folded. So it's myself and the button. The flop comes KQ4, so I obviously like the flop. I make a small bet and he raises me, so i push him all in. Risky because he did reraise preflop and he did reraise when the flop hit. Anyway I had a pretty good sense that I had the best hand and I did. We show our cards and this guy has bottom pair with an Ace kicker. He makes another 4 on the turn and I lose the hand. I think a terrible play on his part, but even worse than that he says it was a great play and that he's a good player and i feel like everytime I play with these guys the same thing happens to me. I always say eventually the odds will catch up with them, it seems like it just never does. Any suggestions on playing in this type of game.

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Answer: First of all, try to separate winning specific hands and being seen as a good player. Your goal is to win and not to prove to everyone that you know how to play well or that you are better than they are. I find that when I get my ego involved I tend to play worse than I would have otherwise. You end up calling more hands down that you wouldn't have, sometimes just to show the other person how lucky they got to beat you.

Playing against opponents who's skill is much lower or higher than yours can be problematic. Last night when I had a few friends over someone wanted to play holdem. I ended up not doing that well because I was over thinking everything they were doing (these weren't serious card player friends). It was really hard for me to put any of their play into context. One instance I even called the river with no pair like I would in a normal game I play in -- if I felt like something was off with the flop and betting -- and sure enough though, my buddy had the other 3 giving him a fullhouse.

The screw up was on my part because I wasn't able to adjust to the way he was playing. Often times playing bad players isn't easy because they don't even know what they have. You can lose more money on marginal hands when you would normally be betting for value (for example with middle pair the whole way after someone checked to you). Don't get me wrong, playing against bad players is ideal but you have to be careful of a few things so you don't end up playing the wrong style against them.

On your good hands, you are going to bet the same way you normally would. The only difference might be to just occasionally lay some traps that better players might not fall for (slow playing big hands, etc). Also, if you can get away with betting more chips against them and still get calls, great. The slight change you'll make against the poor players is with your marginal hands. The danger with a marginal hand against a bad player is that he will call you down with a better hand but be afraid to bet his hand himself. Let me give an example. Let's say I was heads up against a good player and I had middle pair. If I bet and he just called I would be pretty sure my hand was good.

On the other hand if I had middle pair against the bad player and I bet and he/she called, I wouldn't know what to make of it. I would probably bet again on the turn card and if the player still called I would probably just check the river. You want to use their passiveness when possible to minimize your loss on these gray hands where you aren't sure if you are best or not. Against the worst players I just like to keep the game really friendly and passive because they usually play the same way (check if they don't have anything and bet only when they do).

Laslty, if they don't do a lot of raising preflop, try to limp-in in no limit games and hit something big. I try to play as many hands as I can against really bad players (especially in late position). The reason is because I can easily fold and if I do hit, I can usually extract a lot of money from them. That wouldn't work in a limit holdem game though, you would end up giving too much money back.

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