Posted Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:25 am GMT by LoudonD
Been reading this forum for a while, learnt a lot from it. Got a question for you all. How do you read players who don't know whether they have a good hand or not?
A bit of background... I've been playing online for about a year. Started with $50, went down to $1.44 playing limit. Decided it was time to actually learn what I was doing wrong. Switched to NL, and through freerolls initially (wife wouldn't let me deposit any more money, very wise) then micro limit cash games, managed to build up my bankroll to over $100, cashing out $70 along the way. Still a beginner at poker, but at the limits I'm playing, I consider myself above average. All well and good.
My problem has been when I occasionally play friends at home games. They are impossible to read because they will play anything, thinking they're winning - low pair, middle pair, top pair weak kicker. At times when I have the nuts, they'll call you, losing all their stack and show you middle pair. At times where I've got a goodish hand, they'll call me all the way with nothing, or may have a monster or suck out on me on the river.
Playing tight mostly works, but there's always someone who gets a mountain of chips kindly donated by the donks, and with the blinds going up your down to coin flips.
Anyway, rant over. Back to the question, does anyone have any advice on reading bad players?
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Posted Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:11 am GMT by MrDarling
You can't read someone who doesn't know how to read their own hands.
Solution. Value bet good hands. check/call or check/fold marginal hands.
Playing with bad players its very easy to double up just waiting for good cards.
Posted Wed Feb 21, 2007 4:34 pm GMT by Muck
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. You don't need to get a read on idiots you have enough of an edge already.
Posted Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:40 pm GMT by Jauron
If they are calling you regardless of their holdings you don't need to suddenly get trappy (value bet) when you have a monster. They either call down with damn near everything or they don't. If it was as simple as they fold to really strong bets, you'd just adjust your bets when you bluff.
But I agree overall, keep the pot smaller with things like top pair or any pair and get lots of money in the middle when you are likely well ahead.
If they love calling but don't love betting preflop you can see more cheap flops when the blinds are lower and try to bust them with big hands early on. Against players who are very bad but also won't fold you do need hands to win, but you've also got to make the most of the hands you do get. If you flop big, you should be figuring out how to get all their money in the middle and how many streets it will take to do it. Against bad players I usually suggest just betting the pot on the flop and turn and pushing on the river with big hands.
You are not going to want to bluff very often if at all. You need to be in the pot with someone who is willing to fold to bluff.
Just remember if they are too dumb to know what a good hand is, they are way to dumb to figure out what you are doing, you can hit them with the same trick over and over again.
Posted Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:27 pm GMT by LoudonD
Thanks for the advice, will give that a try.
Think my main problem at the last game was that I was playing too tight preflop when the blinds were low, and as the blinds went up lost count of the amount of hands like 10-2 I had. Down to the last four, was short stack and got all my money in with 6-6 preflop, chip leader turns over A-10 and the A comes on the river.
I ended up really enjoying the end of the game though, as my wife who has only played a few times decimated his stack over about 3 hands calling his obvious bluffs and knocked him out. He made his excuses and left grumpily saying 'I'm surprised, I thought you were a bad player', obviously not coping with getting beat by a girl.
Posted Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:28 am GMT by pokerfiend
Yes, in home games, it's always good to limp in when the blinds are low. Early in the game, you mostly win the pots with solid hands. Then in the middle of the mini-tourney, use position to win your pots. i.e., steal the pots when you know your opponets don't have a hand. Then with a big enough chip stack, you should be able to finish at least in 2nd...
There is a page on my site that lets you know how to spot bad players when playing online... Though in real life, I don't think it's much different. It's mostly the excessive amounts of drawing they make on the turn and river and then only to fold in the end. Also the overbets are a good sign.
Posted Fri Mar 02, 2007 3:05 am GMT by snoogins47
Just giving up on 'reading bad players' because you can win anyway is like, really really bad. Really bad.
What you have to remember, is that it's often very hard to narrow opponents like these down to small hand ranges: by nature the sum total of "hands they could play like this" is often quite large. That doesn't change the fact that these players still give out a lot of information, and that they make tons of mistakes.
You have to be willing to push hard, over and over, with a wider range of hands than you might in other circumstances. For many of these bad players (and a lot of good ones) a straight call on an early street can mean almost any two cards: but raises are an entirely different story, especially with the bad passive players. Plenty of them will never raise with one pair... some will never raise with worse than top pair. Raises on the flop by strong players can often be draws, but in a lot of cases against these other folk, they're almost NEVER draws.
Look at this sort of stuff: sure, you'll still be pretty unaware of what exactly they have if they're just calling, but it's usually pretty easy to figure out whether or not your hand rates to be best on average (Even though "Any pair, any draw, big ace-highs" is a huge range of hands, you still know that if you've got something like second pair, top pair, etc, you can usually keep on firing and not feel too bad about it. especially against the guys who almost always raise if they've got top pair or better.
Interesting side note is that with quick tournament structures, the 'NEVER EVER FOLD UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES' M.O these guys have gets closer and closer to correct as time goes on 
Posted Fri Mar 02, 2007 3:28 am GMT by tame_deuces
| snoogins47 wrote: |
Interesting side note is that with quick tournament structures, the 'NEVER EVER FOLD UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES' M.O these guys have gets closer and closer to correct as time goes on |
Yeah this is absolutely awesome.
Say in the last blind rounds of an SNG:
1$ SNG, the BB calls with K3 cause he thinks it is an awesome hand.
10$ SNG, the BB folds K3 because he knows it is a crappy hand.
100$ SNG, the BB calls with K3 because he knows it's good enough against you.
To OP:
Actually this also translates into cash games at times. Often bad players will do the right thing! Often for the wrong reasons, but that doesn't change the outcome.
Also the flip of the coin is true. Good play may often look absolutely horrible to the un-initiated. I'm not saying that every bad player you see online is really a master, but beware of your own perception lying to you.
Posted Fri Mar 02, 2007 4:36 am GMT by snoogins47
| tame_deuces wrote: | | Also the flip of the coin is true. Good play may often look absolutely horrible to the un-initiated. I'm not saying that every bad player you see online is really a master, but beware of your own perception lying to you. |
Yeah, go watch some mid-high shorthanded fixed limit sometime
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