We are going to look at some of the tendencies that we will see from the worst players on the table and how we can exploit these tendencies to get a better win rate versus their play.
Poker is about being balanced and having bluffs a good percentage of the time as well as value hands and generally playing a mixed style so that people can’t read us and know how to play against us, if we only play a certain way then we are easy to play against.
However, this is exactly how many poor players play! So let’s look at how we can beat these unbalanced players…
Value Bet Often and Thinner
We are going to want to charge our customers for their weak holdings and draws against us, as these players aren’t going to be combatting our plays with re-bluffs often enough to worry about getting raised off our equity they are simply going to press “Call” way too much, we need to be printing money from them pressing that call button, so look to size up and get max value on draw heavy boards.
Shut Down Your Bluffs
These players are not looking to make big folds, once players have put chips in the pot they aren’t looking for reasons to not see what you have. So whilst making triple barrels against good players can make good moves, make sure not to try and get the calling station to muck any kind of showdown hand.
There are Many Types of Bad Players
Make notes on how your opponents are playing, as we said at the beginning of this post good players are balanced, but there are many ways to be a poor player, some will be too tight and only be in pots with huge hands, others will be too loose and bluff way too much, other players will be aggressive pre-flop but then way too passive post flop.
We are going to want to have different game plans to exploit each of these types of bad play.
Don’t Make Big Calls
So many bad players will only ever bet large on rivers with huge hands, so a simple adjustment we can look to make against this tendency is to over fold our hands.
The only exception in general to making big folds is when our opponents could have many missed draws in their range of hands, then we are going to want to look them up at least some percentage of the time.
Use Delayed C-Bets as Bluffs
Weak players will nearly always pick up the betting lead if they have a good hand on the turn, so if they do check twice to you, you can nearly always pick up the pot even whilst bluffing with a Delayed C-Bet. This can save us money on our flop bluffs against passive post-flop players.
Have a Solid Range
The players you will come up against are going into the battle that is the Poker Table half blind and just winging it as they go, we want to be going in armed with our ranges of hands that we will be playing aggressively.
So take your time away from the table to learn a good solid starting range from all positions that you will play with a deep stack, this way at least the easiest part of the game is done, we know which hands we are going to play from each position.
As an example, we have constructed a 6Max Table open raise guide for +40BB play, you can click the image to enlarge it and look in detail the hands we have come up with as a basic raising strategy on 6 Handed tables.
Looking for a New Poker Site to add to your Rosta?
We have been playing on GGPoker recently and there is some big money to be made there not only in cash games but they have huge tournament guarantees too and with a prominently Asian client base the action is wild!
Offering a huge sign-up bonus and up to 65% rakeback in some of their cash games! This is a juicy offer indeed from the guys over at GGPoker…
$1000 Sign up Bonus! T&Cs apply
They’re not just another Poker site, but they are revolutionising a new standard for poker rooms with their amazing unheard of fresh features.
The site offers a staking platform, stats tracking for all games, built-in heads up display shown on tables, Straddle and blind All in Action on cash game tables, All in Insurance and the ability to run boards once, twice or even three times. With generally a lower standard of play within the Asian market, these games are action-packed with plenty of fish to be caught.