To be a winning poker player you need to adjust your game to take advantage of bad players and hang in there with the good ones
Thinking about your hand versus your opponents’ isn’t enough – you have to size up your foes and quickly decide whether they’re good or bad players
On the surface, chameleons and poker players have little in common. One is a colourful small reptile and the other is a human being with a fondness for clicking buttons or throwing clay chips onto a green felt. However, what they do share is a common need to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive – chameleons by changing their colour and poker players by altering strategies depending on whether their opponent is good and tricky or a predictable fish.
That may mean tightening your out-of-position calling range against good players or value-betting middle pair against calling stations. Unfortunately (for them at least), too many players forget that playing good poker is as much about adapting to your opponent’s tendencies as it is having a set strategy of your own.
We’re now going to look at three vital poker concepts – bet sizing, bluffing and position – to illustrate the adjustments you should make when playing good and bad players.
Bet sizing
To a bad player a bet is often seen simply as a bet, with little thought given as to what the sizing may indicate about the strength of your hand. As such, you should keep your bet sizing very straightforward. If you have a strong hand and feel your opponent has something then bet big, close to the full pot size, for maximum value. The same is true for when draws are on the board. Charge your opponents the maximum – if they have a flush draw they are just as likely to call a pot-sized bet as a smaller one because they are not thinking about pot odds or maths, only that they want to hit their draw.
Against good opponents you have to put more thought into your bet sizing to try to manipulate their actions. Overbetting the river for value is one example, as a good player will instantly recognise that this generally polarises your hand into a monster or a bluff, allowing you to get paid off in some spots where a more standard smaller bet would have elicited a fold. Similarly, experiment with small bets of a third of the pot against aggressive opponents who are likely to view this as weakness and raise you. Put yourself in your opponent’s shoes and think what sort of bet size would confuse you in their position. Get it right and you’ll find your opponents making calls and raises in spots where they shouldn’t.
Bluffing
Bluffing is pretty easy against bad players. You simply have to know if they are capable of folding and have a good grasp that their hand isn’t very strong. The most important element of a credible bluff against a good player – being able to represent a real hand yourself – is almost irrelevant against weak players. If you spot weakness, just fire away and expect them to fold if their hand doesn’t improve.
Executing a successful bluff against tough players is altogether different. You can’t get away with aimlessly firing away any more – your actions have to tell a credible story or you’ll be called down all the way. When embarking on a bluff, try to think and act as though you hold the hand you are representing. For example, say the flop is Jc-5c-2s and you check-raise your tough opponent because you think he doesn’t have much. He calls you. Think about what your hand looks like to him now – it’s either a set, a strong top pair or, very likely, a good flush draw. So if a third club arrives on the turn, this is an excellent spot to continue your story and fire once more, putting good opponents to very hard decisions with a hand such as A-J.
Position
Position is always important in no-limit hold’em, but against a bad player it’s slightly less important than against a good one. As your profit at the table is far more likely to come against bad opponents you have to make sure you are in as many pots against them as possible, even if that means you’ll be out of position for the hand. So, if a weak player raises your big blind you should be calling much wider than usual, as you have a chance to play heads-up postflop against him where he is likely to make big mistakes. Similarly, if it is folded to you in the small blind when a weak opponent is in the big blind you need to have complete rags to consider folding. It’s not often you get the opportunity to feast on the fish heads-up, so you can’t afford to pass up these opportunities.
On the contrary, it will be nigh on impossible to show a profit against a good player if you are playing the majority of hands out of position. Folding all marginal hands out of position against them and focussing on playing aggressively with regular three-bets from position is going to be the best approach. That way you can keep pressure on them and have the initiative in hands going into the flop.
Make sure you don’t get into ego wars with good players though, in position or not. You’re at the table to make money, not to impress people. Being out of position in a pot against a fish is still going to prove more profitable than being in position against a good player, so choose the opponents you wish to go to war with carefully.