Balance against bad players

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 11 September 2009 / Leave a Comment

One of the most consistent and obvious mistakes you see reasonable players make is to try and play a balanced, optimal and slightly deceptive game against weak or random players.

Against good, thinking players, you need to try and keep most of your plays close to the optimal line, and throw in enough deception that there is enough of an element of doubt in your opponents mind that your actions are not obvious. This is simply because the money to be made in poker does not come from other solid regulars. In fact, you are basically looking to just tread water against these players, making sure they are not profiting from you a great deal while both of you simultaneously go about winning the weaker players money.

Against bad/random players, your focus should rely much more on manipulative and exploitative plays, simply because these players are making such fundamental mistakes in many areas that there is no real need to try and play an optimal game - you just have to focus on one of the myriad of mistakes they are making and pound away. There is no need to try and balance your ranges against these players, simply because they will either not notice, or you will not see them again.

Many solid players seem to not understand this, and continue to play a style that would be fine against the regulars against the table fish. As an obvious example, you should not be throwing in the odd bluff pre flop re-raise or blind steal against very weak players like you do against strong ones. If they are overly tight, you should be raising them constantly with junk. If they are overly loose, you should be tightening up and trying to build big pots with your monsters. You do not need to think about optimal play or balance against players whose own games is so unbalanced - the fact they are playing so far from optimal makes them easy enough prey.

Poker is a game that fundamentally relies on you understanding the mindset of those around you. Solid regulars have a complex enough mindset that you just try and not to make many mistakes against them and bluff them just enough to keep them on their toes. Weak players do not need these sort of adjustments, and should just be trapped and attacked constantly, using the more manipulative and forceful plays of poker - which good players will spot a mile off - but who weak players fall for day in day out.

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