Dealing with regulars
Marcus Bateman
/
Marcus Bateman /
16 July 2009 /
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Poker is primarily a game of people, and as such you have to use a different set of tools against each individual.
At the mid and high stakes, you will start to regularly encounter the same players day in and day out, as the group of players grows steadily smaller with the rising stakes. As these players will typically be profitable players, how you play your hands against them is radically different from how you should be dealing with any unknown fish at the table.
As these players are both profitable and observant, it is much more important that you go to much greater lengths to mix up your game against them - as your history with them, and your intentions for future hands - are of vital importance to how you play each hand when involved with a specific regular.
Against weak players, the money is usually won just by playing aggressive and solid poker. Isolating, building big pots with big hands, and exerting as much pressure as possible will nearly always win all the money against fish. However, against regulars who also understand this, changes have to be made to stop your play becoming too predictable.
Much more creative and mixed up plays have to be used against regulars who know your game well, plays which against weak players would nearly always be mistakes. River check raises, calling bets with nothing (or 'floating' as it is usually called) with the intention of taking the pot down on later streets, or re-isolating players attempting to isolate a fish with marginal hands, are all plays that start to become useful in making your game very hard to read and deal with for an observant player.
Poker is primarily a game of people, and as such you have to use a different set of tools against each individual. Against bad players the tools you need are relatively simple, but as the caliber of player you are up against starts to improve, so you must start adding much more marginal and dangerous plays to your arsenal in order to not become predictable and easy to read.
Although solid regulars will never provide a huge amount of your profit, they nearly all will have some weaknesses if attacked properly, and by mixing your game up against them you also make it much harder for them to profit from you.
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