Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 27 May 2009 / Leave a comment

Creating a good atmosphere at the table is one of the most important things you can do when playing with weak players.

Many people, and quite legitimately, do not play poker to make money. Instead, they like gambling, enjoy the fact that in poker they are playing other people rather than a house, and gamble for recreation.

These people provide most of the money that is ever cut up between professionals, and keeping them happy and in the game is extremely important.

There is simply no point berating bad players for any reason at the table, basically everything it can do is negative.

The first major thing that these players want is to be able to gamble. They did not come and play to fold a lot, and as a result, to keep them interested it is key that you are prepared to get your hands dirty and play as many hands as possible with them. This ultimately suits you as well, as although the variance will be much greater, ultimately any edge you have will be increased by playing more hands with them.

The second point about these players, and one that is so common place it boggles the mind in my opinion - that of berating weak players for the way they played a hand. This is fundamentally so bad for many reasons. Firstly, it encourages weak players to start thinking through their strategy in a more in depth way, clearly a bad result as the number of mistakes they make will go down.

Secondly, they will feel under pressure to only play good hands and not look like an idiot, and you will frequently see a happy go lucky, weak loose aggressive player turn into a tight passive one because of such comments - a terrible result for the other players as it makes it much harder to win large pots from the weak player.

Lastly, it creates an atmosphere of tension and unfriendliness. If you are gambling to make money you do not mind this on the whole, as it often feels like a job anyway, but if you are gambling purely for recreation this can be enough to make you want to stop playing. There is simply no point berating bad players for any reason at the table, basically everything it can do is negative.

There is one rare exception to this, which is to berate a weak player who tells everyone that they are very good, on the basis that it may well tilt them. With this player type well timed comments can prove extremely profitable, with their massive ego proving their downfall as they try and out play everyone as often as possible.

Poker should be a fun game to those involved. Although it can be extremely frustrating at times, it is important that you keep a lid on these frustrations, both to keep yourself tilt free, and also to keep a good atmosphere at the table for the weaker players around you.

Get 40 percent Rakeback at Betfair Poker