Playing against weak live opponents

Live Poker / Marcus Bateman / 05 April 2011 / 2 Comments

Following a question on my Twitter feed from wongkarwai, I wanted to look at one of the basic adjustments you should be making against weak live opponents other than just the obvious of playing strong, solid tight aggressive poker. Arguably the most fundamental area you should be focusing on against weak players in poker is how they respond to big bets.

All weak players really struggle to balance their play on big bets, and they generally fall into two basic big bet categories:

a) The calling station;

and:

b) The habitual folder.

Thinking about big bet spots is very hard. Most people dislike working hard, let alone thinking hard, and so to any recreational player it is much easier just to resort to a rough auto pilot when confronted with big bets. Rough auto pilots are very useful things to the astute poker player, as they give us a very solid guide to work with when thinking over the best routes in hands.

Calling stations are easy targets at any time in poker, but especially so ones who show a propensity for calling large bets. This leak enables you to generally err towards over-betting this player type to death, as their thought processes revolve around the principle that they are going to call as a general concept, not an amount. The actual size of the bet is largely irrelevant to their thought processes.

This obviously leads them to rarely change their calling frequency regardless of the bet size - a huge mistake and one you can profit from immensely, both by over-betting your good hands, but also in firing the odd small bluff if they have shown themselves capable of folding and you want to readjust.

The habitual folder generally works in the opposite direction, although this player type is a little more complex. These players generally hate and fear large river bets, and many pots they should have won can be taken away from them by a brave player.

There are however, two key problems with this player type that make them slightly harder to play than the calling station. Firstly, sometimes they do have the nuts, and even these players don't fold the nuts. Secondly, every player has a breaking point, and working out when this player type has just had enough of being bluffed and will start calling light is crucial to not just spewing bad bluffs down them.

The winning margins in poker are decided in many areas, but big bets are one of the most important. Weak players are generally very sloppy in this area due to its complexity, and this combined with the actual size of the mistake, very quickly adds up to huge profits to the astute players. If you are going to follow anything, follow the big bet patterns. Particularly live, where so much information is on offer, this area is usually a goldmine amongst weak players.

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Comments (2)

1. Dan | 15 April 2011

   I am one of these habitual folders and I am trying to find my way to not be so vulnerable to the big river bets

2. Nicholas Barnett | 17 June 2011

   I pby fold too much also, but the nice part is once you learn who these players are you find out that they seldom slow down in time. They have only 1 gear..naked aggression...so after a while you start calling and winning..they keep bluffing...and pretty soon you've picked up a buy in as insurance for the day they finally DO turn over a hand...fwiw