Playing against total unknowns

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 18 December 2009 / Leave a Comment

How much a player bets and what hands they play are much more reliable sources of information, simply because mistakes in either of these are major leaks that can be exploited.

A lot of poker strategy focuses on the adjustments you need to make to various playing styles - such as the differences in plays you should be making against wild maniacs compared to very tight passive players - but how you should be playing against individuals you have zero knowledge on is also an important area to examine.

If you play low stakes games (particularly low stake multi table tournaments, where tables break quickly and you are sat at a whole new table often), most of the players you will encounter will be completely unknown to you, and there are certain key methods that prove useful when confronted with new and unknown players.

The first key point is that you should stick to solid, aggressive poker against players until you are given information otherwise. Most of successful poker consists of just playing your good hands strongly, not giving free cards and generally letting the power of the cards and your bets do the work. Until you are given evidence to the contrary about a player's weaknesses, this should be your default route of attack.

In order to start playing looser, tighter, making more bluffs or not bluffing at all, you need to have some kind of information on your opponent, which brings us nicely to the second key point - you have to try and absorb every piece of information available. When playing against unknowns - especially in tournaments - you frequently have very little time to build a profile of them, which makes every piece of information they give out precious.

Of all their actions, the most important is to try to see what hands they show down and what size their bets typically are. Although how many hands someone plays is useful information, it can be unreliable, due to that player just hitting a good run of cards (a player who looks like a maniac over the last ten hands may just have picked up some great cards, and is in fact a very tight player). How much a player bets and what hands they play are much more reliable sources of information, simply because mistakes in either of these are major leaks that can be exploited.

Players who bet too much are easy to trap, players who bet too little are vulnerable to being drawn out through not protecting their hand; players consistently playing junk will be drained by constantly swimming against the maths, players playing only premium hands are vulnerable to having their blinds mercilessly attacked.

Poker is a game where information is king, but it is also a game where understanding the implications of having very little information is also extremely important. Being able to shift style depending on not only the things you know, but also on the things you don't, is crucial to maximising your winnings - particularly in low stake games where the player base is so large.