Without a doubt, the majority of people reading this article on the Betfair Poker blog will often be missing out on tons of value. I include myself in that statement. After completing a poker session I will often sit down and look through my Poker Tracker 4 database, go through hands that I played and see a ton of spots where I could have extracted more value from a hand.
Missing a couple of value bets here and there during a session can often be the difference between that session being a profitable one or not. Tough, thinking players are usually quite difficult to get value bets paid off from as they sometimes sniff out your value bet and fold to it, or even get out of the way earlier in the hand.
Weak players, however, are prime maximising value from and not just from value betting rivers.
Famed poker player and author David Sklanksy once penned the idea that whenever you make a mistake in poker your opponents profit and when your opponents make a mistake you profit. This is true even if you lose the hand. Weaker players make more mistakes than good players, which is why they are so profitable to play against.
When a weak player is seated at your table, you can bet your bottom dollar that any thinking player worth their salt will be looking to help themselves to it chips. This means you need to isolate the weak players whenever the opportunity arises.
By this I mean raising in an attempt to get heads up with the weaker player so you can take them on one-on-one in the hand and increase your chances of claiming some of their stack. Players who limp preflop are prime candidates for raising and players who are loose-aggressive preflop but play fit-or-fold postflop should be three-bet relentlessly with a much wider range of hands than you would against your thinking player.
Weaker players generally like to chase draws and call bets on all streets with poor holdings so you can increase your bet sizes when you are up against them. While your standard bet sizing after the flop may be, say, 50% of the pot, against a weak player you could increase this to 2/3 pot, especially if you have a strong, made hand.
Likewise preflop. In today's cash games it is quite common to open the betting with a 2.5 or even 2x the big blind raise in late position, but I you have a weak player in the blinds who calls raises liberally and is bad at postflop poker, why not increase that raise to 3.5x, 4x or event 5x the big blind? Sure, they may fold but often they will call the oversized bet and create a larger pot, with you in position and with a skill advantage to boot. A superb scenario.
Last for today, it is sometimes worth your while taking a calculated risk in order to potentially put yourself in a position that is favourable. For example, a few nights ago I was sat at a full-ring tournament table where the two players to my immediate right were very weak players, players who called almost any bet preflop and were simple to play against postflop. The rest of the table seemed solid and were playing rather tight.
In one hand I was under the gun and had been dealt Ks9s, which most players will usually fold. However, I opened the preflop betting round with a raise. Why? Because the benefits of being able to potentially play in position with a suited king in my hand against to complete fishes way outweighed the risks of being called or three-bet by one of the more solid players at the table.
When in a hand, always be thinking about how you can maximise the value you're getting from your hand and you never know, after a few sessions your profits could start to rise.