Playing poker against weak players

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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 | admin | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy

Submitted by Matt, this article belongs to the Poker Strategy series.

It is a well known fact that you will make the vast majority of your money at poker from weak players. It should be common sense that weak players are going to make more mistakes and as a result donate more money to the other players at the table.

Whether you are at the casino or playing poker online you should keep an eye out for players from countries where poker has only just started to become popular, places such as Romania and Hungary and watch out for people asking how to play poker card game. The broken English alone should be enough to have you rubbing your hands together with glee.

Although weak players are a joy to play with, they do need a special approach in order to maximise your profits against them. Firstly, never try to bluff them, ever. Even if you are thinking of representing a possible full house or stronger, your weak player will still call you often enough with second or third pair to make bluffing unprofitable. The reason bluffing does not work is they simply do not understand what you are trying to achieve by bluffing so they call anyway.

When playing against new, weak players you should value bet your hands to the maximum. Hands as weak as top pair are good enough to bet on all three streets against a typical poor player as they will simply call all the way with a wide array of draws, overcards or small pairs.

Listen to what their betting is telling you and act accordingly. They will lack both the knowledge and skills to make a decent bluff so if they have check/called the flop, done the same on the turn and then fire out a substantial bet on the river when the third flush card hits then they will have the flush almost 100% of the time so do not be making any hero calls!

Finally, although they will often suck out on you during a typical session you should try your utmost not to berate them at any point. Moaning about how poorly they played a particular hand will do one of two things, it will either let the player know he made a mistake, a mistake that he will be less likely to make in future or he may simply leave the table to find a less hostile one. Either way you will lose out.

1 Comment to Playing poker against weak players

braydenmark
February 25, 2010

It is a good idea to work out your budget, and ensure that you can see out the game. Coming to a table with a short stack is a very bad idea, as you will find that you will bust out quickly, and not really learn much from the experience.
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