how to beat the bad players

[SayGN]

lately I have been running pretty cold. I have $10 left in my account and will probably do a .10/.25 table later tonight. i had $40 and was playing 2 .10/.25 tables at a time and lost most of my bankroll on the river. this post is not about bad beats, but about the best way to build my bankroll against people who sometimes show no reasoning behind their play. When I am running fairly well I beat these tables but the last week or so has been hard and I have been losing. I know that some would recommend waiting for the nuts to play these people but Im sure there is a faster and more profitable way of gaining a bankroll so that I can move up and play with people who use their brains...people I can put on specific hands based on their actions. A good player who is running moderately cold should be able to outplay these people where I am failing. My cards are not so bad as to say that I couldn't do SOMETHING good with them, so my losses fall squarly upon my mistakes. At these tables I can't bluff but I also don't know what hands I can win with. So many times I'll get outkicked with TP2K but I see middle pair winning all the time. I am at a loss for how I should approach these tables and my BR is only at 40BB so I need to start winning rather quickly. If any of you have tackled a similar situation, how did you approach it and what type of play did you use to win without getting good cards?

[SmileyEH]

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i had $40 and was playing 2 .10/.25 tables at a time

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*sigh*

-SmileyEH

[TwoShedsJackson]

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what type of play did you use to win without getting good cards?

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I'd really like to hear about this type of play too /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[aces_full]

If you can't beat the bad players, who do you expect to beat? Bad players are easy money. You want to play against people who use their brains? Sure your variance will be lower,but it will be lower on both sides. You won't have wild downswings due to horrible suckouts, but you probably won't book too many huge wins. If you double your stakes, it's very unlikely that you will double your profit, and in fact, if the competition is better than you, you might even show a smaller profit than at the lower limits.

I think your first problem is with your bankroll. I see it all the time online. Someone starts playing the $25 NL games with a $50 bankroll, and then when they lose it all, they scrath their heads wondering where it all went wrong. I think as a bare MINIMUM you need $250 to play the NL25 games, and I think $500-$600 is an even better figure. I don't care if you are the best player in the world, you are going to lose sometimes, and sometimes you will lose big, or for an extended period of time. I had a bad spell that ran for about three weeks. During that time, I dumped 7X the max-buy in. If you only have ten buy-ins that's 70% of your bankroll. I wouldn't feel too comfortable playing with my last three buy ins. That's why I like to keep my roll at about 25X the max buy-in for the game. It gives me a certain level of comfort knowing that I can take a big hit and still have enough of a bankroll to keep fighting without having to resort to depositing more money, or dropping down in limits to rebuild (providing I can beat the higher limit and I'm just running bad).

On one other occasion when I was new to NL, I dropped 5X the buy-in in a single session. These big drops have been pretty rare for me, but a fluctuation of +/- 3 buy-ins in a session is not uncommon, so losing $75 (or more) pretty quickly at NL$25 is a very real possibility. If you are playing this game with $40, you have a VERY high risk of ruin.

Here is my suggestion: Take you last $10 and drop down to the .01/.02 blind NL game and play there until you can learn to beat bad players. Build some bankroll there, and save up until you can afford to deposit more money into your account. Another suggestion you might want to consider after spending some time at the penny tables is move to Paradise where they have a $10 .05/.10 NL game. You are severely underfunded and inviting disaster.

[SayGN]

yeah, I know...its pathetic to lose $40 on .10/.25 tables. I was a bad beat machine. My trip 10s with ace kicker got beat by a runner runner straight and my flopped rainbow straight that i got all my chips in with after the flop got beat by a 10high flush...good bye $30

[aces_full]

What do you do when the cards are running cold? Play tight it's the only thing you can do. It's hard enough to outplay bad players when you are running good (how can you outplay a guy who just won't fold?), but when the cards aren't coming, it's just not gonna happen. Furthermore, in NL it's easier to outplay and bluff people if you are on the big stack or have been on a hot streak. When you have been sitting at the table for hours bleeding chips away, no one is going to give you respect when you try to put a play on them-good player or bad players.

[SayGN]

you make some good points, perhaps tonight i will play at the penny tables instead. I do however disagree that I am not ready for the next level because most of my short poker career was spent playing on the .25/.50 tables on poker stars and I did fairly well until I played drunk one night (kicking myself). I am more successful when I do play at the .25/.50 rather than the .1/.25 and I suppose its because I can more easily put a player on a hand. When it comes to the penny and .10/.25 i see people win with Q5off in preflop raised pots all the time. Im not claiming to be a good player but I do know that I have more success on the next level.

[JrJordan]

A few comments I'd like to make...

I think the most important thing for nay successful poker player to learn is proper bankroll management. You could be killing a 5/5 $1000 NL game for all I care, but if you're not properly bankrolled then you're still a bad player. A buddy of mine complained the other day of losing $300 of his $400 bankroll in one hand when his KK lost to AK on a preflop all in. Even though he got the money in as the favorite, he's still an awful player in my eyes because he can't keep the variance under control relative to his bankroll. I think the comments about going to nano-limit are right on. I realize you're not going to be making the same money you're used to, but thats the price ALL OF US have paid to improve, and eventually become profitable.

Regarding the different levels, I think your results are skewed between the .1/.25 and .25/.5 games. After you've played 15,000 hands at each level, then you can just start to compare your ability to play each level. Usually when a person claims the higher level is easier for them, it means they are not value betting enough, or folding to an obvious made hand on an uncoordinated board in the lower limit. Ink out that extra value at the lower limits first. It will make the transition to the higer level MUCH easier once you have the proper bankroll.

[SpiderMnkE]

Ok... I can tell you haven't been playing very long just because you claim to be better at the higher limit of the two you are trying.

Noobs that think they are good always claim that it is easier to beat thinking players... "because I can put em on uh hand!" Don't be this noob

The truth is that poor players are always easier to beat. Maybe you ran good at the higher limit. How many hands do you have?

Take the advice about your bankroll... it sounds like at one point you were two tabling with your entire roll in play. Does that not seem idiotic to you!!! You can easily bust out of both games and be beggin for quarters from your mom so that you can play again.

[Jdanz]

Number one rule of poker, and everything else is a derivitive.

When an opponent plays differently then if he had known your hole cards you gain.

point being- every mistake your opponent makes is in the long run good for you.

Before you make comments about putting players on hands, you simply need to sit down and really think about how bad players effect a good player's EV.

-JDanz

(If any of that was too complex, you're not better at .25/.5 then .1/.25, not an insult to you, there is simply not a poker player on earth who is.)

[MisterKing]

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Here is my suggestion: Take you last $10 and drop down to the .01/.02 blind NL game and play there until you can learn to beat bad players. Build some bankroll there, and save up until you can afford to deposit more money into your account. Another suggestion you might want to consider after spending some time at the penny tables is move to Paradise where they have a $10 .05/.10 NL game. You are severely underfunded and inviting disaster.

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Agreed in full. You need substantially more than $40 to play .25/.50 NL. Two-tabling will only accelerate your demise.

[2283]

have a proper bankroll and play tight.

if you have $10 either deposit more or play .01/.02. you need at least $100 to play NL25, and that's a stretch. if you can't handle a few bad beats the problem is with your resources, not necessarily your play.