Perception of the "unbeatability" of bad players

[Maddog121]

I was cruising Allvegaspoker.com and came across a review of the Excalibur as follows:

"Competition Rating: 1
Competition Description: It's very tough because the players are very bad. Two words...human ATM. Most players there will bet anything and call any raise. Was at a table...our side were good players, the other side played any two cards. The other side sucked out WAY too often. No point in asking for a table change, since all the tables had players like that. If you have a clue of what you are doing, do NOT play here. Your odds of winning keno are better."

My question is- How can someone hold the idea in their mind that poker is a game of skill and skilled players will dominate the poor players and yet believe that games with poor players are unbeatable?

Why doesn't said individual just play "poor poker" if it works so well?

And, why does this person think they have a clue of what they are doing?

[steamboatin]

I love it when people think this way. If youcan't beat the terrible players, who can you beat?

It is an example of short term thinking. In the short run bad players can run good.

[tdarko]

sounds like a dream table to me /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[BUD]

Have you ever played a table where 8 people are seeing the flop? Or even 8 players will cold call a raise to see the flop? And then how about 5 of them calling to the river. I am sure you are good enough to see that this changes the game drastically. I agree that these players are very beatable. Yet, playing the same strategy that someone plays online or at a reasonably skilled game can create a huge short term frustration. TPTK or huge pocket pairs need help to win and often can not hold up to all of the flush and straight draws. Again i would guess that you are good enough to know this (but until you have experienced it) it is tough to really understand where they are coming from. I have played terrible tables where they made me feel like it was not possible for me to win a hand. On the other side I have won alot. The only comparison online to the games I am talking about would be low limit play money games.
Sincerely
bud

[AncientPC]

That's how the Pacific tables play, even at the 3/6 full ring level . . .

[cardspeak]

I find a lot of people think this way. IMO it comes from over-valuing skill in short term results and not adjusting to the conditions. I just came off a weekend of play at B&M 10-20 where most of the skilled players were getting their butts kicked by the loosey-gooseys, you know, the classic call the UTG TAG's pre-flop raise (he's got AA) with your 52 offsuit, catch a 2 on the flop and chase to river to catch another 2.

A lot of players expect "correct" play to dominate. Then when they have to endure hours and hours of loose players defeating said play by somehow filling every preposterous draw they form erroneous opinions.

Essentially, the presence of such players lowers your win rate (maybe into the toilet for any given session or string of sessions), but increases the size of the pots. I also find that many "good" players tend to pay off the bad players simply because they see them as stupid and probably "playing crap." Well, dumbos 75 offsuit which catches a pair on the flop is still better than your AK that catches squat. Yet, I often see AK betting into 75 heads up, reraising on the come, then grousing about how dumb 75 was. Maybe 75 isn't so dumb. He put you on big cards, saw a raggedy flop that helped him and figured you missed. So, I think "good" players sometimes help "bad" players succeed by building pots when they're actually the one chasing with a long shot.

[revots33]

If you play against a good player, he'll fold his A-9 to your raise with AA. A bad player will call your raise, and keep calling down to the river. I know which player I'd rather go against.

We notice the bad beats, but we don't notice all the times a bad player calls our raises only to fold to our final bet on the river. They muck their hand and we win a bunch of bets we wouldn't have won against a good player. Bad beats are just the price of admission for playing against bad players.

[Mike]

"My question is- ....poker is a game of skill and skilled players will dominate the poor players and yet believe that games with poor players are unbeatable?"

Poker is a game of luck (or probability, or...), there isn't really a 'skill' in our hand selection once we move past the flop in relation to which hand is most likely to win. We use our skill to play cards that should win more often than the cards the other people calling us are playing. If we are very good we can use our skills to get the most money in the pot.

So we use our skill to pick good cards, but we depend on luck (or whatever we choose to call it) for things to happen properly to make our hand good. 72o makes just as many full houses and two pairs as AKo. The skill comes in knowing that AKo makes other hands that make it more powerful than 72o preflop.

The poster who posted what you read was thinking (I am guessing) along these same lines. If eight players see the flop and five players see the river, skill becomes less important and luck more important because the number of hands we individually determine as playable become less important than the number of hands contesting the pot increase.

AA rarely beats beat 43o when 43 falls on the flop. So when the mentioned game conditions occur it is not a game for a newer player because a newer player simply does not have the skillset to make the correct decisions on when their hand is good as often as a more seasoned player. Newer players also lack the skills needed to know when there hands have more horsepower than they give it credit for, and even then when it's time to lay it down.

Many players I think can go splash around in games of this type but how many can really play them day in day out and show a profit? Many less than the number of winning players in general, which are less than 10% of all players, or so we are told.

If you do go and play this game, please let me know how you do, and what your strategy was/is. It would be good learning for us all. tx

[steamboatin]

These games are extremely profitable, but they are also extremely frustrating if you let that kind of thing bother you.

We are all studying our game and developing our skills so it is easy for us to forget that Poker is gambling. The reason for developing skils, is so that we can have an edge and get the best of the gamble in the long term.

[Maddog121]

I guess I look at poker like I do Blackjack. In Blackjack you put your money in when the count is positive and long term you make money. You don't let yourself get down over losing streaks. Games with lots of loose players are giving you the equivalence of many hands with a positive count. (this is what is neat about poker, the house doesn't care if you are an advantage player.) You will still have losing streaks, but if you get your money in when you have the best of it, those are the games you will make the most (especially LPG's, but still LAG's) The trick is to keep the eye on the prize. This is true even if you only have a 25% chance of winning a given hand but stand to gain 5 times your bet. I just get my mind around that I am going to have some nasty losing streaks, but it will come around.

[toots]

Whenever I think someone (or some group) is sucking out too often, I just humor myself by watching their stacks. Invariably, they shrink faster and get refilled more often.

All that money has to be going somewhere, be it rake, toke or better player, because it sure as heck ain't going to them, else their stacks wouldn't be shrinking. If it ain't coming to me, it's 'cause: 1) I'm card dead; 2) I suck at the game, too.

Excuse number 1 is much more comforting, although I suspect that excuse number 2 is probably more accurate.

[CORed]

Most people who think they can't beat bad players aren't very good players themselves. They may have read a book or two, and think they are good players, and probably don't play really trashy hands, but they have a lot of leaks in their game, The bad beats that they inevitably take playing against bad players are memorable. The little leaks in their game: The cold calls with Ajo (or worse), the 54s played out of position, the limps with A-rag off, the river bets they failed to make, failing to raise AK because if they miss the flop, they're going to have to fold anyway, calling the flop with TPGK instead of raising, because somebody's going to run them down and they'll just lose more, etc. are not memorable. So, they blame the bad beats they take from the bad players for their losses. These players are probably beating the really bad players for a little, but not enough to overcome the rake and their losses to really good players. Also, really fishy games are high variance. In live play, a bad run can easily extend for several sessions, which can discourage these players and reinforce bad habits.

In online play "You can't beat bad players" is often replaced by "This sight(sic) is rigged".

[CORed]

I think a lot of players adjust to loose games by moving in the wrong direction. They should be making lots of value bets and raises on pot equity. Their top pair may only win one time in three agaist 5 players (numbers are just for example, and may be way off), but instead of betting and raising for value, they play it passively, because they know it's going to lose most of the time. They bet the river and frequently get raised by the clown that caught his runner-runner trip 3's, repeatedly, so they quit value betting the river. They raise AK preflop, flop rags, and lose most of the time, so they quit raising AK. So when they do win, their pots are a lot smaller than they could be. In loose games, you are usually value betting on pot equity, and when you lose, it seems like you threw your money away, but the key to beating those games is building pots when you have the best of it.

[Mike]

I think people also forget it is not them against nine other players. It is them against nine other seats and that is a huge difference.

If these games were truely so profitable all the pro's would be waiting to get in them instead of sitting at a more predictable table.

[ShawnHoo]

[ QUOTE ]
I think people also forget it is not them against nine other players. It is them against nine other seats and that is a huge difference.

If these games were truely so profitable all the pro's would be waiting to get in them instead of sitting at a more predictable table.

[/ QUOTE ]

The first part of this post makes no sense.

The second part is just plain wrong. Pros/good players jump into games where there's a throng of known bad players. Heck, some of them give their cell phone numbers to cardroom staff to alert them whenever a game's particularly fishy. I've never heard anyone who plays for a living say "that game just has too many fish -- I'd rather sit at a tighter table."

[Mike]

Did you read OP or just jump in to the thread?

The better players I know, some pro btw, prefer soft quiet tables with predictable players when they have a choice.

If what you claim is true, why aren't we all playing micro limits? Surely there is no bigger single pool of players of that genre at one table with hundreds of equally poor players waiting to take a seat when one of their own goes bust?

[Al Schoonmaker]

There are three primary reasons that people whine about games with lots of terrible players.
1. They are frustrating because bad beats are so common.
2. They don't play nearly as well as they think they do.
3. They don't realize that the essence of good poker is to adjust to conditions. If they use the same strategy in extremely loose games that they use in tighter ones, they will lose AND THEY WILL DESERVE TO LOSE.

Their problem is not that the games are unbeatable. It's that they are too stupid and rigid to adjust to games that are extremely positive EV for anyone who knows how to adjust.

Regards,

Al

[ShawnHoo]

I read the OP; as I interpreted it, he's poking fun at the idea that a table can be so bad as to be unbeatable. It sounds like you're defending that thesis.

There is no reason why anyone who wants to make money playing poker would avoid a table where people will call with anything (or nothing at all).

I think the answer to the microlimits question is pretty obvious.

[toots]

You mean the pros don't make their living at $1/2 LHE tables? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Mike]

Some tables are so bad they are not worth playing. When your competition does not care if they individually drop four hundred each in a three - six game, you are usually in a situation where your chance if getting hurt has to be weighed against any possible wins. I do not know if you ever seen a big pot limit game going. In $10 - $20 pl I have seen perhaps a couple hundred thousand dollars spread across nine players and a tenth player sits down with a thousand. What chance does that player have? The same idea applies to overly wild limit games.

I do not understand what is so obvious about microlimits, that type of game is the position you are taking as a game we all want to be in, is it not? If I understand your comments correctly any average player should be able to sit down and make at least as much as they could off a single $3-6 game because the players are so inexperienced and overly loose calling raises and capping on anything?

If op had found a post saying a game was just loose and filled with bad players, yes that is the game we all want to be in, once a game goes to the edge between crazy and insanity, caution is in order.

[toots]

My main reason for playing poker and/or hanging out on these message boards is that I'm a pedantic misanthropic douchebag, and I get a big kick out of having my beliefs reinforced, seeing how dumb people are.

This topic just tickles me pink.

[ShawnHoo]

[ QUOTE ]
Some tables are so bad they are not worth playing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I've been in games where every other hand is a blind chop and people don't pay off sets with overpairs. Those are so bad that they are not worth playing.

[ QUOTE ]
I do not understand what is so obvious about microlimits, that type of game is the position you are taking as a game we all want to be in, is it not? If I understand your comments correctly any average player should be able to sit down and make at least as much as they could off a single $3-6 game because the players are so inexperienced and overly loose calling raises and capping on anything?

[/ QUOTE ]

If a person is a great currency counterfeiter, why wouldn't they just spend all their time making $1 bills? After all, when was the last time you saw a bank teller check a $1 bill to make sure it was legit?

Most "pros" would want to play the highest game available that they could beat that wouldn't also carry a high risk of ruin.

[ QUOTE ]
once a game goes to the edge between crazy and insanity, caution is in order.

[/ QUOTE ]

I nominate this for post of the year.

[Mike]

"Most "pros" would want to play the highest game available that they could beat that wouldn't also carry a high risk of ruin."

Hmmmm....now there is a thought.

[Maddog121]

I may have been overlooking the risk of ruin scenario. I had assumed one would enter a game with a sufficient bank roll to absorb the swings. If you have sufficient bank roll to absorb the swings, then you want the table to be packed with nothing but bad players. Overtime, you will be more profitable. Bad things may happen to you short term. As far as the predictability factor, the individual in question was saying the players would bet anything and call any raise. You can't get more predictable than that. In those situations, you do have to tighten way up, but, when you do play a hand, you should get paid off hugely. Not to say you won't get sucked out ever, but you should be sticking to premium hands and not trying to be fancy, IMHO.

[toots]

Yabbut would a pro be putting his entire BR, or even a significant (>25%) subset of it at risk at a single table, regardless of the table's dynamics?

Seems like he wouldn't be a pro for long.