playing "strong" vs "weak" players

[eastbay]

My 2 cents on this idea of "I don't like playing against weak players."

Well I sympathize with that a lot. But I think it's not a "strong" player I want to play against, it's a sort of weak-intermediate player who has a clue what can win and what can't, but he hasn't yet learned to play with any deception, and you can read him like a book.

This is the key. You want players you can read. Otherwise your profits may be good, but your variance will be painful in the process.

So I want neither "strong" nor "weak" players. I want players that are easy to read. Call them what you will.

When the flop comes 733, I want to be certain that someone didn't play 73. At a table full of idiots, you can't be sure of that. At a table full of some-clue players, you can make that determination with confidence. This is why people are afraid of the weak players.

[SevenStuda]

Optimal opponents should be weak-passive players.

[cferejohn]

I find that in NL tournaments, I prefer to play against weak-tight players (i.e. rarely raise, often fold with decent, but not great hands) than weak-loose players (call down with almost anything). Generally speaking, the evolution of a poker player goes:

weak-loose
weak-tight
loose-aggressive
tight-aggressive

That's taken from an article that was I *think* written by Mason some time ago. It certainly describes my evolution, and I think that of many others.

In limit cash games, weak-loose players are your bread and butter. The "schooling" effect that makes these questionable calls not as bad as they would be in a no limit or pot limit game, where you can manipulate pot-odds much more effectively, so enough of these players win often enough that you can usually find a game with several of them if you look around.

This kind of weak-loose behavior will bankrupt a player very quickly if he plays any kind of no-limit though, since he will be making much much larger FTOP mistakes when making these calls. Therefore, generally there aren't a lot of these sorts of players around in NL games, and those that are are usually playing at very low limits. Its important to spot the ones that are there, though. However, they are distinctly different than the other type of "bad" player, weak-tight. If you merely qualify them as "bad" without being aware of their mistakes, you can end up in trouble when weak-loose calls your bluff with third pair when most other players would have folded.

The sorts of players you would rather be up against in NL (especially tournaments) are weak-tight. Players that can be bluffed out of big pots. Someone very eloquently stated in another post in the last couple days that in a tournament, you would like to pick up as many uncontested (i.e. no showdown) chips as possible. Weak-tight players offer the most opportunities to do that.

Playing weak-tight is, generally, more profitable (or less unprofitable) than playing weak-loose (that is to say at a table full of weak-loose, the one weak-tight guy will probably be a winner, long term). That's what I think people usually mean when they say they prefer to play against "better" players. They want to play against players who are:

Weak-tight players are also probably the easiest players to put on a hand. What they will call with is limited, and they won't play back without a fairly strong hand.

That was all a little rambling, but I like to think there were some good points in there somewhere. Someone smarter than me please feel free to elaborate or disabuse me of that notion entirely.

[loco55]

well whether in a tourney or not i cant stand those hyperactive players that are supposed to be weak. first u need to take some time to recognize them being weak, second dont ask me why but they often draw to a better hand than yours or give a third person the possibility to trap you and the maniac with a checkraise after u called a significant bet to draw.