Putting loose-fishy players on hands

[toots]

So, I play these online microlimit games, and I'll often see four or five people, not counting the blinds, seeing the flop.

Huh. There are four or five aces in the deck? Four, I can believe, but when I'm sitting in the big blind with two of the aces and four other people call, I find it dang difficult to figure out what the heck they're playing.

For the most part, I find that this means that I have to play ABC O8: Either I have the nuts or I don't, and just prepare myself to get double-counterfeited by the river, only to see some fish scoop the pot with a 46 low and three of a kind, 7s. It doesn't hurt too much, because I figure it's all coming back my way sooner or later.

Even still, I am finding that I have an enormously difficult time figuring out where I am with these people. Yeah, I know if I have the nuts, and if I have a draw to the nuts, but that's about it. I will often lose pots when my nuts don't hit (or get counterfeited), and I assume that the reason the other guys are raising like a gaggle of drunken freight trains is that they backed into the nuts. I'm often wrong, and only discover after folding that I probably woulda won.

Which then leaves me chasing pots that I probably shouldn't.

I'm stuck.

[Ironman]

Come on Toots.

You know what to do.

Look for the good hands. Be diciplined. Throw away the A 2 3 when the flop comes 6 T J.

Play from late position with good hands and then be the aggressor with a raise of your own with good cards.

You WANT to play in these games with 6 or 7 people seeing a flop. This is a dream come true.

Have fun.

[toots]

Yes it is, and I don't run from such a table.

It's just that when playing Hold 'Em, I can often figure when someone's playing 72o and catches a pair of deuces on the board.

I guess the two things that are bugging me:

1) There are a bunch of pots that I probably ought to call down, even when I don't have the nuts, and I'm not clear if there's any way I can discern those

2) It's just dang uncomfortable playing my cards and my cards only. I mean, yeah, sit back, wait for the nuts and jam them. In stud and Hold 'Em, I usually have some idea where the other guy's at - like the guy who'll raise PF with any raggedy ace, or the guy who figures that pocket crabs are gold when 7 go to the flop.

When I'm in an ultra fishy game like this, yeah, I'm raking in some pretty heft pots and seeing a nice win rate, but it's like flying on instruments. Sometimes, I'd like to have some idea what the other guy's doing, just so I can play him instead of my cards.

[Ironman]

I do admit that at this point more often than not, I'm playing the cards rather than the people. That is a problem of mine that I'm working on with the help of Pokertracker.

I don't seem to have the same problem when I play a tournament...I'm working on it.

I've been playing O8 in casino games for 4 or 5 years now and I have much better luck at those games. I only started playing online at the beginning of the year, so I figure it will take me awhile to get to the same spot.

While I'm learning to play online, I have to think that folding when you have the best (marginal) hand is less trouble than getting in the habit of taking a hand too far.