Beating Novice/Bad players

[Delanger]

Am I right that the best strategy for beating the novice, bad, loose and unfortunately annoyingly lucky player is to stick to a tight agressive play?

Any other tips, suggestions, strategies?

Thanks,

Liam.

[Sh0rtyoo7]

Weak/Novice games on the outside seem the easiest to break; however, many of us know that is definitely not the case. The key for many experienced poker players to winning is information. Playing with weak players where calls that shouldnt be made are and monsters are slowplayed to death makes the game tough.

I myself play in a regular home game which is slowly evolving into a better game, away from the weak game I've accustomed myself to dealing with. There are two major strategies in my experience that provide winning results in these types of games. Before you decide which is right for you you must learn the players of your game.
1) Strategy 1 is best used against the 'callstations' of our home games. (the players who dont know when they're no longer good in the given hand, and often pay you off) play tight against these players and be patient. When you've made a hand, bet it big and in my experience, get paid off. Keep an eye out for draws on the board against these players as novice players play solely on luck and have no idea about pot odds.

2) Strategy two can evolve from strategy 1, but best save this strategy for the more timid novice players. Play a tight and aggressive style. Pull out more bluffs than you normally would at decent pots. If you raise a good hand preflop, always raise the flop afterwards an amount that would cause the timid player to fold his missed flops. If a call is made, you must immiedately feel danger. Watch the draws on the board and go back to safe mode.

Knowing when to use both styles when against which players will take you to being the overall winner night after night week after week.

[faytlnd]

Yes, I would agree with the above. Just figure that against most novice/weak players you will win with tight, aggressive play. However you should be aware that you will probably take more bad beats in these games, especially if the players are playing "no fold em" and call you down with everything. So the key then is to make sure you push very hard with your top hands, and bluff a little less in those types of games. Yeah, you will take some bad beats when they suck out on you, but the pots you win with your big hands will greatly outweih the bad beats you take.

You might also think about picking up a book to read through, I defintiely found that it helped me in beating the weaker players on a consostent basis. I would suggest Small Stakes Holdem by Miller. It deals with these types of no fold em games, and even if you are not playing small stakes, the strategy holds for higher stakes games with weak players who play with the same mentality as the weak small stakes players.

[KenProspero]

Generally, a spiked mace works best for beating any player, in my experience. Of course it's rare that they return for another game if you do this (and if they would return, are you really sure you want to associate with them).

Ok, seriously -- I find bad players to be problematic. In a regular game, it's often someone who is 'sitting in'. So the real question is the game competitive or fun.

Let's assume it's competitive -- if you want the bad player to keep coming back, you have to make sure that s/he is having a good time and doesn't realize that you're mentally putting all his chips in your stack as soon as he buys them.

But ... that's not your question. In general, tight aggressive play will get the most chips from the loose, bad novice. Expect greater than average variation in your play. Try to figure out the range of hands this person really plays, and act accordingly.

[smoore]

We've recently hashed this out a couple times, take a look at these threads and then reply here with more questions and discussion:

Big discussion

Rehash 1

Tells from n00bz

There's some good stuff in those threads, very good signal to noise ratio.

[Schmag]

In one of your posts in the second link, you commented how the tourney structure was wierd. (20$ buy-in, no re-buys, blinds start at 1/2 and get doubled every half hour). What is wierd about that structure (I've only been playing for about 6 mos now)? And what would be a good home game smallish (7-15 or 7-20) structure including payout (assuming buy-in of 10 or 20)?

Thanks very much.

[smoore]

Blinds doubling make the structure "weird". It turns mid-game and late-game into a complete crapshoot. Almost as bad as "blinds go up as players are eliminated". I try to build a big stack early in these games.

go check out homepokertourney.com, it's a great site and will have you well on your way to running a quality game.

[TomHimself]

if you pay top 3 for small games i like
50%
30%
20%