Players capable of folds v. players that are not

[benkahuna]

I've been thinking a lot recently about which players make for better opponents.

I'm mainly thinking about tournament situations.

It seems that it can be very difficult to do well in tournaments when you get called down a great deal, even when you have the best hand 90 percent of the time. I'm not even talking about players drawing with hands as good as OESD or flush draws.

It's it worth more to have players fold to you, or is it better to have players that will always call?

I realize this is a complicated question having to do with hand values, adjusting for calling stations or very aggressive players, etc.


I've just noticed that I always do better when people are capable of folding to me, even when I typically have many strong hands.

With 2-3 people that will call all the way in a 6-12 limit game with any pair, I get killed. It seems that my top pair, good kicker or overpair gets rivered by someone calling with a lower pair. I know I supposedly want them making those -EV calls, but when there are many of them, I wonder how helpful it is to me. It seems that by teaming up in me, those players may be able to knock me out even with very loose passive play.

It seems to me that because hand values run so closely together that getting people to fold may have better equity. Gordon talks about one of the values of aggression being that you don't get bad beat when you get people to fold, an advantage I think is overlooked, but that I can't decide whether it has more value.


Am I just irrationally scarred by bad beats and bad luck or is this topic worthy of serious discussion?