Playing Against Weak Players
In the past, I’ve said that I believe it’s incorrect to develop a signature style of play. The reason is simple: In tournaments you will approach all kinds of different player and situations and there isn't a magical style of play that is right in all of those situations. You should have an arsenal of different "games" that you can always have at your disposal. In this article I'm going to explain how I play against very weak loose and passive players. If I get a lot of positive feedback on this, I’ll turn this article into a series.
I like to call the style of play I discuss in this article my “circuit game.” I use this label to categorize the inexperienced loose and passive players you often fi nd in WSOP circuit events. The same caliber of players can be found in the WSOP Main Event as well.
Basically, these guys don’t really know what they are doing and tend to call all the time, both pre-fl op and post-fl op. They don’t know how to properly play their good hands aggressively and simply call all the way with hands that should have been folded. If you aren’t a tournament player, you may fi nd these same players in your home game. Early on in tournaments, when the stacks are still deep (let’s say a bare minimum of 50 big blinds, preferably 200+), I like to play around seventy to eighty percent of my hands against these players. Generally I can limp in cheap without having to worry about too many pots being raised. A huge percent of my focus is towards trying to make a big hand and get paid off as much as possible. The chips that I lose from calling pre-fl op only to fold my trash on the fl op are negligible compared to the huge pot that I’m trying to set myself up to win.
If the stacks are really deep, you should fi nd a good spot to overbet your big hand. Let’s assume the blinds are 25/50 and you are 20,000 chips deep. There are three limpers, you also limp, and both the blinds come along. You have 10-9 off-suit and fl op gin on the Q-J-8 fl op. There are 300 chips in the pot, and a blind leads out for 200. One limper calls, and everyone folds to you.
You could make a small raise and string along at least one of the two players, almost guaranteed; but if you do that, it will be hard for you to get paid off big. If either player is REALLY bad, you should consider making a huge raise to 2,000 or 2,500. To an extremely inexperienced player, this won’t be much different than a raise to 800. He’s still not folding his J-10. The raise isn’t THAT much of his 20,000 stack and the implications of the exact size are way over his head.
It is important to understand that you are NOT doing this to get an extra 1,500 chips out ofhim. You are doing this to bloat the pot andget a very large portion of his stack on the turn and the river. Let's say you made it 2,500. If you get one caller, there are now 5,500 chips in the pot. If you bet 5,000 on the turn, and then 11,000 on the river, you’ll have a good shot at taking 18,500 of his chips. Notice that I don’t recommend moving all in on the river to try for his last 1,500 chips simply because very inexperienced players will suddenly become scared if their entire stack is on the line. If instead you had made your hand on the river and there was no time to bloat the pot, you could try massively overbetting and just saying, “I’m all in.” Every now and then the inexperienced player will just assume you are bullying him, especially if he has seen you raising and betting big a lot without a showdown, and you will get your miracle call. Make sure you know your opponent before trying this, because it will only work against that rare dream fi sh.
If instead your opponents are just moderately bad, you should bet around the size of the pot on each street. You could raise to 1,000 on the fl op. If you got one caller, there would be 2,500 in the pot. You could then bet 2,500 on the turn, and 7,000 or 8,000 on the river. You would get 11,000 out of him this way if he called all three streets. It’s not quite as much as 18,500 in the above example, but it will work a higher percentage of the time.
If the stacks are no longer super deep on the flop, instead you should try to fi gure out the best number of bets to get the money all in. For example, if there are 5,000 chips in thepot, and both players have 10,000 left, you can bet around 3,500 on the flop, setting yourself up to get the last 6,500 called on the river. If instead both players have 15,000 left after the flop, and you think bets of 5,000 and 10,000 might not get called, you can try to get the money in over three streets. You can bet 3,000 on the fl op, 5,000 on the turn, and 7,000 on the river. If your opponent gets to the river, this bet will be small enough in relationship to the pot that he may feel priced in and will make a bad call. The most important aspect of this is that it’s a decision you should make on the fl op. Pay attention to the stack sizes that will be left on future streets, and plan ahead to bet amounts that you think will get called.
Against these players who will call you down very lightly (often purely because they vastly overestimate the value of their own hand), it is usually a bad strategy to bluff. Oftentimes these players don’t understand the importance of the number of chips in the pot, so a small bluff might be worth trying occasionally. However, if there is a competent tight player at the table, a bluff could pay off big. If you do bluff the one bluffable player at your table, make sure you show the bluff. The truth is, you don’t really care much about what the tight player thinks, but showing the bluff to all the loose players could pay huge dividends when you fi nally make a big hand that you want to get paid off with.
Personally, when I employ this strategy, I like to make it known that I’m playing almost every hand. I’ll splash around small bets in the pot, and even try to act quickly as if I don’t particularly care about the chips as much as the other players do. The reason this strategy works to my advantage is because the inexperienced players will often use this information to justify their belief that I may be bluffi ng when I put in a very large bet later. Of course, I will almost certainly have the nuts or close to it when I put that large bet in. It is important not to go overboard with this idea because, in reality, it only makes a small difference in the seemingly random decision-making process of the inexperienced players.
Knowing when you can value bet your marginal hand is a very important skill to have against weaker players. Unfortunately, there’s no one trick that I can teach you to know when you can profi tably value bet a hand. The basic math says that if you will be ahead more than 50% of the time when your bet is called, you should bet. Of course the real formula is more complicated than that because you have to factor in check-raises and other occurrences, but for the most part, it holds close enough to true. The hard part is paying attention to the hands your opponents play, so that you are able to make a reasonable estimate of what their range is, and what percentage of their range they will call you with. Against loose and passive players, a good rule of thumb is: If you are in doubt on whether or not you should make a thin value bet with your hand, the answer is probably yes. Of course, the opposite is true against tight aggressive players. Don’t be afraid to bet a small amount, even if it looks like an obvious milk bet. Players don’t like to fold if it’s cheap to see your hand.
I fi nd that loose-aggressive players tend to have poor results against the weak players described in this article. The truth is that even some of the top tournament pros don’t understand how important it is that they completely change their game around to combat their specifi c opponents. If you go into a weak fi eld planning to bluff your way to victory, you will have virtually no chance of success.
The situation described in this article is just one example of the many different tables you can come across in tournament poker. The best players understand how to adjust, and even more importantly, when they need to adjust. If you read more of my articles, you will come to understand why I pride myself on not having a single style of play. A lot of my tournament success has come from being able to fi gure out my opponents’ weaknesses, and how to maximize my equity against those specifi c opponents. The above is just one example of when you need to completely readjust your game. For more examples, check out my articles and blogs at www.justinbonomo.com.
