Bad Players Harder To Beat Consistently Than Mediocre-Average Players?

I seem to be able to outplay average or OK players far more consistently than bad players.
It sounds stupid, but I keep getting crushed by players who will play random garbage hands badly then suck out.
Average players on the other hand are far easier to read and put on a hand because their play makes sense.

Yer doin' it wrong.

Do you ever make notes on players while playing? If not you probably don't have enough info on them to crack them, if you know what they do then you can use that information to beat them.

For example you could have the typical calling station, very proliferent at low and micro stakes. He does nothing but call your pf raises, bets on the flop, turn until he makes his hand (will be a flush or straight most of the time), then when they make a hand they'll want to put money in. Now you know this, you're going to bet as high as you need to make his call unprofitable when you have a hand. And when they make their draw and they suddently bet, something they never do? Well you just fold, even if you have the most wicked set and you have been catching trash cards for three hours, you fold.

There's no secret to NL, except to get all the info about your adversaries you can get and use it against them. I could give many more examples of these kind of mistakes players make and even more ways to use those mistakes against them. Just keep focused and play your best game.

A little more about these players in the example, you can't bluff them, don't cbet the flop or double barrel or even try to pick up flops which probably didn't make any hand (since those calling stations will play anything they might actually have made their hand).

Actually the gist of this is that probably you try to bluff too much or call too much when you know you're beat.

Hope that helped.

I get where youre going with this but I think what this guy means is the players who are so bad and unreadable they play and raise with random trash and raise with great hands or players who call a raise no matter what and hit something rediculous. Not the guys who are betting differently to throw people off just the retards who bet or make a huge raise anytime they get a facecard and some stupid x rag.
In this case I think the bad players are harder to beat online cause sites seem to love to give the retards the money who are just gonna throw it away in a stupid rake by playing way over thier heads.

I suppose it is harder to get a good read on the total maniac, but in the end that maniac will lose more money then the average and slightly predictable player.

Another factor in this is: HOW MANY of the "maniacs" are you going against?

If you're going against a table FULL of maniacs, then even though you play better than any ONE of them, but at such a table, you will have a much harder time, and it might not even be profitable.

If it's one or two maniacs at a table of good players, then they get eaten up much more and much easier than the table full of maniacs can "get" you. But that might not be of much consolation if you are taking the bad end of it.

I completely understand you. I'd much rather play against a decent player than a donk maniac calling station. I know that all of our luck, overall in the long run, is about the same, but it seems like (most of the time) my luck isn't very good against all of their ridiculous draws (and sometimes not even draws but spectacular runner, runner catches).
It seems like, with donk players, I either win a lot of money fast, or lose a lot of money fast (and the latter seems to prevail over the former). Whereas with decent players, I win money slowly, but consistently. I much prefer that.

Grinder101 brings up a pretty good point that helped me a lot. you may never see that donkey ever again, but, it doesn't hurt to just make a quick note about how they play. if nothing else, that little point sticks in my head while we're still at the same table...and it helps the next time i have AK and know they're going to call me. helps me decide how to proceed in a hand against them, especially if i don't hit and i know they won't fold, maybe this is all of a sudden a pot i'd like to keep smaller...just simple notes, will "check-call you down with bottom pair" stuff like that. i usually like to add in little insults in my notes, stuff i'd like to say to them, haha. stuff like "limps with AA,AK,KK,AQ,QQ...never raises preflop"...all things you should probably note. but here's the deal with doing better against better players...this is the difference. better players have more of a feeling when to just go ahead and let go of their hands...you're not running into check-calls or just calls with them, its more like bet-raise-reraise. and most of the time when you're raising, you're seeing people folding preflop, whereas in some random freeroll, you're getting 5 callers for some reason...the odds on your AA winning just dropped quite a bit...and since they're all calling stations, you're out of luck, cause you're really hoping someone is going to raise you, that's your only hope of raising again, to get more people the hell out of the pot. it sucks when there's so many of them, but bad players just call...you have no read on them if you're out of position until you take notes. sometimes the best way to deal with them is just play with whatever crap you're dealt with on the button, and raise enough that even a calling station will think they're beat. but that's the difference, bad players call, good players fold/raise...and those callers will suck you out quite a bit. BUT, they are always there to call you down when you do hit, and you should definitely bet for value there, cause it makes up for the last suckout, and maybe the next suckout, haha

The more bad players the better.

Also, "schooling" is a myth.

You must remember You CANNOT bluff bad players.

Just wait until you have a hand and take them to value town.

Also bad players get good hands sometimes too.

Ok, I came across a hand in one of my sng's that very closely fits the topic of this thread. Bad players, calling with the worst of it and shoving with their (unrightfully aquired) monster hands.

It goes like this. Early in the game I get the beautiful pocket rockets dealt in early position (I think it was UTG+2). Since I've noted that even in the first round a lot of players are calling even big preflop raises, I raise to 100 with 10-20 blinds. Two players I've labeled as calling stations/loose, have called. One on the button, one in the big blind.

So far so good. The flop comes K, J and a trash card, the board is showing a clubs flush draw. I know I'm up against calling stations, and there's a good chance that one of them might have caught a King or Jack and is willing to donate his chips. I bet around 300, almost the size of the pot and they both call, the pot is now around 1000 and a 9 of hearts comes on the turn.

The BB player checks and I decide to bet 500 half of the pot. My reasoning behind this? It's big enough to dissuade them from raising out of simple madness and doesn't doom my stack if I have to fold. Besides I don't know too much about these players so I don't know if they'll try to take a shot at the pot if I check. And calling one of their bets would be reversing roles, which I certainly don't want to do.

Now the player on the button puts the rest of his stack in the middle, the player on the BB calls.

What would you do? Maybe they're moving in with a strong king or they've got something silly like 95o? You fold, because calling stations don't make a sizable bet unless they have the stone cold nuts. My thoughts were K9, 99 or a straight.

I fold, both players turn over Q10o. I have a stack of around 600 left, not great, but surely enough to make a comeback of some kind.

It's not important if you lose a pot, as long as you know you're playing against players with bad habbits. You'll get their money in the long run, it's a blessing from above to get to play these players. It's better than playing a solid agressive player who picks up on the fact that you're stealing blinds or raising too often with marginal hands. The edge you have against these players ( if you play solid poker) is monstrous vs that you get against more methodical players.

Anyway, again, hope that helped.

You just like playing players who fold to most c-bets!!

"It sounds stupid, but I keep getting crushed by players who will play random garbage hands badly then suck out."

It happens. Over time u will chew them up. Don't dwell on beats or donks, keep playing solid poker and u will prevail.

The donkier the better IMHO.

But i find the real situation is you have a mixed table.

So you have say 3 complete idiots who just dont even know what poker is but they saw it on tv one time, and 3 average and a coupla nits but it can bust you out finding out which is which.

I just go with my standard answer i think to all and every question which is go tight play blackjack hands only.

Then you fold 99A to them and they show ace high

I like owning bad players better than good players. If I see a guy keep raising all-in, I'll call with A-2 or K-7 something and I have won about 70% of the time.
Bad players are soo easy to trap, if it wasnt for them I'll probably be still playing play money chips.

A good read here. One of the many parts of my game that I would like to improve upon is note taking. I play alot of tourneys and see players that I have played before at almost every table that I am seated at. Yet I fail to take good notes. Laziness I guess. I'm gonna try to be better at this. Thanks for the post.

I'm not a very good note taker myself but I'm trying to get better at it. I've been playing more live poker and tend to use my iphone for taking notes of people, so I'm not actually using a pad and pen to write stuff down. Smart hey? lol.

Harder...no...but obv if they are terrible you are playing more pots against them and opening ur range. So making bigger pots and playing a larger number of them you increase the variance, sometimes the fish can run hot so waht.

Patience! Patience! Patience! The only way to beat a donk and I still have not got enough patience at times. Good Luck with yours.

It depends how deep your stack is. If you're not that deep then I would just call anyway and take my chances as the pot odds are going to be huge. If you're really deep then you should probably fold.
Theres a chance the guy pushing all in may simply have K10 or KQ or something like that. The guy on BB if he really is awful could be calling on the turn with just a club flush draw, king high himself, or even something like QJ.
Thats the trouble playing donks you never know

The style I play best is an aggressive style where I raise a lot of pots preflop in late position, and make a lot of c-bets, bluffs and semi bluffs.
So obviously that works best against rocks, wimps and average players who won't stand up to you unless they have a strong hand, and I am getting really good at reading these players.
I try to adjust my play to donks and calling stations but I havn't really got the hang of that tbh.
I have had the experience where I've raised preflop with AQ, bet the flop, then bet the river and a donk called me all the way til the end with something like 54o on a board of K J 5 8 9.

Ive noticed this alot more recently. It is really hard to play against the bad players. Especially the ones who somehow accumulated some chips.
Like another member said in this thread, the site will reward the donks who will make rake with any garbage or even take stupid chances in tournaments with any random cards. (Big stack favouritism??)

^ This.

^ and this.

If you are having trouble beating players who are really bad, it's your fault. You make money by not making mistakes and by how many mistakes your opponents make. If you are having a lot of trouble beating these small stakes (I'm assuming your really bad players are at the smaller stakes.), the book "Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning big With Expert Play" By Sklansky and Miller is a great book. It is for Limit Hold'em but will give you some great advice on bad players. In the long run, if you play better then your opponents you WILL win. You can't go into poker thinking that the bad players "always win", "Jokerstars just helps out the people they know will pay more rake", "they always catch so I'll just call intead of raise". Thinking like that will garantee you will loose.

Don't c-bet against someone whose fold to c-bet is around the 35% or less mark.

So knowing you can't c-bet this player off a hand profitably,

Just weight your range to pairs 7+ and broadway cards.

When you have a weak holding, look to get 3 1/2 pot streets of value.

If their fold to c-bet is higher then c-bet a little more with your decent overcards. Don't c-bet too much because these players simply think everyone is out to bluff them.. therefore the call with anything. If you can get a few folds out of them, great but if you keep c-betting them, they will label you as a bluffer.

get away from the micro-low limits. and stay away from the buyin-addons this is where i find most of the donkies. gl and peace

True in an overall sense, but not true in every sitatation. For example, it has certainly been true that for top pros this Moneymaker Effect of swarms of questionable players, definitely makes them a lot of money in a "trickle down" (or should it be trickle up" in this case? sense. But in the sense of them being able to win the Main Event, it has made it MUCH harder.

If the table has so many bad players that you can't beat it, consider switching to a table with more good players that you can beat.

Which presents the question, if you can beat good players but not bad players, does that make you a bad player or a good player?

But I haven't encountered any micro limits tables with players so bad I just could find no way to beat them.

I guess that means I'm not good enough a player, since I haven't found players who are so bad they beat me.

im pretty sure the players who u think are fish are probably better than u but u dont understand the plays they make

It all comes down to switching your stlye to beat them and most of the time you have to be very tight against them playing only premium hands

Its simple enough to tell the difference between a strong aggressive player and a maniac or donk.
I look up the stats of players I am talking about who suck out on me with stupid cards and they normally have a -ROI.
My ROI is 20%.