This just in! You want bad players at your table.

STOP COMPLAINING

Whether you are playing a huge fielded MTT or a regular cash game, you want bad players at your table. This board has been flooded with "all in guy wins", or "when will they learn to play right" type posts. If you want to play at a table where everyone plays "right" (In most cases 'right' means tight aggressive) you are setting yourself up for a tough night.

Good card players feed on the bad players. Complaining that you get sucked out on and getting upset are all donkey moves. Much worse than winning with a 10 7.

Part of playing tournaments is understanding that all it takes is one bad card and your tournament is over. It comes with the territory and is a reason why a lot players don't play in them.

Some of you need to reassess your game, and figure out what you are really trying to do, and who you really want to play against; the rich business man that doesn't know hes making a bad call trying to catch a flush, or a grinder thats there everyday playing "right" poker.

If you can't take the luck factor, you are in the wrong field.

AMEN!!!

Amen to your thread White Lytning!!! It's even worse when a player decides to curse the winning player because of a poor call or raise; causing them to leave the table.

Ironic, the one complaining about the Donk play thinks he is a pro. Real pro's know that is part of the game and immediately bait their hooks and cast for another chance at a big "chips" catch of the day. More often then not, you can easily get your chips back; knowing this player will play weak hands to the showdown!

Of course you are right. I will say one thing though... being at a table full of terible players is like playing soccer on a minefield. There is a poker term for this... being "Schooled" as in a school of fish... little bitty ones with teeth.

I wrote a (very terrible) haiku about it:

Flopped nut straight! All In!
Call, call, call, fold, call, call, call.
Beaten by a flush.

But yes... we absolutely do want some bad players around at all times. We just need to be careful when there are a lot of them.

cAPS

P.S. I am usually available if there is a shortage of bad players...

Quite correct.

For tournament players, in particular, the bad beat is a commonplace occurrence. There are only three ways in which your tournament is likely to end:

a. You reach the FT and secure a big payday.
b. You make an error, put your chips in while behind, and are busted.
c. You put your chips in while ahead and are busted by a bad beat.

Since A will always be comparatively uncommon, and B should become increasingly rare as your standard of play improves, C is going to be your most common outcome and will become more so as you become a better player.

Therefore, as WL says, if you can`t get used to beats and shrug them off, you will never have what it takes to succeed as an MTT player.

I want the bad players..but can I get the unlucky ones for a change, It gets old flopping top trips and raising a fair amount, and then someone goes all in with nothing and you know you have to call and he/she catches runner runner and flushes or straights...

It gets old ..but hey, what can you do, it happens...

One minor thing though, I'd rather have someone who knows the basics but just uses first level thinking than someone not thinking at all and basically doing random actions. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather play either of these types than good solid players, but the most profitable players I believe are the ones that have the basics down, but aren't very imaginative, don't mix up their play, and basically play their hands face up.

I'd rather play opponents who show me their cards than opponents who use an RNG to determine their actions. It's not exactly like this, but I think you get the point.

Well, if you read Harrington on cash games, he does use a RNG (his watch) to decide on most of his plays.

The only thing that upsets me about a terrible player is when someone else gets all his money and he leaves. Thats a sad time for the table.

Omg no bad players suck!! I hate it when i have AA and i get called by 79 suited and they make a flush on the river!!11!!!11``2!3ev!!1!



oh wait.

Rather an oversimplification, if you don`t mind my saying so (unless Harrington has departed from his previous advice. I haven`t read the Cash Game book yet).

What Harrington always used to propose was that, in order to make it difficult for opponents to understand your style of play, and where there is more than one reasonably viable way to play the hand, you sometimes choose the less favoured option rather than the one that you would normally use. The wristwatch is then used to determine randomly when you will pull this trick.

The problem I think alot of people have is they see AA or flop a set and start counting the chip are going win. They dont think my hand has to hold up to win.

Of course this is what he does.

Right, which is what makes him tough to play against. Obviously I said you'd rather play a terrible player who just makes the plays he feels like rather than thinking than a good thinking player like Harrington, but I'm saying a predictable below-average player is probably easier to beat than a complete beginner who doesn't understand much about the game.

What are bad players? For some people its just their gamestyle so it can't be called bad play.
Key for a good player is to recognize the playstyle for the other players, not neccesary bad or good.

Baffaert

Actually I think Harrington goes a bit too far when he advises randomizing nearly all your plays. What matters is that for all your actions there is a sufficient range of hands that the action can represent. It does not matter that a given hand is always played the same way, as long as you also play other hands that way to provide balance.

Not to beat the point into the ground but Harrington does explain that randomizing your play is only necessary against solid thinking opponents and that when playing low limit online tournaments it is not really necessary. I am sure this will all be discussed when we do the book discussion though.

Actually though, I've given this some thought and I really do not like randomizing your play like that. In general perfectly balancing your range will ensure that you can never be exploited. This also means opponents can never make a mistake (because all decisions are equal ev, that's what it means to perfectly balance your range). With rake this means you can NEVER make a theoretical profit, that all your profit comes from short-term good luck.

For example, cbets:

I know Sklansky has said some of this as well, that your bluffing range should be as wide as the odds give you. Basically say you're pondering betting 1/2 pot, giving an opponent 3:1 on a call. According to the theory of perfectly balancing your range, you should be bluffing 3 times as much as you value bet. Obviously this is simplified and ignores things like equity when called, people floating with worse hands, your "value" hands actually being behind (or the worse hand having equity), etc.

But basically the logic is that if our opponent knows our range is 75% bluffs and 25% good hands he can't exploit us. If he calls he's picking off a bluff 75% of the time and has to be right 75% of the time for our cbet not to be profitable. But on the other hand we don't profit ever. What we really do is mix it up according to the mistake we expect our opponent to make. If we have opponents who fold too much, we do something to make our cbet range 80% bluffs and 20% value bets. This way we have an edge, but most opponents won't be able to observe this in any short period of time to exploit it. On the other hand when opponents call too much we may make our cbet range be 70% bluffs and 30% value bets.

Obviously if our opponent calls too much we should pretty much just not bluff at all, but the problem is our opponent will still make adjustments, and it doesn't take a genius to stop calling when a villain only cbets like 20% of the time and always shows up with top pair or better. So against a perfect player, we should attempt to perfectly balance our range, because the best we can do against a perfect player is to break even (with no rake). The real answer though is to not play against a perfect player, and since none exist, no one really has this problem. We need to sufficiently balance our range though such that we exploit our opponents without them realizing what we are doing and being able to adjust to our changes.

Sorry, but when a player calls 70% preflop, chases their gut shots, flush draws, etc. and never bluffs, they are a bad player. There are plenty of bad players playing which is what allows good players to make money in online poker.

you better belive it, Here is proof.....................

Hand #56418873-28 at 1115amFreeTD-136 (No Limit tournament Hold'em)
Started at 26/Aug/08 11:50:29

Cowboy8112 is at seat 0 with 6240.
lawlover is at seat 1 with 4540.
RickVick2 is at seat 2 with 1035.
JA_ is at seat 3 with 1165.
eepi66 is at seat 4 with 870.
pocket408 is at seat 5 with 785.
downriver5 is at seat 6 with 1345.
easyflop is at seat 7 with 6830.
lothian49 is at seat 8 with 1320.
Aslann is at seat 9 with 3415.
The button is at seat 0.

lawlover posts the small blind of 30.
RickVick2 posts the big blind of 60.
Cowboy8112: As 7s
lawlover: -- --
RickVick2: -- --
JA_: -- --
eepi66: -- --
pocket408: -- --
downriver5: -- --
easyflop: -- --
lothian49: -- --
Aslann: -- --
Pre-flop:

JA_ calls. eepi66 calls. pocket408 calls.
downriver5 folds. easyflop calls. lothian49 folds.
Aslann calls. Cowboy8112 calls. lawlover calls.
RickVick2 checks.
Flop (board: 7d 7c 2d):

lawlover checks. RickVick2 checks. JA_ checks.
eepi66 checks. pocket408 checks. easyflop checks.
Aslann bets 480. Cowboy8112 calls. lawlover folds.
RickVick2 folds. JA_ folds. eepi66 folds.
pocket408 folds. easyflop folds.
Turn (board: 7d 7c 2d 6c):

Aslann checks. Cowboy8112 bets 1440. Aslann calls.

River (board: 7d 7c 2d 6c 2c):

Aslann checks. Cowboy8112 goes all-in for 4260.
Aslann goes all-in for 1435. Cowboy8112 is returned
2825 (uncalled).
Tournament all-in showdown -- players show:

Cowboy8112 shows As 7s.
Aslann shows 4h 4d.


Showdown:

Cowboy8112 has 7s 7d 7c 2d 2c: full house, sevens full of deuces.
Aslann has 4h 4d 7d 7c 6c: two pair, sevens and fours.

Hand #56418873-28 Summary:

No rake is taken for this hand.
Cowboy8112 wins 7190 with full house, sevens full of deuces

I think the site you play on has really bad software. Obviously missing the "raise preflop" button. That's a really nasty bug for poker software...

think it is part of the game.try to adjust my play when facing maniacs. dont need luck,its just being unlucky thats scare me

After being bad beat so many times, option c, it is hard for me to keep a that's poker attitude. What it seems to do is make poker players start being passive aggressive. Has anyone watched the after dark poker and seen the way players like phil hellmuth have started to play. To me it seems like a passive aggressive style more then a tight agressive style, an I have to say I am not impressed with some of these so called proffesional players... do you think that it is a string of bad beats that make players like this and loosen up their game and seemingly become worse for the wear?

Oh there is that one worse scenario. Idiot is going all in over and over... you fold fold fold.. oooooh look. AA! CALL! ...suckout...

Then.. he keeps going and some nit-tastic multi-tabler felts the guy with KK or something effectively sending what USED to be your money into a black hole.

I shall not tilt, I shall not tilt, I shall not tilt...

cAPS