How can I know fast who are good/"garbage" players in tournaments & freerolls?

How can I know fast who are good/"garbage" players in tournaments & freerolls?

Shay said:

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there's no fast way of finding out how players play except experience playing with them.
maybe you can tell something from our leaderboard although it just started 1st of this year.
sharkscope if you know some players you want to check out or accolades in their profile.
keep notes in all the games you play and you will know before long. good luck

caracaski220

You cant know in advance, but if you keep notes over time you will have a good feel about players you come up against. In a game after soe hands against a certain player you van get a pretty good read on him.

It's very simple, keep a close eye on the game at the table, notice how often players play their hands, and also notice which hands they play, make notes about such players.

Don't think there's a fast track for this really..

With experience you learn to spot things which are out of the ordinary or don't make much sense.

A common one for me in micro stakes tourneys is when a player open jams for 100bb+ into a pot of 1.5bb, this is move that a more experienced player generally won't make.

Probabilities and observations..

If you are new to a site, or group of players, first check the ladders of different tournies and free-rolls, you will see a lot of the same names on the upper end of the ladder, grinding; they know how to play an MTT.
Take notes on players, observe first hand by playing against them, it's easy to learn a player's nuances in the heat of play.
Most importantly, play within your abilities, and play smart, a tourney is a collection of small and large victories, strung together, in the long run.

Look for the following signs:

* Open limping preflop in any situation, where its not a good strategy
* Being involved in the action to often - if you use a HUD look for VPIP > 40 in ring games
* Playing passively preflop - if you use a HUD look for vide gap between VPIP and PRF
* Showing down garbage hands like Q4 suited played from early position
* Weird betsizes like betting 400 chips into a 6.300 chip pot or jamming 75BB in preflop in a single raised pot
* Donk betting in spots, where its generally not a good strategy like on flops, that favour the preflop raiser

Basically doing anything, that a good player would typically not do

There is no QUICK way to understand how an opponent plays.

Therefore against unknown opponents you should employ a fundamentally sound strategy, until you notice leaks in their game. A HUD will speed up the process for you since you don't need to pay nearly as much attention because the HUD does all the work for you. If you do not have a HUD then plain old concentration and diligence is key.

How many pots are they playing? Lots or barely any?
Are they open raising, or limping a lot?
Are they calling all the way down with weak and marginal made hands like middle pair bad kicker?

One thing to note: if you're using a HUD be sure to have collected a reasonable sample size before relying on it in any significant way. Some traits are easier to spot than others. For example you can spot a maniac in 10-20 hands if they have VPIP stats of 60+% PFR of 50+% and 3 Bet 30+%, they are obviously playing with some very speculative hand. On the flip side another player who hasn't played a single hand for 20 hands is not necessarily a complete nit, as it's perfectly possible to be dealt junk 20 hands in a row, or have a marginal hand that they're not prepared to play because there was a raise and 3-bet in front of them.

Matt_Burns88 said:

One thing to note: if you're using a HUD be sure to have collected a reasonable sample size before relying on it in any significant way. Some traits are easier to spot than others. For example you can spot a maniac in 10-20 hands if they have VPIP stats of 60+% PFR of 50+% and 3 Bet 30+%, they are obviously playing with some very speculative hand. On the flip side another player who hasn't played a single hand for 20 hands is not necessarily a complete nit, as it's perfectly possible to be dealt junk 20 hands in a row, or have a marginal hand that they're not prepared to play because there was a raise and 3-bet in front of them.

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Golden words of wisdom, which any HUD-users need to understand and take in. Seeing a very high 3-bet like 25% means nothing, if its one 3-bet out of four opportunities. But if its 10 out of 40 opportunities, then probably this player is 3-betting pretty wide, and maybe you choose to 4-bet a hand like AJ against him rather than fold it.

Also the required sample size depends on, how extreme the stats are. If someone is playing 100/14 over 7 hands, then this is absolutely certainly a "fun" player, because its extemelely unlikely, that anyone will pick up 7 hands in a row, that are good enough to play, and especially that only 1 of them was good enough to raise. So you can comfortably start to make some adjustments against this player already. However if someone is playing 34/29 over 33 hands, that does look rather wide, but it is entirely possible, that this is just a standard TAG, who ran a little hot over this sample size. So you dont want to go to crazy against this player just yet.

Fish or shark

I think you need to pay attention to those cases when the opponent reveals the cards at the end of the hand and then analyze his bets in the repetition of the hands. And from this to draw conclusions whether his bets were correct throughout the game

You can find out very easily. All you have to do is play in our freerolls, regularly, for 2-3 months, and you will understand everything.

one way is to analyse the cards of the player and his style. I also wanted to ask users here for the freerolls is there any rollover or such if we win

A few hands and even a couple of tournaments can not accurately determine the level and skill of the player, because there is a concept of variance when good cards come too rarely or simply from the mood and attitude to the tournament. Consider each hand separately, make the right decisions and do not make major mistakes, this will help you against any type of opponent.

1nsomn1a said:

A few hands and even a couple of tournaments can not accurately determine the level and skill of the player, because there is a concept of variance when good cards come too rarely or simply from the mood and attitude to the tournament. Consider each hand separately, make the right decisions and do not make major mistakes, this will help you against any type of opponent.

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yes patience is the key.

Any coach will tell you that you MUST watch EVERY hand played at your table very closely... because you never know when a player will show their cards and reveal their strategy to you.

Many players - myself included - do not do this. When I fold my hand, I almost never pay attention to the current hand, I'm probably playing my Sudoku or Minesweeper off to the side, and that's what I'm focused on. LOL Don't be like me!!

If you can learn what your opponents are doing at your table, if you can figure out their strategy and their approach to poker, you are going to have much more success against them compared to a random player that you have zero information on.

funkymoney said:

one way is to analyse the cards of the player and his style. I also wanted to ask users here for the freerolls is there any rollover or such if we win

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What do you mean?

funkymoney said:

yes patience is the key.

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I'd argue in this instance, observation is key... :wink:

Tracid said:

What do you mean?

I'd argue in this instance, observation is key... :wink:

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i see there are many $100 freeroll tournaments. Would we receive them as cash or are there any strings attached.

yes you are partially correct because if you have a lot of patience then only you can observe

funkymoney said:

i see there are many $100 freeroll tournaments. Would we receive them as cash or are there any strings attached.

yes you are partially correct because if you have a lot of patience then only you can observe

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If you cash in a CC freeroll the funds you win are credited directly to your poker balance, just like any other game on a poker site.

If the prize you win is from a CC competition hosted via HomeGames, then you receive winnings after sending a Prize Claim message.

Shay said:

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You cant. It takes time to get a real feel for a player most times and you need to remember players can and do change over time.

a few days back if you played me for the 1st time you may have put me in the fast moronic type players. I raise 7 or 8 hands in a row and won them all. I raised about 15 of the 1st 20 hands. Why? I had hands time after time. When a few players tried to stop me they saw I had flopped a bigger hand of I have the hand pre- flop. If you joined the table after that run you may of thought i played only aces and kings as I folded pretty much every hand for the next hour. It can be deceiving.

The best thing you can do is watch them play and what they show but always really think about it.I won a minter hand wish 62o the other day. Was I a fish? No. I was in the BB and flopped the boat. If you just remember that I had 62 off you may put me in the moron section again. The fact is, it was a limped pot with 5 players and I was in the BB was the only reason I was there. What you learned about my play here was nothing. Now it here was a raise and re-raise and someone 4 bets and I call on the button with the same hand, you have learned I am loose and a bit crazy. Don't just make the quick decisions and look for the quick answers most days there are none.

Alizona said:

Any coach will tell you that you MUST watch EVERY hand played at your table very closely... because you never know when a player will show their cards and reveal their strategy to you.

Many players - myself included - do not do this. When I fold my hand, I almost never pay attention to the current hand, I'm probably playing my Sudoku or Minesweeper off to the side, and that's what I'm focused on. LOL Don't be like me!!

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If you run deep in a big tournament, then for sure it pays off to pay full attention to the action, even when you are not involved in it. However the reality of online poker is, that most people multi-table, and that already reduces the ability to pay full attention. But as long as you are a winning player, its a reasonable trade-off. Being able to enter 4 MTTs at the same time allows you to win more money in the long run, even your ROI is slightly lower. You also get more experience faster, which can be just as important as picking up on any small clue from your opponent.

the quick way is when you play in a closed group where taking notes during tournaments tells you how the player is and works in other tournaments but the truth is that in a tournament with a large field it is very difficult since you can waste time taking Notes change your table and voila, you never see those players again. My advice is to watch the hands that are playing and take care of your game so you can be more successful.
Q. to help you a bit start by writing greatgame230 is the worst CC player

if this applies to all opponents at the table, then in no way, and this is not necessary, it is important to understand how the villain of interest is playing now, here you can look at the player's statistics, and adjust, look for convenient places where you can pick something up. If you are interested in what the player is interested in, there are sites of tournament statistics.

There is a saying "If you do not notice a sucker, then you are a sucker."

First sign us who plays every hand to recognize garbage player and easy fish to catch

I think the only way to get a fast read (aside from having a good sample of HUD data from previous games) is to really pay attention to each hand, take note of the actions at each stage and if it goes to showdown you may be able to draw some strong conclusions after seeing a player's hole cards. However it takes a lot of mental energy to do this hand after hand, and most of the time you won't get to see any hole cards, and most of the times you do see the cards you'll find that the play was perfectly reasonable and you can't draw any strong conclusions. So it can be a lot of effort for little benefit.