How do you play against bad players that play any two cards? I have problems with them as putting them on a range of hands is difficult for me to play against them, even harder when they have position on you. What is the best way to play against them? I always hear tighten up your range, but that only goes so far. Thoughts?

the simplest answer is not to play all hands with them, I try to narrow the range of protection from such players and then very often it turns out to take all their chips))

Originally Posted by 5KINGLEO5

the simplest answer is not to play all hands with them, I try to narrow the range of protection from such players and then very often it turns out to take all their chips))

What would you do if they have position on you and can not control what hands they play with you? Would you look for a different table or just tighten your range to beat them and scoop their chips? They frustrate me and can cause tilt.

I am stop this bad game and sit another table

You should play just strong hands with big bets..also there is a possibility to play aggro when you have top of the ranges

wait for some other player to knock them out
don't waste your nerves

Originally Posted by Nikolay Nakhaev

wait for some other player to knock them out
don't waste your nerves

Why you should wait for others to do it if you can do it on your own and much faster lol ...

Originally Posted by Dhendrixon

What would you do if they have position on you and can not control what hands they play with you? Would you look for a different table or just tighten your range to beat them and scoop their chips? They frustrate me and can cause tilt.

In cash games it is rather important to try to get the loose players on your right and the tight players on your left, because otherwise you will play most pots out of position. So yes in some cases table change can be a reasonable option. In tournaments you need to take, what you get. And typically the best adjustment will be to tighten up a little bit. This also include postflop, if they are equally sticky on the flop. There is no point in firing a C-bet with air into someone, who is going to call you 80% of the time, and he has position on you. So basically you need to be patient and wait for a big hand, where you can get paid.

I try to play carefully with these players. Consider their presence.

it is advisable never to bluff a player who does not respect the rules or who does not understand anything about the game. For my part, I only play against them with good hands. I prefer check call or check fold and wait for the right spot to take their chips.

Originally Posted by Risto234

Why you should wait for others to do it if you can do it on your own and much faster lol ...

if only I have a very good hand and position on this madman then of course I will go into battle with him and save this world and all players from him

Originally Posted by Nikolay Nakhaev

if only I have a very good hand and position on this madman then of course I will go into battle with him and save this world and all players from him

Nah i would that even with average hands

Play more time in position, depending of what are their size bets you can just call more time with good hands to play post flop, or if you prefer use only the top of your range, and bet harder.

If you are playing against passive players, you will play with more callers, a bet can help you to kick them from the hand, if you are playing against aggressive players, you will find some good spots, they will give you more value, connectors and suited will be fine to play in the last position.

The most important are to play with aggression good cards, because their wide range, if you don't bet to filter theirs weak hands you can get involved in a bad beat, like one of these players holding 23o with an ace on flop, until complete their straight on the river.

Another good advice for who are deep in the table are to only play premium hands, try to extract value from these players, and later your image will give you the chance to make some bluff.

I think those bad players don't care to lose some money.

My way is all-in every hand with him.

Originally Posted by Dhendrixon

How do you play against bad players that play any two cards? I have problems with them as putting them on a range of hands is difficult for me to play against them, even harder when they have position on you. What is the best way to play against them? I always hear tighten up your range, but that only goes so far. Thoughts?

It depends on how aggressive the "any2" player is. If they are aggressive, play a tight range weakly. Allow them to make raises while you call. Make some check raises on the turn. If they are more passive, open up your range and bet into them more. If they are a calling station, only play good cards, and only bet when you have it.

If you have trouble with any certain style of player, change up what you are normally doing. Sometimes a simple style change is enough to combat their advantage.

This is a big problem. Not only you. I also don't know what to do in this situation. They play with any cards. Especially in KO tournaments

Just play your strong hands for value. I also like to change my bet sizing when I think it can get me extra value.

Bad players are the best opponents. So I am playing hands even more often with them as they are mostly bad postflop

I like players like that because they only have to wait for a strong hand and the limp and all-in call can go.
However, there is a problem that you have to pray until no one drops them out of the game because it is easy money like that and I love it when it comes to me.
Of course, sometimes they knock me out of the game but even then it’s always well worth it in the long run.

Tighten up your range is correct and play those hands aggressively when you hit your hand on the flop. Bottom line is that you will win against these players in the long run but that won't ever stop them from winning their hands sometimes in the short run.
Usually avoid trying to bluff them as well. Just play straightforward A-B-C poker when in hands with them.

Online play against bad players is a long-term winning proposition. You hope that all your tournaments start with a table FULL of bad players, so you can build your stack early. They are your best option to make money. Why would you want to play against GOOD or BETTER or GREAT players? I am a mediocre player and hope to find all kinds of bad players at the tables. The best players would just take my money.

Play well or get lucky. Both is best. Knocking a bad player out of a tournament feels great.

Play only good hands and don't bluff.

Originally Posted by Dhendrixon

How do you play against bad players that play any two cards? I have problems with them as putting them on a range of hands is difficult for me to play against them, even harder when they have position on you.

Part of the secret is to not worry to much about their exact range, but more about classifying your own hand correctly and take lines, which are long term profitable in general against loose players. In the course "become a winning poker player in 30 days" Collin Moshman talk about the concept of hand planning.

When you see the flop, the very first thing, you do, is to classify your relative hand strength and determine, how many bets you would like to go in. If for instance you opened AA, and the loose player called you in position, then most of the time the answer will be, that you want 3 bets to go in, unless the board change in a very unfavourable way like putting out a 1-liner to a straight or flush.

So if the loose player with position on you is also passive, and the effective stack is 30-40BB, probably the plan is a very simple bet, bet, shove. So you bet, he call. Turn is a blank, you bet, he call. River is also a blank like an offsuit 4, so you carry through with your plan and shove for 63% pot. He call and show Q4 offsuit, which rivered two pair.

The point here is, that you did not need to know, that his range included Q4 offsuit. All, you needed to know, was, that you could take this line and show down the best hand more than 50% of the time. Which I think, you almost certainly can, if his range is wide enough to include Q4 offsuit.

Or lets say, you were 100BB deep. Then he might have raised you on the river, and again the important is not to know, that he might have that random two pair with Q4 offsuit. The important is to know, that when a passive player call preflop, call on the flop, call on the turn and raise on the river, then he can almost always beat one pair. So you should fold your AA.

The real issue for many players is, that they cant fold in the second scenario, and even in the first scenario it tilts them to lose to a hand, that the opponent should not have played. They feel, that when the opponent is so bad, they deserve to win every time. But as has been said many times, this is the difference between poker and chess.

Of course the lower the stakes, the harder to put them in a range. But anyway the best way to play with them is folding most of the times, ie, play, I'd say, 80% of the times with high pairs and premiums hands.

I find that these players show up in the early stage of tournaments and then don't last long. Since everyone tends to tighten up our player tends to only get calls from premium hands that eventually take him down. If I get a top hand I'll jump in but otherwise I wait. Sure there are some occasions where our player actually starts winning...his any two cards strategy gets lucky. When that happens I just wait for table change. Finally what some folks try is to slow play way down and wait to fold hoping the guy gets the "message". I find that never works

Have to tighten it up. Their range is everything...so you need prime hands.

Believe it or not I've found that I have better results playing at slightly higher stakes. While it's true the bad players will pay you off, calling too much pre-flop when they should have folded actually brings my ROI down. Too many players in the hand post-flop or they called when I should have won the blinds.

I only have turbo option available on PS, so I can't tighten up much or the blinds just eat me alive.

Originally Posted by StealTheButton

Believe it or not I've found that I have better results playing at slightly higher stakes.

And over what sample size is this? Especially with large field MTTs, you need to play tousinds of them to get anywhere near your true long term luck adjusted winrate.

I've left a few poker sites because of the number of bingo players on the site. I find it a waste of money and time.

Thanks for all the responses.

Originally Posted by fundiver199

Part of the secret is to not worry to much about their exact range, but more about classifying your own hand correctly and take lines, which are long term profitable in general against loose players. In the course "become a winning poker player in 30 days" Collin Moshman talk about the concept of hand planning.

When you see the flop, the very first thing, you do, is to classify your relative hand strength and determine, how many bets you would like to go in. If for instance you opened AA, and the loose player called you in position, then most of the time the answer will be, that you want 3 bets to go in, unless the board change in a very unfavourable way like putting out a 1-liner to a straight or flush.

So if the loose player with position on you is also passive, and the effective stack is 30-40BB, probably the plan is a very simple bet, bet, shove. So you bet, he call. Turn is a blank, you bet, he call. River is also a blank like an offsuit 4, so you carry through with your plan and shove for 63% pot. He call and show Q4 offsuit, which rivered two pair.

The point here is, that you did not need to know, that his range included Q4 offsuit. All, you needed to know, was, that you could take this line and show down the best hand more than 50% of the time. Which I think, you almost certainly can, if his range is wide enough to include Q4 offsuit.

Or lets say, you were 100BB deep. Then he might have raised you on the river, and again the important is not to know, that he might have that random two pair with Q4 offsuit. The important is to know, that when a passive player call preflop, call on the flop, call on the turn and raise on the river, then he can almost always beat one pair. So you should fold your AA.

The real issue for many players is, that they cant fold in the second scenario, and even in the first scenario it tilts them to lose to a hand, that the opponent should not have played. They feel, that when the opponent is so bad, they deserve to win every time. But as has been said many times, this is the difference between poker and chess.

Thanks for the information. I do often tilt and have to sit out and walk away for a few minutes after I see a hand they played at showdown. The worst part about the game is the phycological, you tend to always remember the bad hands.

it's hard to predict bad players but the most appropriate thing to do when dealing with them is to be a little gracious so they play at my own pace

Originally Posted by Dhendrixon

Thanks for the information. I do often tilt and have to sit out and walk away for a few minutes after I see a hand they played at showdown. The worst part about the game is the phycological, you tend to always remember the bad hands.

This is exactly the point, and recognizing that you have tilt issues is the first step in dealing with them. Often the difference between breakeven and big winning players is mainly in the mental game. Evan Jarvis / Gripsed has some old videos on Youtube about tilt, which it might help to take a look at. And as I think, you already know, getting tilted about losing to bad players is completely irrational. So the sooner you deal with this, the better.

Another hand example from a 5$ R+A, which I played yesterday. I open AQo in the second blind level, where a starting stack is 100BB. A maniac moves all in for his remaining 40BB. I am not always stacking off AQo for 40BB preflop. But in the early blind levels and against a maniac, who might be tilted from losing more than half his chips, I am going to call with hands way worse than AQo. So I call, and I am in good shape against his QTo. However he makes a straight and dubble up through me.

Now I am not going to lie. This is never a great feeling. All poker players like to win, and losing is never fun. But its absolutely no reason to go on tilt. After all I got my chips in with 75% equity, so I clearly made the right play, which just happened to not work out this time. But as have been said many times, we want luck to be there in poker, because otherwise players like this guy would probably stop. At one point when I looked in the lobby of this particular tournament top 4-5 big stacks were all players, I had tagged with yellow. Which is the tag I use for players with a VPIP above 40%.

But by the time, we got near the money, they were all gone or had moved significantly down the ranks. So in general maniacs do not manage to turn an early chip lead into a cash and even less often into a top 3 finish, where the real money is. Instead it is patient players like me, who play at least closer to “correct” poker, who tend to cash and/or end up in top 3. Which did not happen for me this time, but just a few days ago I made it to the final two in a similar tournament, where I made a deal with the opponent. So you really need to have that long term focus and not let meaningless short term fluctuations upset you.

Originally Posted by Dhendrixon

How do you play against bad players that play any two cards? I have problems with them as putting them on a range of hands is difficult for me to play against them, even harder when they have position on you. What is the best way to play against them? I always hear tighten up your range, but that only goes so far. Thoughts?

Firstly, why did you decide that the player is bad?
Let's assume that this is a cash and your opponent opens with any connectors, with any suited pair in order to make a straight or a flush. Any pair per set. ... Off-suit Broadway…. Any ace… etc.
Depending on the flop, he shows aggression. If the flop is unsuccessful for him, and you show aggression, he will fold. If you check, he checks the same. Etc.
Suppose this is a tournament and this is the beginning of a tournament.
Your opponent with the range listed above enters the game with the same goals, especially if he is allowed to do so with impunity.
I think the best tactic with these opponents would be to play your 10% range aggressively starting pre-flop.

the best to make and increase their card range and play with caution but always aggressive

Originally Posted by ronn6583

Firstly, why did you decide that the player is bad?

This is a pretty good point. If you're often finding yourself on the losing end of a showdown while playing out of position, maybe they're not that bad. If you're also having difficulty putting them on a range, are your postflop actions helping to narrow their range, or are you just check-calling?

Just because someone plays a different style of poker than you does not automatically make them bad. At present, this kind of playing style is exploiting you, so find a way to adjust. Playing less hands out of position seems to be a good start.

If you can try to wait them out. Play only when you have a really good hand. Usually they will mess up and somebody else can take them out of the game. Good riddens to them then !!!

Don't bluff them. And pray to avoid bad beats or coolers.

I play them like any other player, I try to call strong hands, sometimes some marginal or medium hands so that I don't see myself as a tight player. Good hands.