1. Worst Bad Beats In Poker
2. How To Beat Bad Poker Players
3. How To Beat Bad Poker Players Game
4. How To Beat Aggressive Poker Players

A poker party is about to start all over the world. Assuming things don’t somehow change with a variant of COVID that easily infects people who are vaccinated, people are going to be flocking to the poker tables in the very near future. Many people here in Las Vegas already are taking part in them.

A bad beat in poker is when a player with strong hands loses to a player with weaker hands by hitting a lucky card. This unexpected win is called a bad beat. This unexpected win is called a bad beat. “I don’t need a lesson on how to beat beginners at poker. They don’t know what they are doing!” Unfortunately, in poker that same inexperience can be to the new players’ advantage because in a single session of poker, luck can work against you. A nit in poker is somebody who plays extremely tight. They only play very strong hands before the flop, and usually if they are betting after the flop, then they have something very good as well. The best way to beat tight poker players is to play loose and aggressive against them. Slowplay against these players For the most part, I talk a lot about slowplaying being bad and that fast playing is the best way to capitalise on your opponents mistakes. However, its pretty much. Bad Poker Players Play Too Many Hands Bad poker players play too many hands. Some play every.

I played a $2,500 buy-in at the Venetian last week that had almost 300 entries. That’s a pretty big number for the Venetian this time of year, even if we weren’t under partial lockdown. The night before I stopped by Caesars to see what the poker room looked like and it was full; not a single open seat.

Let me preface all this by saying that I have been vaccinated and I’m still careful. It is not my advice that you should risk your life to play poker. If you are in a high risk group and haven’t been vaccinated, don’t do it. I went an entire year without playing live poker for that very reason. But once you deem it safe for you to play, be ready, because the party is already starting.

So many times I have lamented with my online poker friends from back in the early days that we didn’t take enough advantage of the amazing games when we had a chance. Sure, I made good money, but with better study habits and grinding more hours I would have been retired by 35. I won’t make that mistake again. What’s coming is sure to be sweet bonanza!

I was playing in a little poker room in Wisconsin the day Osama Bin Laden was killed. The games had been pretty boring, filled with older regs, until the announcement. The floor guy turned up the sound and played it for us and everyone cheered and ordered rounds of drinks and the games went crazy. They went from boring and tight to absolutely maniacal. I think I was up $70 in three hours, and I made $600 in the next three hours. When people are celebrating, the games are great.

And many former pros found other things to do during the lockdown. The number of pros in the tournament, and at the cash games, was much lower than usual. Here in Vegas I expect a real resurgence of live poker, with more recreational players coming to Vegas to party and have a good time, and fewer pros in headphones silently grinding out a living.

Your area will likely be the same. We saw it last year with online poker, the games getting better and win rates increasing because live poker rooms were closed, but that will be nothing like what we are about to see in brick and mortar casinos.

That means you’ll need to be prepared for wild games. You’ll take more bad beats and your bluffs won’t work as well. You’ll probably deal with more drunks. The dealers and floor people who haven’t worked in a year may be rusty and may make more mistakes than usual. But if you can handle these things, there is going to be a lot of money to be made. Here are seven tips for how to maximize your potential win.

7 Tips for Beating Wild Games and Bad Players

1. Have the Right Mindset

When dealing with a party atmosphere, it helps to start with the right mindset. You aren’t there to test your skills against other strong players. You are there to make money and take advantage of other players’ mistakes. Be ready for big swings. Expect them. And if you are rattled by them and playing badly, go home. The games will be good again tomorrow.

2. Know Your Opponents

When a player who is having a good time and socializing gives you real indicator that you are beat, believe them. You can tell the jerks from the players who are just there to have a good time. Ignore the things the jerk says, but believe the people who are having fun; they will almost never lie to you either with their big bets or their actual words. I’ve saved a lot of money in my life by folding when a recreational player tells me something like “You can fold, I have it.”

3. Don’t Tilt

If you are easily tilted by bad players and bad beats, you’ll need to deal with that problem because it will be harder to control now than it has been in at least five years. I highly recommend Dr. Alan Schoonmaker‘s books as well as his coaching. Nobody knows more about poker psychology than Dr. Al.

4. Bad Player ≠ Bad Hand

Don’t fall into the trap that bad player = bad hand. Bad players get good hands just as often as you do. Sure, their average starting hand may be far below yours, but you can’t assume they have nothing when they four-bet you preflop, or raise you all-in on the turn, just because they’re loose preflop. If you do this, they will lose money on their bad hands against you, and win it all back on their good hands when you don’t believe them.

5. Charge Your Opponents

It’s also important not to offer a loose player huge implied odds. If they are seeing flops cheap with garbage hands, then winning huge pots whenever they hit, they will actually win money from you. Control this by making bigger raises and three-bets preflop, and not handing them your whole stack when they outflop you.

I see this mistake constantly, usually followed by the tight player holding a long funeral for their hand and complaining about how the “bad” player had nothing preflop and got lucky. Yeah, they did get lucky. By finding a player who would pay them off whenever they flop a big hand with their garbage. That is very lucky indeed because without it they would lose money very quickly.

6. Preflop Play Isn’t Everything

Remember that preflop play isn’t everything, and those loose players see a lot more flops than you do. They are used to seeing flops against tight players and even if they aren’t very good, they may be playing pretty well after the flop simply because they’ve had so much practice and it’s easy to put a tight player on a hand and outplay them. If you combine this with tight players who offer them great implied odds and always assume they have a bad hand, it can be very profitable for them to play junk hands preflop.

7. Choose Your Stakes Wisely

Don’t move up because “I can’t beat a game where they never fold.” If you feel this way, I have some bad news and some good advice for you. The bad news is that you are very wrong. If you can’t beat a $1/2 game, the better players in the $2/5 game are going to eat you alive. When I play $2/5, my very favorite target isn’t the wild drunk or the newbie who is just getting started. It’s you. The guy who thinks the game will be easier when people can fold a hand. They guy who can’t beat a $1/2 game full of recreational players.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard some pro at a $2/5 table tell a recreational player something like “Yeah, you can’t beat those games, you have to come play the $2/5 with us, it’s way better.” They aren’t inviting the losing player up to a game where they can be a winner. No pro invites someone to a game because they want more strong winning players at their table. They are perpetuating the idea that bigger games can be easier to beat. The only time this is true is when you get to really big games where most pros can’t afford to buy in. And even then the games are usually very tough.

Conclusion

Do some studying and get ready! Sign up to a poker training site, and brush up on your skills. The party is starting and a year or two from now it will probably be over and we’ll be back to the grind. When you are sure that it’s safe for you, get back in the game and start scooping up that cash because there is going to be a bunch of it and you don’t want to miss out.

Other Posts You'll Enjoy

• App Review: Probable Poker

  There are tons of HUDs out there that have poker odds calculators which can assist you with online poker, but they all run afoul of…

• Poker Book Review: Unfolding Poker

  When you're a beginner or an intermediate poker player, you've often got lots of questions. Red Chip Poker co-founder James 'Splitsuit' Sweeney understood this and…

• 4 Good Tips for Winning at Poker

  Just starting out at poker? You probably want to win - like you see all those players doing on TV. It's a long road to…

• Webcam Poker - Online Poker Revolution?

  This guest post on Cardplayer Lifestyle presents an overview on one of online poker's newest developments: webcam poker. Read more to learn the advantages and…

• Poker Tips By George: Bluffing is Essential!

  In his ongoing series of strategy pieces, George 'the Engineer' Epstein reminds us that bluffing is essential. This might seem relatively obvious, even to beginner…

• Poker Tips By George: Stealing and Other Forms of Deception in Poker

  In this third and final installment of George 'the Engineer' Epstein's miniseries on bluffing, he expands on stealing and other forms of deception in poker.…

One of the hardest things to deal with when you are playing low stakes cash games is all of the bad beats. When you are playing against people who like to call a lot and chase wild draws, it only makes sense that you are going to face more suckouts on the river.

As somebody who has played millions of hands at the lowest stakes online, I know the feeling all too well. I sometimes (half) jokingly tell people that I have probably taken more bad beats than anyone in history!

In this article I am going to give you a few tips on how I deal with all of the bad beats and suckouts that you necessarily will encounter in small stakes cash games.

Embrace the Bad Beats

Once again, it needs to be stated that at the lowest stakes (online or live) you will simply face more bad beats than at any other limits. The reason why is that there are so many more bad players at these stakes calling the whole way with bottom pair or chasing some ridiculous draw.

The key, though, is to understand that this is very much a good thing. The reason why win rates are always so much higher in low stakes games than at higher limits is precisely because you have all of these bad players willing to call you down with anything.

Of course, this means that you are going to face suckouts more often. Higher-stakes players typically fold earlier in the hand than do many of those playing the lower limits. The better players often are never in a position to draw out on you in the first place.

But it is important to understand that there will always be more value in playing against players who chase everything because of this simple fact — most of the time they miss.

We get so angry sometimes when they hit their four-outer on the river against us that we forget the simple math of the game. The vast majority of the time when they play like this, they miss those four outs, one of the other 46 cards comes, and we win the pot with the best hand.

As painful as it is to lose to something ridiculous like a gutshot straight draw, when you look at it from a broader perspective, you can just laugh it off. You should be happy that there are players in your game willing to play this badly. Because most of the time the pot is getting shipped your way.

Suckouts Are a Tax We All Sometimes Need to Pay

Another way of looking at bad beats and suckouts is to consider them a 'tax' we must pay to keep playing against such lesser-skilled opponents.

The reason why bad players keep coming back again and again (and depositing again and again) is because they can blame their lack of success on bad luck. Ego is a very real thing in poker. Much like driving, most people rate their skills higher than they actually are. When a recreational player hits a ridiculous draw on the river against you, this is actually vindication in that player's mind. Finally, luck is on their side!

It is hard to think of any other game which is skill-based in the long run, but has this incredible element of luck in the short term. And it is a very beautiful thing. It allows players to ignore the obvious and delude themselves into thinking that they only lose because of bad luck. This is what fuels the game — delusion.

This is why I prefer to think of bad beats and suckouts from recreational players as a tax that I need to pay sometimes. Indeed, it is a tax that we all need to pay sometimes. This is what keeps the poker economy running. If bad players were not able to get lucky sometimes, they would stop playing and the profitability of the games would plummet.

Everything is Crazier Online

The last thing that you need to know about bad beats is that when you play online they are going to come faster and more often than you have ever been used to before. This is indeed one of the main reasons that many live players have a difficult time moving over to play online. (For more on that subject, see 'New to Online Poker? Don't Make These Two Mistakes.')

Worst Bad Beats In Poker

When you are playing live you might only see 30 hands an hour. But online, a typical six-handed no-limit hold'em table will deal three times that many hands in the same amount of time. And when you are talking about fast fold games like Zoom on PokerStars, you could be seeing 10 times as many hands per hour as you would in a live game.

It only stands to reason, then, that when you are seeing so many more hands, you are going to see way more bad beats and suckouts. Many people mistakenly think that there must be something wrong with the dealing online or the sites are trying to “rig” it somehow, but in truth they are failing to see that the pace of the game online is simply much faster than it is live.

This is especially the case when you consider that most people will play multiple tables online as well. When you are seeing hands so much faster online, you will also see many, many more bad beats. There is no way around this.

Final Thoughts

Many people view bad beats and suckouts as a negative part of the game. In fact they cause a high percentage of players to tilt, especially if several of them happen in succession.

How To Beat Bad Poker Players

However, when you learn to embrace the madness of small stakes cash games, you can train yourself to look at bad beats in a more positive light. You want bad players to be chasing their crazy draws, because you know that most of the time they actually miss them.

Secondly, you even want them to be able to hit those draws sometimes, because this is what keeps them playing and coming back again and again. If they didn’t get a chance to get lucky now and then, they would all see the truth — that they are actually getting consistently outplayed — and quit.

How To Beat Bad Poker Players Game

Next time a bad player hits a miracle card on the river against you, challenge yourself to react to it in a better way. Bad beats and suckouts are a necessary part of the game and they are very much a good thing. Have a laugh about it, pay your tax, and move on to the next hand.

Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books, Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!

How To Beat Aggressive Poker Players

• Tags

  cash game strategytournament strategyno-limit hold’emonline pokersmall stakes strategymicro stakes strategypsychologytilt

• Related Room

  Full Tilt