The NoPayPOKER.com How To Defeat Better Players Method
The standard (and indeed common sense) poker strategy followed by average skill poker players who mostly play free poker tournaments or low stakes and, for some reason find themselves up against strong players is not to play at all.
Normally this is not a problem, in cash games, when the novice realizes he or she is out of depth all the player has to do is bailout and find a more suitable table. But in tournament poker, it is not so simple to avoid being trapped on a table with some good or even exceptionally talented poker players.
In this article you will learn why good players will generally easily beat the novice, and, if you are a novice or less advanced player what you can try to do to survive and even prosper if you find yourself circled by hungry sharks!
A good player can normally easily beat the novice as he knows the patterns novice player tend to follow, given the Board cards, the novice’s actions and the position. Good players can also put them on a hand.
They will know if a novice player is holding a suited connector; a pocket pair, or even, in some extreme cases, a Set. The good player knows to play a Straight weak or even fold it when the Board pairs and the novice suddenly dumps down loads of his chips.
First lets understand how the novice tends to play so we can understand why the good players have such advantage. For the purpose of this we will say that a player wins a pot when, (a) he wins the hand in a showdown or (b) he makes all his opponents fold. If we want our novice player to win a pot against a good player, what kinds of hands should he play, and how?
For example, if the novice aims to win the showdown. Then he has to play the good players through the preflop, turn and river. At each step, simply by reason of experience, the good player is able to get more information about the novice player than the novice can get from the good player.
If the good player has more information, then he knows immediately whether the novice player has a good hand or not. He can continue to showdown and probably win a big pot, if he keeps on value-betting our novice. Or he can lose a little pot, if he slows down and just checks. Or he is able to make the novice fold.
Imagine our novice now tries (b) to make his opponents fold. (Let us assume the Board can help him only a little, and his hand, from the flop up to the river, will not be of showdown quality.) Throughout the flop, turn, and the river, the good player will extract more inferences from the Board cards than the novice player will.
If our novice, who usually has the tendency to get excited, overrepresents a hand unnecessarily, then he will just be called by the good player (unless he plays really strongly, but he can’t overdo this either).
From all of these, we gather that the pieces of information needed to make a decision is:
1. Your cards.
2. Your perception of the opponents’ cards.
3. The Board cards.
4. Tells your opponent provides.
5. Tells you give away to your opponent.
6. Previous tendencies of each player.
7. Position.
Both the novice and the good player has (1) and (3), but the good player’s judgment is generally more accurate with all these criteria. A good player, for instance, will believe that 8-7 (his cards) is not so nice-looking in a flop of 10-7-3 (the Board cards), but a novice player may. As for (4), (5), and (6) which stems from (1), (2) and (3), the good player is usually more aware of these. And good players care more for (7) than novice ones.
So if our novice really wants to play a pot against a good player, he cannot really rely fully on the information above, for he cannot interpret them well. So our novice should look for a spot in which the good player also cannot rely on most of the information above, so that they will be on equal footing. When is it? Answer: Preflop. How to play? All-in.
Preflop, your perception of the opponent’s cards is less accurate than after the flop falls. Also, since there are no Board cards yet, tells are less reliable. Finally, because a novice is less likely to have previous tendencies resulting from experience, the good player has little hold on (6). And preflop all-ins are dependent on hand strength mainly than position.
By moving all-in you can make your opponent fold (which is a win) or entice him to a showdown. Don’t call yourself all-in, however, unless you’ve got a premium hand. Once your opponent does this move, if he is a good opponent, he knows you are vulnerable.) When he does want a showdown, he is deprived of postflop information that will increase his chances of making an good decision. At this point, even though good player is still good, he has to play in terms of novice play.
The good hands the novice may have are still the traditional all-in hands: A-A, K-K, Q-Q, etc. A-K (or similar) is quite shaky, but if you can lull someone with 7-7 to play with you, you are still about 50-50 with him.Whereas if you take him to the Flop, he will have more opportunities to play his 7-7 better than you would play your A-K, and you will be defeated most of the time. Let us say your chance to win above is just 25% postflop; why don’t you take the 50-50 instead?
In summary
If you are new to poker then know this seems a lot to take in, the fact is though that while poker is easy to learn it is harder to be good at, hence the mad “chip flinging” you will see on many free online poker tables. Most people it seems can’t be bothered to learn, they are happy to play for what they call fun when in fact it’s a lot more fun to learn to play and win more often!.
Yes it is crazy that so many play with so little skill, but it is also very good news for you as a player who aims to learn to play well. The reason why is that when you really learn how to play poker well you can go mercenary and hunt the “fun donks” down in low stakes real money games as well as free online poker sites that pay out real money while you happily build your skills and bankroll!
To make this work first, play free poker tournaments to learn to play poker online free where you can learn while you lose but without losing real money, then once ready to can move up to low stakes and start to make some serious poker cash!
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