Playing Against Inexperienced Players
I just recently played in a home game tournament with some friends and family where the poker ability scale ranged from one female participant who was literally looking down at a “What Beats What” poker cheat sheet while she played, to my father who plays 2-3 live tournaments a week and has been making it in the money with about a 70-75% ratio. We had 27 players overall, and everyone started with 2,000 in chips with blinds beginning at 20-40.
This tournament served as a prime example of why you need to stay sharp when playing against a table full of players with little to no poker experience/knowledge. Many of the plays and techniques you’ll learn by trying to correctly advance your poker abilities will only work against a player that also has a basic understanding of when the moment is right to fold, call, raise.
For this mini-tournament I had to throw away almost my entire playbook, as I can’t bluff someone who doesn’t know that they shouldn’t call a pot that represents a third of their overall stack when all they have is third pair. Instead, I tightened up a little, but at the same time tried to see as many cheap flops as I could with hands that could flop big enough to allow me to extract a lot of chips.
With a table full of inexperienced players, expect to see a lot of people in on the flop, as they’ll limp with almost any two cards. Raising will get many of them to fold, but you’ll have difficulty making continuation bets post-flop as they’ll happily continue to call off chips with ace high and weak pairs, which will put you in a lot of awkward situations.
In these games I always like to stress patience as the main state of mind to adhere to. While you sit and wait for strong to premium hands, look around the table and try to ID the styles of all of the other players, it actually shouldn’t be that hard. Like I mentioned before, I had one player at my table that was literally reading off a cheat sheet because she didn’t know if two pair beat a flush, etc. Throughout the night she would limp in a lot, fold on the flop when her hand would miss, and over-bet the pot when she had a good hand. This made her very predictable and easy to play against.
Another player would raise pre-flop with ace-rag and shove with marginal hands like small pocket pairs when he still had a lot of chips left in front of him. Against a player like this you just want to wait for the opportunity to where your hand likely has him crushed. For me, it was when I picked up pocket kings in early position and made a minimum raise pre-flop because I felt that he would push all-in over the top of me with any hand that seemed strong enough to him. Sure enough, he shoved, I called, he turned over pocket threes and was the first person eliminated from the game.
Your biggest asset in a game against beginners is identifying their style, so you should really put a lot of effort into watching how they play and what hands they’re flipping over on the river. Trap as often as possible when you flop big or make your hand on a following street, as these players will happily bet into you with second and top pair even with a dangerous board on the felt.
As for the tournament itself, three members of my family participated (myself included) and we took the top three spots and chopped the prize money evenly. The three of use hands down had the most poker experience in the entire room, and just further goes to show that while luck does play a major factor, in the long run it’s skill and game theory that will lead to consistent results.
By: Chris Iaquinta
