Poker Math: How To Beat Bad Players

Poker Math: How To
Beat Bad Players—Principle 1
by Martell

In my last article, I explored the notion that bad players are more difficult to beat than good players—and discovered that there may be some mathematical truth behind that myth. It turns out that many of the substandard hands that bad players tend to play fare better against the top raising hands than many of the more select hands do. Unfortunately, that information, while interesting, doesn’t really help us much. What we really want to know is, “What can we do about it?” In the next few articles, I’ll discuss five principles that can help you counteract the strategies of the bad player and regain your advantage.

1. Focus On High Cards

The normal piece of advice for beating loose, wild players is to play tight. This means only playing premium hands—Ace-King, Ace-Queen, and big pocket pairs. Conventional wisdom is that these hands will be more likely to dominate an opponent, so you should win with them more steadily. Unfortunately, this advice is a recipe for disaster.

The implication is that, if you play only the best hands, you will make more money in the long run than if you were to play a normal strategy. The only way this could be true is if you were either a) increasing your volume or b) increasing your edge. Playing fewer hands decreases your volume, so that’s out. And as we’ve seen, many raising hands have a lower edge versus live players than most people think.

What happens if you play even tighter? If you were to restrict your hand selection to the premium hands that have a huge edge—hands like pocket Queens, Kings or Aces—you would only be playing once every 70 hands. It’s hard to make up 7+ rounds of blinds every time you win a hand (and that’s assuming you win them all). It gets even harder to win a big pot when people see you haven’t played a hand in almost 2 hours. They just won’t give you the action.

A more profitable strategy is to shift your range of starting hands to include those that are more likely to have a big advantage over your opponents. This means a shift toward playing more high cards and playing fewer drawing hands. Of course, you will continue to play all your premium hands, but hands like Queen-10 suited and pocket 7s become hands you should fold, while hands like Ace-10 offsuit and King-Jack offsuit—hands that many good players wouldn’t play in early position, especially if they were trying to play “tight”—become hands you should play.

Let’s look at a couple of examples: first, King-Jack versus hands like King-10, Queen-Jack and Jack-10. King-Jack rates to win around 72% of the time versus these hands, while many of the premium hands win anywhere from 8-10% less often. Because many bad players like playing any two straight cards (as well as any King with a small suited card), it’s easier for this type of hand to end up in a dominant position.

And most of the time that King-Jack is in trouble, you can figure it out: 1) Even the bad players usually raise preflop with Ace-King or a big pocket pair, so you should play very conservatively in those situations, and 2) you know that almost all bad players will play Ace-Anything, so if an Ace hits the flop, you need to get out of the hand. That leaves Ace-Jack and King-Queen as the only two hands where you can get into trouble, but considering how often you end up in a dominant position with the hand, it is clearly worth the risk.

Now, let’s look at a bad situation: you call with King-Jack offsuit, someone else calls with Ace-9 offsuit, and someone else calls with Jack-Ten offsuit. Then the button raises with pocket Queens. The big blind calls with Ace-6 suited, and everyone else calls. Let’s assess the situation: If a Jack hits, you’re still behind; if an Ace hits, you’re nearly dead; six of the cards you could use to make a straight are gone; and your cards aren’t even suited.

What are your chances of winning going into the flop? 20.8%. Amazingly, you will win your fair share of the pots in this dire situation. The lesson is that, versus many of the hands that the typical bad player plays, two big cards will be in very good shape, and even when they appear to be in pretty bad shape, things may not be as bad as they look. Depending on how loosely and passively your opponents are playing, you can expand your starting hands to include King-10 and Queen-Jack. Understand, though, that if you take it much further than that, it’s quite likely that you’ll be the one dominated.

This leads to the problem of interpreting a raise from a bad player. In my next article, I’ll discuss how to deal with this situation in a way that maximizes your profits.

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.