“They’re all donkeys.”“You can’t bluff them.”
“Nobody ever folds.”
It’d be easy to oversimplify your opponents in low buy-in poker tournaments. These snap judgments aren’t stereotypes, per se…just a misunderstanding of how others play the game and, more importantly, how to beat them. Your success in wading through the maze of huge fields and jungle of bad beats relies on your ability to make a couple of simple reads.
It’s probably a mistake to get hung up on taking super-detailed notes at the smaller stakes. I mean, feel free to write down as much or little as you’d like, but avoid anything which makes you sound like Phil Hellmuth guessing the exact two cards someone has because of a pre-flop action.
All you really need to know can be broken down in three two-word phrases:
Psycho-Loose: Position, stack size, and anyone else’s image mean nothing. P-L’s raise a lot, and once they put a chip in the pot, forget it…they’re not folding.
Weak-Loose: Loves to see flops. Willing to limp in with 2-gappers, anything suited, and will defend blinds with anything pre-flop. Makes lots of min-bets, such as a 30-chip bet on the flop with 750 already in the pot. But unlike the Psycho-Loose, Weak-Loose is quite able to get away from anyone showing strength. Hell, they LOVE to prove how good they are at folding if you’d only give them the chance.
Weak-Tight: Waits for a hand, with the patience of Job. Aware of position, Weak-Tight distinguishes himself from Weak-Loose by strictly following starting hand charts from the tournament writings of David Sklansky, Phil Gordon or Andy Bloch. They missed the part about raising and showing strength when they enter a pot. W-T’s usually assume you’re following the same chart they are.
Approximately 80-90% of the fields in $10-and-under MTTs fit in one of these three categories, in varying blends depending on what time you’re playing, and on which site. A couple of reads are instantly available. If the player is from a city with either five consonants in a row or a symbol not found in the English language, they are more likely to be Psycho-Loose. A player with a picture of an older person, the phrase “Granny” or a year in their name indicating an age greater than 45 is likely to be Weak-Tight. A player with a university logo, drug reference or poker jargon in their name will tend toward Weak-Loose.
These assumptions help, but with some practice, it’s fairly easy to figure out where most players stand in the first hour of a tournament. Weak-Tight doesn’t play a hand. Weak-Loose plays a lot, almost entirely small pots. And Psycho-Loose, if he makes the first break, will have a big stack and have shown down runner-runner flushes and flopped boats after defending his blinds with Q-3off.
So, how do we use this information, and when? I rarely try to make specific plays based on my reads in the first hour or two of a tournament. I’ll adjust my bets based on my Two Laws presented in my last article, but I’m not breaking out the fancy artillery and really going after someone. It’s when the antes kick in and stacks get tighter and the money comes into sight. At this point in an MTT, knowledge of these three categories provides the greatest edge.
Let’s take a classic scenario: We’re fairly close to the money, but not on the bubble yet. Blinds are 250/500 with a 50 ante. You are on the button with 6700 chips. There are a couple of limpers, or a raise to 1100 from the cutoff. This is a classic steal spot where you can add a quick 25% to your stack; your only decision is to shove or not. Your range should be fairly wide…but not infinite. The squeeze you can make with nearly any two cards in a middle-stakes or higher tournament isn’t necessarily the right play in a $4+.40 180-man on PokerStars or $5 freezeout on Full Tilt Poker.
Against the Weak players (either loose or tight), you need to be wary of them actually having a hand. You should avoid Aces and Kings with rag kickers, because you’ll too often find yourself dominated if they call. You should have little expectation of being ahead if you shove and get called, so you want to play hands that are the smallest underdogs. Smaller one- and two-gappers are attractive. Such hands are usually only a 3:2 underdog against most hands the Weak player (especially Weak-Loose) may call with.
With a Psycho-Loose in the pot, I’m less interested in finding a spot where I’m not that far behind. Why? Because his range is so much wider, I’m far more likely to have a hand where I’m ahead. I’m not simply stealing with A-7 or K-9…I’m thinking Psycho-Loose is going to call me with A-4 or Q-9 and I’m in really good shape to double up. The middle-to-low gappers, 3:2 dogs against the Weak-Loose range, are more likely to be dominated against the Psycho.
It’s easy to let yourself think you have to get hit with the deck to beat a bad field, and admittedly, it doesn’t hurt. But every game, even a “donkament," has opportunities where your poker abilities can shine through.
Every player has tells and patterns to read. What you do with the reads is up to you.
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* Paul "grapsfan" Herzog has been a PocketFives.com Contributing Writer since 2005, and is a successful mid-stakes poker player. He can often be found playing online when he has free time away from his duties as a Software Testing Engineer for a Minnesota firm.
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Book Review: Poker Wisdom of a Champion
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Greed Gone Wild: WSOP Final Table Rescheduled
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