Little help calling stations

[SheridanCat]

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Eureka!! I can now prove what many people have long ranted about. Low limit players are so bad that the games are hard to win money at. Poor players often don't make mistakes according to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker.

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Wow, weird. I was browsing TOP this morning and read the FTOP section. I had this same thought. The way he words the FTOP, he assumes your opponent is competent.

[AKQJ10]

Humor aside -- and bernie, I can't blame you for thinking that's a serious misunderstanding of the FTOP, since so many people really do believe that a game can be "too good to beat" -- there's a serious point here: Deception is wasted, and hence counterproductive, against really bad players. If your opponent can know what you have and still make bad decisions, then don't waste equity trying to disguise what you have. (It's amazing how many people will slowplay trips on a coordinated board or a non-nut flopped flush just on "general principles" with no reason to think they won't get action.)

[bernie]

[ QUOTE ]
Humor aside -- and bernie, I can't blame you for thinking that's a serious misunderstanding of the FTOP, since so many people really do believe that a game can be "too good to beat" -- there's a serious point here: Deception is wasted, and hence counterproductive, against really bad players. If your opponent can know what you have and still make bad decisions, then don't waste equity trying to disguise what you have. (It's amazing how many people will slowplay trips on a coordinated board or a non-nut flopped flush just on "general principles" with no reason to think they won't get action.)

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Many times they'll just apply FTOP to a single street, not the overall hand or combining 2 recent streets.

One of the best ways to be 'deceptive' in these games is to just bet out where others wouldn't. Flop a str8 or nut flush? Bet it out. Most won't put you on it because they would wait to the turn before they came alive which defines their hand so much they actually can lose action. It's great when they do this on dry boards when people are drawing slim. But think of how many hands you are representing if you bet the flop along with the opponents being enamored with how they'd play a certain hand if they had it. Remember, there's a reason many of these 'bad' players play predictably.

For many, their main concern is winning a pot. So they'll try to define it as fast as possible, or make a big move on a big street, hoping to win the pot right there, not necesarily to make more money on the hand. Hell, some will even plead with you to fold sometimes even showing their hand they just want to win the pot so bad.

Unless they have the nuts. Then they bitch about not getting any action... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

b

[jjshabado]

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Deception is wasted, and hence counterproductive, against really bad players. If your opponent can know what you have and still make bad decisions, then don't waste equity trying to disguise what you have.

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I agree whole-heartedly here, and it needs to be beaten into the heads of every person who plays low limit poker. Every time I hear low-limit players talking about making sub-optimal plays just to keep their opponents off guard/guessing I want to beat them with a 2x4. Since 75-90% (statistics curtesy of my ass) of low limit players don't pay enough attention to other players, don't have the skill to realize what a check/bet/raise/cr/3-bet/cap actually signifiesyou should almost always go with the play thats going to get paid off the most and don't worry about mixing it up until you see actual evidence that you need to. And when you're online the bad players don't have poker tracker, they don't keep buddy lists of good/bad players, so they'll very rarely remember your screen name amongst hundreds of others.

And yes I was joking with my proof. The real proof low-limit games are unbeatable is because so many people are playing against you that you have to share the luck with more people and so you get less of it. In better games you're usually only up against 1 or 2 people after the flop so you get luck 1 in 2 or 3 times and win. In small games you're up against 7 or 8 other players so you only get luck 1 in 8 or 9 times. So its a harder game.

Now ... before somebody makes some smart-ass comment about the pot size, remember thats another advantage to high limit poker. In low limit poker, not only do you get luck less, but the pots are smaller because the limits are lower. In high limit poker you get luck more often and each time you're lucky you win more money. Thus high stakes games are easier to make money in. QED (for real this time)

[bernie]

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And yes I was joking with my proof. The real proof low-limit games are unbeatable is because so many people are playing against you that you have to share the luck with more people and so you get less of it. In better games you're usually only up against 1 or 2 people after the flop so you get luck 1 in 2 or 3 times and win. In small games you're up against 7 or 8 other players so you only get luck 1 in 8 or 9 times. So its a harder game.

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This is your real proof? I'll take 7-8 players to a flop over 2-3 any day of the week and get my money printing press ready with plenty of ink.

Next you'll be ranting how you want fewer callers preflop with AA.

[ QUOTE ]
Now ... before somebody makes some smart-ass comment about the pot size, remember thats another advantage to high limit poker. In low limit poker, not only do you get luck less, but the pots are smaller because the limits are lower. In high limit poker you get luck more often and each time you're lucky you win more money. Thus high stakes games are easier to make money in.

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Do you even understand pot size in relation to the betting limit? What you just typed here, for the most part, isn't accurate, nor is it true.

b

[AKQJ10]

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Do you even understand pot size in relation to the betting limit? What you just typed here, for the most part, isn't accurate, nor is it true.

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jjshabado,

I've got a lottery ticket to sell you. You could win a million dollars. You interested?

Oh, the price... well, the price isn't important. Wanna buy it?

[jjshabado]

It seems that 2/4 at the Taj isn't the only place to find suckers! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

It was a joke. I thought it was pretty funny though. I've been trying to think of a 3rd "proof" of why low-limits are unbeatable but I couldn't think of anything.

Come on, you have to admit though that "luck" being divided more was pretty funny. I was hoping to get a few people who agreed with the post to back me up... ah well.

[AKQJ10]

Ah, well, I wondered what was going on. Your other posts make a lot more sense.

So was that a "two-barrel bluff"?

[jjshabado]

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Ah, well, I wondered what was going on. Your other posts make a lot more sense.

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Thanks! Of course its not that hard to make more sense than those posts.

[AKQJ10]

If we seem to have no sense of humor in this forum, it's just we tend to be a bit anal about not leading beginners astray. It may be disappointing that no one posted agreement with you, but I can assure you someone was reading that post thinking, "That guy makes a lot of sense."

Well, if any beginners can actually find this forum, that is.