Undisciplined Players

[Willy]

I thought the idea of a raise was to weed out the poor hands.



[/ QUOTE ]
The point of your raise is to cause them to make an error. you raise the largest amount that would be an error to call that they will still call. In the long run you will win.

[Cloodie]

I may be missing something here, but are you saying you've been playing poker for 2 1/2 years and still haven't played in a game where cash was at stake?

[JJT]

I started out playing in something called the National Poker Tour. It's a multistate, bar-based, free poker MTTs where you earn points and play in monthly and yearly MTTs for payout, so yes, for a long time that's all I played. After that ended, some of us from that gathered at a couple of people's houses once a week for a $10 buy-in games, with no more than a couple of tables. I have been to Vegas, even played NL at the Bellagio, not to great success, but I played. Recently I started playing at another bar in a guy's private MTT, but again for points, altho the monthly and yearly pays out, too. I see you're from the UK, so I guess you don't have B&M freerolls there, I don't know.

[JJT]

So, I played poker at 2 places tonight. At my usual place I busted out after 2 re-buys before the blinds rose to 25/50. Not wanting to go home so soon I went to this other bar (pointedly called "All-In") and after playing there I think I will give up playing poker with local people.

Or, I think a new word should be added to the TAG/LAG/PAG definitions and that's WAG, with the W standing for wild-ass. These people were insane. There's no such thing as ABC poker playing with them.

It didn't matter what you raised the blind to you got a caller, and usually with a totally [censored] hand that invariably hit the table. Have Ax? Go all in. Have 7-10d? Raise 7 times the blind because you have "2 over cards" and the flop is 6-5-4. Knowing these people in this short time, me, with pocket 7s, figured she was playing 7-3, so I folded. Why else would you raise like that? So she lost her "over cards" to a pair of sixes.

And of course play any 2 suited cards as this one woman kept whining as she raked the pot after pot.

In this particular game the blinds rise by a factor of 4, I think. After 1/2 it becomes 2/4, 4/8, 8/16, etc.; my math isn't good so I don't know what the factor is. But at the end when there are only 2 people left, they chop the pot based on chip count, so out of 4 games I chopped once, having the lesser chips.

Anyway, I can't do it, I can't play with them. They kept telling me that I'd have to play their way and I just can't. My luck, after whatever little ability I have, just doesn't work like that.

So either I go back to playing on-line, move to Vegas, or give up playing poker all together. I can't deal with this.

[Cloodie]

With regards to my earlier post, I just think that people are more likely to play in a loose (and sometimes crazy) way when there isn't really anything at stake for them. I've played a few free roll tournaments myself in the past and even though there were money prizes at stake I found my concentration drifting and I ended up playing a very lag style which is pretty much the opposite from my usual game. When I know that I'm playing using money from my bankroll then I find I'm far more disciplined in my play.

[JJT]

I really don't think the people I was playing with last night would play sensibly if the blinds were 5 and 10 dollar bills.