We once had a few players who thought they were slumming at our game. They were used to 1/3. I decided that they thought this was a great place to try on their super aggro hat, because a huge raise here was like a standard at 1/3.

A couple dialed it back once they realized we weren't the easy marks they at first thought we were. But one was a pretty darn good player, so it was successful for him. We switched to PL and he stopped playing because the game was too small for him with that structure.

I think you should rethink the way you wrote the OP.

I would rephrase it as. We have a player who is better than everyone else in the game. He has found a winning strategy and none of us want to adjust. because we are losing to this strategy we are unhappy and we feel he is ruining the social environment of the game by winning. We would be much happier if we could win.

What should we do? And please don't tell us how to adjust our strategy to beat him because we already know how, but we feel it would be better for him to change than for us to change.


Look its your game you can kick him out or change the rules or whatever you want, but stop deluding yourself that he isn't the best player in the game and stop deluding yourself that he is doing anything wrong. The problem is your attitudes not his.

I can't help but feel that maybe you guys should be playing a game like gin.

That seems overly harsh.

There is more going on at a game than who wins or loses. Maybe these guys would adjust by playing tighter and hoping to trap, but don't want to fold all night. Or maybe they would play more aggressive themselves but take the risk of losing more money on a given night, and are uncomfortable with that. Maybe they think duking it out with this guy will make the game a lot more serious and less fun socially.

And your conclusion is based on your knowledge that this guy is the best player at the table. Just because they are folding more than they should does not mean he is winning.

Whats fun about playing poker with a bunjch of people who all play exactly the same ABC poker?

My experience is people don't complain about the way others play if they are beating the "bad player".

This all seems a little silly to me. I have never played regularly in a NL home game, but betting $4 here would be about the equivalent of raising to $15 in a 1/2 NL game, which happens regulalrly in a lot of casino games.

As some have said, if you don't want people to make big bets, don't play NL poker. You are correct that big bets make the game less fun; NL played properly is the most boring game around.

Poker is far more complex than NL preflop bet sizing.

That's not the same as knowing. Your post sounded very sure.

Why would you FORCE $$$ off the table?

I'm confused why you're hiring a dealer for this very low stakes game. In addition, you said you're also providing a meal and free alcohol--do your guests either bring anything or contribute towards food and booze? If not, it sounds like you are going through a lot of trouble and money to have people come to your home for a few hours of low limit poker...and despite this, some of your guests are still complaining?


This fun player and his wife are not the ones killing the fun of the game. It's being killed by cheap-ass people who want to play the home game version of "BBJ Bingo," better known as the game of choice among elderly casino denizens who simply want to play ABC poker while getting mad at anyone who raises and forces them to fold their pocket pairs or suited connectors.

As have been said by others, either change the game from 40BB buy-in NL, play tournaments instead, or play something other than poker for money.

I don't know if I'd take such a harsh tack, but you're pretty much right. The local cardrooms up here are peppered with folks like this. When you make any kind of intelligent play, they whine that it's a "friendly game," that you're making it too expensive to play, or whatever. Some of them will outright refuse to play with certain people because "he wins too much" or "he plays too tight," and they blame their losses on everything under the sun except their own play.

The fact that this game is typically a 40 BB buy-in really does mean that the aggressive guy has a built-in advantage. Maybe he seems clueless about hand strength, but playing that shallow does mean that constantly stealing blinds can be a strong strategy against a table full of nits. It's a low-variance strategy in that case too, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's crushing the game. You have to be willing to take some chances with that kind of structure. Those who play too conservatively will just be bleeding money all night, and of course that's no fun. But it's their nitty play that's making it no fun, not the guy who's raking in the chips (whether it's a deliberate strategy or not).

You're sure HE'S the bad player?

Winning versus losing is easy to judge. Good versus bad play can be a little trickier.

OP's only indication that Villain is a bad player is that "half the time [he] has no idea what hand if any he has made." Aside from that, he bets $4 all the time, but $4 isn't necessarily an improper bet in a $0.25/$0.50 game.

We're told that it makes everyone fold. This is what makes me wonder. I mean, at some point, you have to devise a counter-strategy. You can't beat the over-aggressive guy by going weak-tight and surrendering orbit after orbit of blinds, limps, and weak preflop calls to him.

I've been in games where I played somewhat like this precisely because people would either routinely limp/fold or, better, limp/call and then check/fold. It's the classic weak game that Doyle Brunson talks about in Super System. "Take it, Doyle. Take it, Doyle." It's the lowest-variance, easiest-to-beat game that you can find. Everyone's too scared to go to a showdown until they have the nuts, at which point their stacks have often been whittled down significantly, or they're less of a favorite than they were during most of the pots you took uncontested.

I'd really like to hear more from OP about this. Is Villain winning in this game with any kind of consistency? I'd guess he is, or else there wouldn't be an issue to raise. No one usually complains about the guy who throws a party on his own dime.

I also seriously doubt that the "problem player" has no idea what he has "1/2 the time". Maybe he does not know how to properly play hands frequently, but I think he knows how to play all the other players LOL including the OP very well indeed.

I wish Buccaneer would come back and give us more info. Is this "bad" player winning a lot? I did not gather that from the OP, but it could be true. A player who does not know what he has, reading it literally, is not generally a winning player.

Anyone can bet and make people fold. That does not equal winning.