A few years ago, Setsy wrote a post about "poker as rock-paper-scissors," and did a very nice job laying out some examples of how we can adjust to opponents' static strategies. This post is more conceptual/motivational. Lots of players don't really adjust very much to specific opponents. They just play TAG. Or LAG. Or whatever label they want to use. As a player who cut his teeth online pre-BF, I didn't fully appreciate what a huge difference adjustment makes until playing lots of LLSNL sessions. Even most inexperienced players realize they're supposed to adjust, but it's not always obvious how or why, and executing it properly is not always intuitive for beginners.

I like to think about Adjustment 101 using an exercise I call "Nit-Maniac-Station*." It's exactly like rock-paper-scissors. Station beats Maniac, Maniac beats Nit, Nit beats Station. For the purposes of NMS, they are not thinking players at all; they simply play the way they play, and never adjust to their opponents.

Now let's take a "better" player. I'll call him Milton, because I'm picturing the guy from Office Space. Milton knows about how often he "should" raise pf, limp, 3b, cbet, etc. His game is basically in the middle of the NMS simplex. However, like the Nit, Maniac, and Station, Milton does not adjust to his opponents, and he doesn't think that deeply about each individual situation. He just plays the way he plays. How well do you think Milton does?

Well, he doesn't lose to these guys (in the long run). But he also doesn't win much, because he's not playing particularly well against any of them. Against the Station, the Nit does way better than Milton because his range always has the Station crushed and he extracts max value (and he never gets pushed off hands). Against the Nit, the Maniac does way better than Milton because he pushes the Nit off hands and wins tons of money w/o showdown. And against the Maniac, the Station does way better than Milton, because he's perfectly happy to call three streets with a marginal hand.

Let's see how this plays out in three example hands. All of them are going to start with Hero (Milton) having AK, opening to 5bb in MP, and getting called by Villain on the button to see a flop heads-up for 10bb (blinds & rake cancel out, for simplicity). Effective stacks are 100bb.

Hand 1: Villain is the Station
Flop (10bb): AQJ
Hero bets 10bb, Villain calls.
Turn (30bb): 7
Hero bets 25bb, Villain calls.
River (80bb): 2
Hero checks, Villain checks.
Hero shows AK, Villain mucks.

What went wrong here? Hero underestimated the number of Ax hands a Station will call three streets with on this runout, and overestimated how often a Station will bluff a whiffed draw. It's profitable to make what are seemingly much thinner value bets against the Station. In this hand, against this Villain, the Nit's mindless "I hit my AK, must bet/bet/bet" approach would have worked a lot better.

Hand 2: Villain is the Maniac
Flop (10bb): AQ6
Hero bets 10bb, Villain raises to 30bb, Hero calls.
Turn (70bb): 5
Hero checks, Villain bets 65bb, Hero folds.

What went wrong here? Hero underestimated the number of hands a Maniac will take such an aggressive line with, and didn't stop to consider how relatively few hands he'll ever have here that beat AK. He almost never has AA/QQ/AQ after not 3betting preflop, and if the 5 can give him a second pair, he's capable of having all sorts of trash one-pair hands. In this hand, against this Villain, the Station's approach of mindlessly stacking off with top pair would have worked a lot better.

Hand 3: Villain is the Nit
Flop (10bb): 653
Hero bets 10bb, Villain calls.
Turn (30bb): J
Hero checks, Villain checks.
River (30bb): Q
Hero checks, Villain checks.
Villain shows 99 and wins the pot.

What went wrong here? Hero overestimated the number of hands a Nit will call this flop with and then call two more bets with given this turn card. Since the A is in Hero's hand, the Nit has very few flushes. He also has no Jx, and he almost certainly would have raised a set on the flop. He has lots of 44/77-TT. In this hand against this opponent, the Maniac's approach of mindlessly barreling off would have worked a lot better.

To do better against these very exploitable static players, Milton needs to understand the mechanics of NMS, and why each matchup turns out the way it does. When he knows a player to be similar to one of these types, he needs to play more like the type that beats it. That's what basic adjustment is: moving around in the NMS simplex depending on who the opponent is.

Obviously I'm oversimplifying, and adjustment gets way deeper than this, because we want to exploit specific tendencies, not just general player types. But the baseline should not be to play like Milton. You can identify the more extreme opponents of each type within the first orbit or two, and the less extreme ones not long after that. You're leaving so much money on the table if you don't adapt.


*In case the terms are too imprecise:
-The Nit has very low VPIP, is aggressive postflop with TPTK+, and folds to bets/raises on scare cards.
-The Maniac has extremely high VPIP, PFR, cbet%, 2-barrel%, and 3-barrel%, and raises postflop a lot, especially on scare cards.
-The Station is capable of folding junk, but never folds TP+. He never raises without the effective nuts.

Very nice poast OP, and one of my fav topics in poker.

Adjusting to the table and adapting constantly is one of the key factors to become a crushing pokerplayer.

I hear many recfish or bad regs complain to me all the time like. "Player A calls so ****ing much, he is impossible to get to fold". Or "Player B is so freaking tight, he always has the nutz".

Generally i just sighs when i hear those complaints because the bad regs and rec fish has one thing in common: they are frustrated because they are incapable of adjusting. They keep on trying to bluff the station, even if its suicide. And they also keep paying off the nit who plays 1 hand pr hour. I mean come on!

It was not easy to develope this skill i would have to say. When i started out live for about 3-4 years ago i had more than enough with handling chips, keep my concentration for many hours and plan out my own hand. The breakthrough came when i was able to reach out of myself and focus on what the other players were doing, rather den myself.

Also, i will end this post with a funny story and some food for thought. In a underground club i regurarly play, we have this ultra aggressive player in his fourties. He is often being discussed by the players and the other regs. What is interesting is many players i respect think he is the best player in our area of the country. He is so difficult to play against, he puts you to a decision for his stack and they just gets scared of playing him. I simply cant understand how they are so impressed with his play. Why is that? Because they cant adapt to him. They just play their standard nitty style and let him barrell them off their non nut hand over and over again.

Now: i on the other hand disagree completely with all of them, and i have said it very clearly. I think he is an overaggressive spewmonkey, and at stakes i am comfortable with and rolled for i would play him 7 days a week. I played with him several times, and he has been spewing chips all over the table every time, dropping like 6-7 buyins in 3-4 hours. One of the reasons is that i manage to see what he is doing and adapting properly. If i flop any kind of solid equity against him i am going to war, or let him barrell off his stack to me. This example just shows how extremly important adapting and adjusting properly is in poker.

This is a simple way to keep track of how to quickly size your opponents up a and form a game plan to take all their money. At the casino I play at, the player pool is huge and rarely do you see the same players. So the quicker I can plan my game, the better. Thanks for this.

Very well said.

I think is a good area for people to start along their poker journey past 'what do I have?' and into how to adjust to other people at the table based on the classifications that we give them.

I think the easist way to start to classify people which is touched upon in this post is 'what do they do with top pair?'. Once we know what a villain will do with top pair, we can base the majority of our decisions on that.

In the case of the station, top pair is the nuts. And given that the number of top pair combos > reaonsable two pair+ combos, we can always profitably stack off here with TPTK, and when we lose, that's just how it goes sometimes.
However, if we know that our villain is not going to call 3 bets with top pair, we can classify him differently, and adjust accordingly.

A valuable concept to consider and learn to apply, thank you.

Never quite thought of it like this before.

What a gem, thank you

Epic bump. Very well done OP.

Why is Milton who never adjusts better than the other groups who don't adjust? You said that each group dominates another group. It seems logical to me that everyone who doesn't adjust is the same. Why would any of the groups lose if they each dominate another strategy equally?

Ultimately poker is a person against person game. If someone calls down with second pair is he a calling station? How do you decide? Maybe the bettor is a maniac.

I know a lot of calling stations who have bet-when-checked-to disease. Any player type can have it. Just like any player type can over-value over pairs.

I take detailed notes, whenever someone does something that doesn't seem standard: Here's the notes I took for someone I played with for a while Saturday night. What player type do you think he is? Is he maniac/station/nit? Can we tell? Does it matter?

Checked to bettor when hit runner-runner nut flush on the river.
Called pot-sized bet on turn with second pair
Didn't bet 873 flop with 86o
Checked flop with top and bottom pair. Bet around 2/3rds pot on turn/river
Called shove on T95hhh board with QhQc
5x QQ. Called large bet on AJ5 flop with QQ.
bet 2/3rd pot with open-ended straight draw on flop and then checked down 9 high.
Bet 3/4s pot on 723 A turn with A9o
Bet 1.5x pot on river with backdoor 3rd nut flush
3x raise with KTo in early position. Also AQo. Also T9s. Also 45s
2.5x raise with 77 in late position. called pot-sized turn bet on 386 A turn.

Thanks for bump & comments, guys. I thought I'd never see this thread again.

I was trying to imply that he's really not, but I could've been more explicit about that. fwiw, a player of any of the three groups can be quite successful if the composition of their player pool is favorable for them.

Good point, and a caveat against typing opponents too quickly with too much certainty. This is really true of reads in general; when we see a player do something once, we don't know with 100% certainty that it's representative of what he usually does. We should always be honing reads as we get more information.

We absolutely want to get more specific & detailed reads on players than simply classifying them into a few categories. But for someone who's not comfortable with live reads and adjustments, it can feel like trying to run before they've learned to crawl.