As I have ventured into more and more live poker over the past 3 months I have realized that the majority of games that you walk into in a casino are populated by people that are not completely competent thinking players. Most games I have come across up to 2/5 have been some mix between 50/50 fun/thinking players and some as high as 75/25 fun to thinking. I recently took a trip to vegas and played mostly 2/5 with a couple of sessions at 5/10 and one that started there and then jumped up to 10/20. What I found is that when playing against players that are obviously thinking players I often feel more comfortable deeper in hands. Hand reading comes more naturally and I have a better feel for whereI am in hands. I have had a couple of examples both positive and negative against "fun" players where I was totally lost because they played in a way so counter intuitive to how I thought they would.

A good example would be me running a 3 street bluff on K7s8s2K where the player quickly called flop and turn and then disgustedly mucked QQ face up to my river bet. He said something to the effect of "god any other card on the river and I snap call". I was completely lost in the hand and had his range so backwards it was silly. In this scenario it worked out favorably but I have had the opposite happen as well. This was obviously insane reasoning to me but it also showed me how much I have to learn at hand reading at this level, and what I deem experience really means very little against this player pool.

Some of you have played 1000's of hours live at this level and my question is are there things that will just come with experience and more hands or did you completely change your mindset towards the game and specifically hand reading when entering these games?

I understand this is an incredibly open ended question and post but have others of you struggled with this idea as well and how did you overcome it or is it simply something that more hands will clarify for me? Thanks, any input will be welcome.

It sounds like you moved up to where they respect your raises.

Lmfao.

Tbh though at no stake levels do opponents respect your raises really.

It's very simple. Whether they are regs or recs I don't make any moves against them until I have a read to work with. Until I get reads I just play a tight and value heavy game.

Once I start getting a read (betting lines without showdowns, showdowns, chat, physical tells) I will start taking slightly alternative lines in the best possible spots. As my read improves I will make bigger moves, more often and in more spots.

It always makes me laugh when I read a thread like:

" V is largely unknown but is young Asian and seems loud and arrogant. He's raised a few hands and won pot on flop with cbet. I flat this LAGtard OOP with KTo, hit 2nd pair and call him down over 3 streets for all my chips. Good move or spew?"

Of course it is ****ing spew you noob! You have almost no read, you have no range for V at any point and yet you elected to make a hugely marginal call down OOP based entirely off V's apperance.

You get the same BS threads all the time for readless bluff lines and readless value lines. The posters want the rest of us to be like psychics and get the reads they couldn't at the table at the time but at a distance in time and space and tell them if they were right or wrong. Guess what OP? You wrong!

If you don't know what range your opponent has then play cautious, conservative poker until you get a read. Makes no difference if they are thinking or fun players except that the thinking players will more often trick you by disguising their hands.

I guarantee that in a game with me you'll have much less clue what I have than the blundering recs. The thing that'll hurt you most is when you think you have me read like a book and exactly where you want me is exactly the time I'm going to show up with something completely unexpected and entirely -EV for you.

+2 LOLs

Seriously though, yes you have to get some experience before you become atuned to population tendencies in any new game. Just don't rely heavily on population reads when making moves.

Reading a lot on here and playing a lot live will give you a feel for the various illogical aproaches that are commonly taken to this game. Then it is just a case of putting yourself in the fish's shoes when ranging them.

I also strongly recommend all Ed Miller's books on live poker. They helped me out a ton.

There is a lot that is wrong with your premise. You've divided the world into "thinking" and "non-thinking" players when in reality what you have done is divide the world into "thinks like I think" and "doesn't think like I think" players. This is common human reaction and seeps into almost all activities that we get involved in. All players are "thinking." They are actively working to achieve their goals. If their goal is to win money at poker, they will have varying levels of skill in order to achieve that goal.

Let's take your example. Running 3 bet bluff is usually a bad idea in live poker. People don't come to the poker room to fold. After the turn, they usually have something they consider good and aren't folding. In your mind you thought, "I'm obviously representing TP. I would fold with QQ against top pair. Why isn't he?" He recognized that you were full of **** while you kept thinking you could get him to fold. On a thinking scale, he was way ahead of you. His issue which cost him the hand is that instead of knowing that the king on the river made it much less likely you had a king, he thought it made it more likely. So he folded.

I suspect you found playing higher stakes "easier" because the villains were playing a standard tight strategy against you. Since you learned a version of that yourself, it was easier to play than the more chaotic play you saw at lower levels. I can assure you that if you had continued to play in Las Vegas at those stakes, you would have found in several days that they were adjusting their play to exploit. They would have become "non-thinking" to you. They won't make the "king" mistake you saw before.

I'll leave this thread up for a bit, but I expecting it will continue to attract trolling. My hope is this thread will be a wake up call, suggesting that you still have a lot of learning to do. You'll probably want to do that at the 1/2 level. Your reaction to my comments will let everyone know how "thinking" you actually are.

^ great post Venice10.

Ultimately it is about respecting other players, ironic given the slightly disrespectful tone I and others took with you while trying to explain this, but hey, noone's perfect

I find respecting my opponents helps me get in their heads so I can play better AND it also reduces entitlement tilt and helps me have more fun and be more relaxed at the table. I'm more enjoyable to play against and get more action as a consequence.

It is still about getting good reads. That's the fun part of poker so, really, it is great that there are players who think differently to us and make different mistakes to ours. It gives us more work to do reading them, more depth to the game, requires greater skill and knowledge: that all makes it more interesting if you embrace it.

My point about getting good reads still stands but Venice said it better and more respectfully.

Nailed it.

This 1000 times over

Ragequit, you are rapidly becoming my favorite poster