Forgive me if this is in the wrong section, Im not really sure where else to post it.

Anyway, here is my dillemma. I like to play live poker occasionally but dont want to get to committed to playing all the time,however I want to improve my game. I understand the basics like pot odds, drawing odds, rule of 2 and 4 ect ect.. Im great at hiding my emotions when I have a big hand and usually get paid off.

Where I need a ton of help is when facing tons of resistance from a tough player who just keeps calling down my bets making me doubt my hand. Im usually alert enough to get out of the way of big hands when I see it, and can lay down a hand when needed. Where I loose most of my money is playing good cards, OOP against a lag who when scary cards hit force me to fold.

I was playing the other day with 2 players that would call almost any raise or limp. The table went the way of all limpers or at least 4 callers on a raised pot. One player in particular was impossible to put on an accurate range, he would call a mid to weak flush draw on a QKT flop for 2 to 1 odds or run me down with a 68 suited chasing a flush with only a pair of 6's when my AK wouldnt connect. He would rarely define his hand by RR, just call,call,call then when he sensed slight weakness in my hand he would bet out after I checked. I tried a 3 barrel bluff against him OOP, and he called every street with a pair of 6's on a really wet board.

HOW DO YOU PLAY THESE GUYS??? He wasnt a donk by any means he knew what he was doing, just made some questionable moves.

I didnt have the balls or the cards to really play back at him much and I think he sensed that and exploited me a bit. I left up for the night, but not up as much as I would have liked. I think I need to work on being more aggressive but Im too afraid to play that way, I rarely bluff and dont do it too big. I will play my big draws aggressively or my big hands aggressively and fairly deceptive I feel as I usually get paid off when I hit..My issue is loosing or letting go the small pots, and it adds up over time, I did add a lot more Cbets and semi bluff turn bets to my game and usually they work, but they didnt work against the 2 tough players at the table..

I know this is kind of general and I didnt get too much into details, Im just looking for some advice on what to read or study up on to gain more confidence in your hands and betting patterns..

Would be nice if we had exact hands, but from what you said he doesn't sound tough at all, just like your standard 1/2 calling station.

It's really a simple answer. Stop playing out of position.... I try to play EVERY hand in position unless it's a premium hand OOP is just not worth the effort most of the time

Im gonna guess that you are making good folds and then overthinking things. Very few people lose at low limits due to folding too much. If you see people folding pocket kings to your min raise then you are too nitty.

Alright I'm gonna make my first bonafide attempt at giving back to the community here since this is a situation close to my heart lol. I made a thread just like this when I first started playing, if you go in my history you can find it. I thought the guy was some kind of super human. The posters here told me what I later discovered for myself, that he was actually a terrible player. Your dilemma is the same, and you already have the solution. It's written in your OP. He called you down 3 streets with a pair of 6s. The reason you struggled is also in your OP. You bet when you didn't connect, added air c-bets and semi bluffs into your game against calling stations, and you seemingly check-folded with made hands. Instead you should have played an ABC value oriented game.

The other thing to add is that the goal of poker is not to win pots. It is to win money. So you can lose 3 $30 pots and win one $200 pot and be way ahead overall. The extra advantage of this is that your typical regular will look at you as a loser. He won't respect your game. He'll assume you just got lucky that one time. And he'll call you a lot because he figures he's going to beat you most of the time.

Great advice. listen to this OP

Anytime someone calls me down with a pair of 6's I immediately table change to a game where they respect my raises.


As you ponder how ridiculous this sounds OP consider that it's what your post was basically saying.

Stick to value betting the crap out of these guys. Play as much in position against them as possible and don't bluff.

This is more an indigtment of your seat changing abilities than anything else.

Telling you someone is terrible gives you no information about how they play poker.

On a wet board even someone who doesn't know the meaning of the word polarized, can recognize that most people's range is filled with air if they barrel. On a Tc9c5s 8d7c board, most people aren't using a bet, bet, shove line with TPTK.

ABC poker would tell him that AKo is a poor semi-bluff candidates on a Tc9c5s board because it rarely improves to a hand strong enough to value-bet.

Agree with a lot of what was said. It takes a long time to learn how to "change gears," so MOST of the people you play against will have particular strategies that they stick to throughout the session. It's just a matter of observation and experimentation.

It's not like there's a scale of 1 to 10 and everyone is somewhere on that scale. Different people have different ideas and do different things. If someone confuses you, you can just not play marginal strength hands against that person. Just muck and move on if that makes the game less stressful. But then watch that person play and gather any SOLID evidence that is available.

Someone said it right in a post above. Play straight-forward ABC and don't bluff into him OOP. I wouldn't do too many double/triple barrels either, even IP. You may be OOP too much and you're just betting in bad spots against him. If you say you know he senses your weakness and you can't stop him from exploiting you, then this might be a simple case of "he's better than you".

I think you have to build up your game in layers. Start with defining your own range in different positions. Keep it simple. Learn what to pay attention to and how to identify different player types. Then learn how to exploit their tendencies.

If you really want to improve invest in one of the training sites. The major ones have tons of great content.

Post hands in the forum and let others evaluate your decisions.

Good luck at the tables!

This.

My experience exactly.

Thanks for all the advice. I seem to be afraid to continue with say one particular hand I had against him OTB was pocket T's which I raised $12 and got 3 callers. Flop was 2 clubs all under cards, Cbet $20 little more than half pot. 1 fold and the PITA called. Turn came another club and I checked, and PITA (Pain in the Ass..) led out for $70...I was to scared of the flush cause I had seen him repeatedly chase and hit so i was forced to fold cause I didnt want to loose my stack on pocket T's

This was the typical scenario against this guy. I could not put him on a specific range of hands the way he was playing. I had seen him run down a flush draw with absolute trash hands like 72 59 on a Broadway flop ect ect.. It was very frustrating.

The good thing is the big pots i won were huge for 1/4 :-)

And FWIW the table didnt respect one single raise, especially UTG. Despite me showing the absolute nuts 2 times. Literally no respect, almost like we were playing flop bingo for $12 to $15 per hand and whoever had the balls to bet 1/2 their stack took the pot. I did however have what i thought was a read on him, but he didn show down enough hands for me to make an accurate assesment, but I thought when he hit his flush he looked away breifly as the card hit. When he was what i perceived weaker or on a draw he would stare me down. But I coul not determine if it was the strong means weak, therefore Im gonna acct strong when strong actually means strong reverse play..I simply didnt have the balls to test him out..

I would try not to focus on the soul reading/ physical tells stuff for now (like where his eyes were when the flush hit, reverse psych, etc) and focus more on fundamentals, like: hand ranges, position, getting value with your strong hands.

Those fundamentals are much more important especially in the beginning. You can worry about staring into villain's eyes to help finalize a super tough decision after all the basic concepts have been mastered and are on auto pilot.

Widen your value ranges a bit against these guys, aka value bet thinner. Lots of people never think of getting value with thinks like second pair or TT on a K89 flop but against these stations there is def value there. However i only really recommend going real think for value IP because it lets you pot control on later streets.

I know not getting respect is boring now because you basically just have to wait to get cards and then bet. Its pretty simple and boring, but it can be very profitable. Trust me appreciate it now because if you ever move up in limits you will be praying for games with only a few of these type of guys in them and not a full table. Everyone when they start playing wants to try fancy bluffs and plays that they learn and they normally are fundamentally sound but poker, before everything else, is about exploiting your opponents and making them make mistakes. At higher limits you have to force mistakes by bluffing people of the best hand and such, but here the players make all the mistakes already, just play more solid then them and profit of the mistakes they make
Live reads can come into play in these games, but never make a decision off them. Use them to support a read and solid poker thinking. If you have a tough decision then bring live reads into it, but when i first started playing live i remember thinking every little facial tick or word someone said was a tell. You can start seeing ghosts with these type of things so just stay away from them for now.

Agaisnt aggro lag small hand small pot goes out of the window.

I don't think your fold with TT is bad. It's very good unless he literally never folds the flop, then you can still bet for value/protection OTT but then half the deck OTR is ugly as sin. If he's really wide you can close your eyes, never look at the river card and c/c.

But then it's probably best to just keep your stack and "wait for a better spot" since if he is so stationary and wide there are much better boards to exploit him.

Can you expound a bit on widening my value ranges amd value betting thinner? Generally here is my range
UTG,UTG+1: TT+ AK-ATs KQ,QJ about 50% of the time and occasionally I will raise with JTs just for widening range.
MP to CO: I will add 78s+ And some one gappers occasionally.22+ (raise 50%of the time)

OTB: I will add suited 2 gappers and most suited A or K

Is that too loose?

I play significantly tighter than that, first in from EP and MP: 77+ and AJ+

It's because I find bluffing from those positions is not +EV in the long run.

I'd say you didn't have the knowledge to know how to play against this player. You can't just hope to get big cards because that doesn't happen enough and he might fold when you play back at him with a big hand.

It's easier to have balls when you know what you're doing IMO. If you try to be courageous and don't know what you are doing, then it makes sense why you would be uncomfortable. You're going to feel uncomfortable if you don't know what you're doing and if you doubt yourself.

Edit: On second thought I guess you can wait for big cards. I read your post instead of skimming it and I wouldn't surprised if your opponents were just calling stations who ran well.

I haven't read the other replies yet but it's clear this player did not know what he was doing.



So these guys keep calling after the flop. They also call when you bluff. Then why are you implying that you need to be more aggressive? The loose play postflop is easily exploitable. Just bet when you have it and cut down on your bluffs. These guys sound like they are calling stations a lot of the time. They are just trickier because they react to weakness and play with more aggression, which makes them trickier. But like calling stations, they will pay you off.

These players will play oop A LOT, so you should usually have position AND stronger hands against them. And the fact they play hand after hand gives you plenty of chances to study them and look for any tendencies/betting patterns they have. This is huge. I've been able to pick up on obvious betting patterns against these players before I even played a hand against them.

So what's the solution? I feel I kinda know what I'm doing just enough to be dangerous. (To myself)
Perfect example of a hand with him:
I would raise $12 to 15 from UTG/EP with AKs.
Miss the flop and Cbet 75% of the time, get called check the turn and he would bet, I would fold.. On the occasion I would check the flop I would stab the turn amd have to fold on the river..if your not connecting what could you do? He was unbluffable..

How did PITA bet the turn if you had the BTN and already checked on the same betting round?

When studying betting patterns, am I looking at amounts? Or patterns like Check raise,call,bet with specific hands or draws?