Originally Posted by ATrainBoston
Ok here's one I have started to notice:
SROGTASAP- Semi Retired Older Guy Taking a Serious Approach to Poker
After working for most of their lives in a conventional career, the SROGTASAP, aged about 52-60, has retired a little bit early and can now devote some productive years to chasing the poker dream. Often lawyers, accountants, small businessmen, or contractors, they have made a nice but not jaw-dropping pile of retirement cash, and are under no immediate financial pressure.
They will take their game SERIOUSLY....reading lots of books, signing up for multiple training sites, and maybe even hiring a coach or fooling around with software. But even with all this work, their game doesn't get too scientific; they are basically employing general fundamental principles.
This player usually has a well-maintained clean appearance, and is also usually pleasant to others. You can easily identify them by engaging in some small talk about sports, and they will then loosen up and tell you a little about their careers, and move on to reveal how seriously they are taking poker, because they secretly want to impress you with how good they are for an older guy.
You may find them playing 2-5 no limit, but typically these types are attracted to tournaments, where they may be chasing an ego boost which escaped them in their too-dull-for-their-dreams careers. So you will find them at larger cardrooms playing dailies or bigger local series, on the WSOPc and similar tours, or even finally living out their ultimate dream and going for a long stay in Vegas around the WSOP.
Handle them as follows: While they know a lot about poker, they will often screw up in big pots, mostly by folding too much to pressure on the turn and river. They know they should be playing to finish high in the tourney, but they nevertheless will fold too tight in the mid-stages of MTT's and not put stacks in play enough, simply because they can't stand the ego-deflation of traveling to a tournament, getting eliminated, and having to get up and walk away from the table and having their plans for the day shot. They will know push charts and generally push properly with a short stack, but they will usually not call enough. Basically, they will lay a decent TAG game, bet-folding a lot, but susceptible to aggression causing them to fold too much, because their actual game-play at the table is not as strong as their knowledge of the game away from the table.