Quote:
Originally Posted by unsolvedmysteries
You don't want a table full of amazing players or a table full of really bad players facing 5 and 6 way pots every hand. Both of them are -ev. The best set up is 1 or 2 bad players on the table you can isolate.
You are confusing high variance with -EV. A whole table full of bad players who go 5-6 ways to the flop is very much a great situation in terms of EV. You just need to adjust your game to the reality of the table to take advantage. You don’t play marginal spots, bluff frequently, or go for thin value. You look to smash a flop, bet big and stack one or more of the fish, who will stack off with marginal holdings.
That style will be high variance though. You’ll lose quite a lot of pots that you “should have” won. In the long run it will be quite profitable. Consider a toy example. You are playing against 8 opponents who will simply call a shove PF with ATC. You get AA. Your equity in this spot is about 30%. Bad spot right? Absolutely not! You should shove and not think twice. You are getting 8:1 odds on a shove where you only need 7:3 odds to break even. You are printing money by shoving. You will lose more often than you win - hence high variance, but the spot is tremendously +EV
Real fish won’t be that bad or that easy to play against. You better bring your mental A game too. It will be frustrating losing a lot of pots where you have a hood starting hand, flop top pair or two pair and lose to a ridiculous runner runner draw to a straight or flush. But keep your wits about you and you will make it all back plus a nice tidy profit.