Hi everyone! Gonna try make this short. I'm a complete amateur that has been playing poker online for three years. Two months ago I tried playing live poker for the first time with my friends. There is usually 6-8 players at the table. We play for peanuts - 5 euros = 2000 chips (no rebuy). Winner takes it all. We start with blinds 25/50 which go up after 8 minutes. NOW THE PROBLEM I GOT - I just can't win. Can't even come close to winning. So far we met 4 times, played 14 sessions for 5 euros. Eight times I was third which is my best result. Now you are probably thinking what is the big deal here. The big deal is ALL of my friends don't know what they are doing. None of them ever played online, some of them just learnt the rules. I play seriously, pay attention to my hand selection, position and all the crap I learnt online. My friends play any hands with A-K-Q-J. They laugh, they don't care about my raises while having a bite of burger or pizza, they call with K2 or J8 or 79, or 3Q. Whenever someone has an ACE they go all in without caring what the kicker is. Why can't I win?! I don't go crazy with them, I keep on playing tight but it doesn't help. I have come to conclusion that the main problem is 5 euros. We don't play for bigger money, they don't care about losing 5 euros so I guess I get beaten because they just go all in a bit too much for fun. Or maybe I just got unlucky and should start winning sooner or later (long run?). Anyone cares to give opinion on this?
Joined: Nov '11
Location: Romania
Age: 34 (M)
Posts: 754
well that's your problem, you carry too much to win agains ppls who don't know exaclty how to play. they play for fun, you are to much focus on what are they doing, when they don't give a crap about their hands and how supose to do it. Like when he bluff , when he doesn't have a good hand, bad hand.... they just play and nothing more.
for them it's about luck, i don't know how to play against them tbh
i can say just play like them , have fun and don't give a sh** about your cards like in online poker
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
I deal with the same problem with a very similar group of players. You can buy-in as many times as you want and as much as you want. A couple of the players go allin just like you said, when they have an A. I've learned to play these guys for fun to. I don't go there to play a serious game of [poker with others who don't care if they lose 20, 30 even up to 50 dollars. I don't think you can play stategy against players who don't care if they actually win or lose. One of the guys will be drinking go on tilt (although he plays like he don't care until he's drunk). Once on tilt he is constantly allin and when he loses 50 or 60 dollars he's pizzed at everyone. The nextweek same thing again. My advice is play your good hands, but start playing to have fun / good times with your friends. You'll win every timeby cherishing these times, not the $$.
Your problem is playing tight. Played similar games 3 times won 2 times. It's easy money. Outplay them on flop not preflop. Play lose agressive like them but you know when to fold, they dont.
Joined: Aug '08
Location: Canada
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 658
I agree with the above poster. move your aggresion to the flop and bet top pair top kicker hands and they should station off pretty quickly.
Although sometimes its actually anti-productive to play these games at all if they end up tilting you or causing arguments.
Personally fall in love with folding and even then you should be able to move thru the field while they drop allowing you to play shorthanded which should help you even more.
Joined: Jan '12
Location: Netherlands
Age: 36 (M)
Posts: 22
To tight will is not the solution. Try to play looser and play more hands. But be carefull if you play more hands. Oppenents can have good cards so toppair will not always be the winning hand. And if you have good cards play agresive, so they dont call you with k2.
Guys, it can't be described what happened two days ago. We finally met this Saturday and it was amazing. Loose-aggresive worked better than I imagined. It was crazy. We played 4 sessions, I won 3 in a row then I lost the last one on purpose, knocked myself out first. Some of my friends even got pissed off, I was accused of cheating and bringing in marked cards. They didn't know what hit them. They were saying I'm the luckiest guy ever to win 3 in a row. They had so many theories why it happened, but none of them realised what really went on. I had to lose this last session on purpose just so things can calm down a bit at the end of the evening.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 6483
Well, if you're playing 6-8 players winner takes all, that can be a lot of variance, I mean - statistically (assuming skill isn't a factor) you're only due to win one in every (6-8) games, so the chance of going 14+ without a win is fairly high (not that uncommon/unlikely).
That said - in terms of strategy, when you're playing against very loose players with a basic understanding of the game there is a few key points:
A) Minimise your gambling - try to avoid flips and other marginal situations. Take advantage of your edge by folding spots that are more luck dependent and instead focus on trapping and value betting.
B) Avoid large pots - although you may be tempted to get your chips in when you know you're ahead (preflop with AK for example when you know their range is very wide). The reason being that if you're playing large pots, your variance will increase, just because you're ahead, doesn't mean they can't get lucky - and if you're risking your whole stack, well then that's just silly.
Small pots are ideal - this means you can slowly "chip away" at them, taking their stacks a little bit at a time and never risking a large portion of your own (without the nuts or close too).
C) Increase your blinds, 8min blinds are faily short when playing online - when you play live, this is basically turbo - since you have to fold, cut, etc between every hand. I suggest a minimum of 15min blinds. Once again - you need to create spots where you can take advantage of your edge.. Playing with super fast blinds is the opposite of what you need.
D) As with the theme I've set - basically - you need to be trying to focus as much as you can on exploiting your edge and minimizing high-variance plays. *Don't bluff (or at least, do so very rarely) *Use pot-control *Pay attention, find ways to trap your opponents, weak players always have massive leaks and are always easy to exploit, find out how they play their strong hands and their bluffs, set traps and catch them when they're weak.
------------ EDIT: sorry, just read your last post after I wrote this (oops). Sounds like you've got a style worked out.. Playing LAG is a great idea - so long as you're clever and not a maniac, LAG is the ideal style for playing lots of small pots. (as opposed to playing TAG - which generally calls for fewer, larger pots - allowing for a single bad beat to destroy you).
Playing lots of small pots, aggressively is a great idea if you have a huge skill edge.
