The standard (and indeed common sense) poker strategy followed by average skill poker players who mostly play free online poker or low stakes and, for some reason find themselves up against strong players is not to play at all.
In cash games, in a table surrounded by good players, the "novice player" only has to leave and find an easier table. But in tournament poker, it is not so simple to avoid being trapped on a table with some good or even exceptionally talented poker players.
In this article you will learn why good players will generally easily beat the novice, and, if you are a novice or less advanced player what you can try to do to survive and even prosper if you find yourself circled by hungry sharks!
A good player can defeat a novice player because a good player knows the general pattern of a novice player, given the Board cards, the novice's actions and his position. Good players can also put them on a hand.
They will know if a novice player is holding a suited connector; a pocket pair, or even, in some extreme cases, a Set. The good player can play a Straight weakly (or even fold it occasionally) when the Board pairs and the novice suddenly pours down his chips.
First lets understand how the novice tends to play so we can understand why the good players have such advantage. For the purpose of this we will say that a player wins a pot when, (a) he wins the hand in a showdown or (b) he makes all his opponents fold. If we want our novice player to win a pot against a good player, what kinds of hands should he play, and how?
For example, if the novice aims to win the showdown. Then the novice player will have to pass through the preflop, flop, turn and river against the good player. At each stage the good player will get more information from the novice player than the novice player can get from the good player.
If the good player has more data, then he knows immediately whether the novice player has a good hand or not. He can continue to showdown and probably win a big pot, if he keeps on value-betting our novice. Or he can lose a small pot, if he slows down and just checks. Or he is able to make the novice fold.
Imagine our novice now tries (b) to make his opponents fold. (Let us assume the Board can help him only a little, and his hand, from the flop up to the river, will not be of showdown quality.) During the flop, turn, and the river, the good player will extract more inferences from the Board cards than the novice player will.
If our novice, who normally has the tendency to get excited, overrepresents a hand unnecessarily, then he will just be called by the good player (unless he plays really strongly, but he can't overdo this either).
From these, we gather that the pieces of information needed to make a decision is:
1. Your cards.
2. Your perception of the opponents' cards.
3. The Board cards.
4. Tells your opponent provides.
5. Tells you give away to your opponent.
6. Previous tendencies of each player.
7. Position.
Both the novice and the good player has (1) and (3), but the good player's judgment is generally more accurate with all these criteria. A good player, for instance, will believe that 8-7 (his cards) is not so nice-looking in a flop of 10-7-3 (the Board cards), but a novice player may. As for (4), (5), and (6) which stems from (1), (2) and (3), the good player is usually more aware of these. And good players care more for (7) than novice ones.
So if our novice wants to play a pot against a good player, he cannot really rely fully on the information above, for he cannot interpret them well. So our novice should look for a spot in which the good player also cannot rely on most of the information above, so that they will be on equal footing. When is it? Answer: Preflop. How to play? All-in.
Preflop, your perception of the opponent's cards is less accurate than after the flop falls. Also, since there are no Board cards yet, tells are less reliable. Finally, because a novice is less likely to have previous tendencies resulting from experience, the good player has little hold on (6). And preflop all-ins are dependent on hand strength mainly than position.
By moving all-in you can make your opponent fold (which is a win) or entice him to a showdown. Don't call yourself all-in, however, unless you've got a premium hand. Once your opponent does this move, if he is a good opponent, he knows that you are vulnerable.) When he does want a showdown, he is deprived of postflop information that may increase his chances of making an good decision. At this point, even though good player is still good, he has to play in terms of novice play.
The good hands the novice may have are still the traditional all-in hands: A-A, K-K, Q-Q, etc. A-K (or similar) is quite shaky, but if you can lull someone with 7-7 to play with you, you are still about 50-50 with him.Whereas if you take him to the Flop, he will have more opportunities to play his 7-7 better than you would play your A-K, and you will be defeated most of the time. Let us say your chance to win above is just 25% postflop; why don't you take the 50-50 instead?
Summing up
If you are new to poker then know this seems a lot to take in, the fact is though that while poker is easy to learn it is harder to be good at, hence the mad "chip flinging" you will see on many free poker tables. Most people it seems can't be bothered to learn, they are happy to play for what they call fun when in fact it's a lot more fun to learn to play and win more often!.
Ironically the fact that so many players inhabit this donk fun zone is very good news for you. The reason why is that when you really learn how to play poker well you can go mercenary and hunt the "fun donks" down in low stakes real money games as well as NoPayPOKER.com sites that pay out real money while you happily build your skills and bankroll!
To make this work first, play free poker online to learn how to play poker where you can learn while you lose but without losing real money, then once ready to can move up to low stakes and start to make some serious poker cash!
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