Playing against low level thinkers

When I am reading one of the many forums or blogs on a daily basis one of the most common subjects is players asking if they should move up in stakes because they cannot beat the weak players or the weak players do not understand they plays the particular player is making. There is no doubt that you will have heard the tongue-in-cheek saying of “move up where they respect your raises!”

This saying is obviously incorrect because if you cannot beat the players who are really bad then how on earth do you expect to beat the players who actually have a good grasp on the game? You should be delighted that there are weak players on your tables as, over time, they will yield the most profits for you. Yes they can be infuriating due to them sucking out on you but they are only sucking out because they are getting their money in badly again and again, remember that.

A common mistake by tournament and cash game players alike is to pay off small river value bets and using pot odds to justify doing so. We have all been in a situation where we have a medium strength hand that we are quite sure is second best but then our weak opponent bets less than half of the pot on the river giving us great odds to call. You will often be getting three or four to one to call but will in reality be at least an eight to one so calling is a massive leak. Think about it, nobody bets this small as a bluff. Ever!

Another leak against weak, low level thinking players is to call their open shoves, when they are short stacked, too widely. Although almost every single regular player knows that you should be open shoving very wide when you have 10 big blinds or less, an unknown will often allow themselves to be blinded down to a much lower number waiting for something that at least resembles a decent hand. How many times has a complete unknown shoved with six big blinds, you have called rather wide, say with King-Queen and they show up with Ace-King. Too many I will bet.

Finally, another leak that will make it seem like weak players always have the upper hand on you is to move all-in with a four-bet after the weak player has made a small three-bet. Sometimes the small three bet will be some sort of crazy hand and you will wish you had four-bet all-in but when a lot of the time the instant play poker players without a clue will make with a premium hand is to make a small bet so that they do not scare off the opposition or are hoping for you to jam over the top of them.

As mentioned, weak players can be frustrated to play against but approach them in the right manner and they will donate their chips to you time and time again.

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