ok i need some help. I want to know how you people deal with loose players in live games. I was recently at Foxwoods and the play at the tables left me scratching my head wondering if I just suck at poker or if i am just the most unlucky player ever. There were 3 people at my table who would consistently just limp in with any two cards, however if the pot was raised either before they limped or after they limped they would still call ...no matter the size of the raise! my plan was to wait for big hands and make them pay to see a flop.....this seemed to backfire. i would get a big pocket pair....raise the pot a ridiculous amount and still get those 3 callers and get killed when one of them flopped 2 pair or better. what other strategy do you people use when faced with players like this. i also tried limping in with a variety of hands in order to try and hit some big hands cheaply but i never connected with the flop.


help please i am very frustrated with poker right now.
flame if you please also.

A good rule of thumb; if the table plays tight, you play loose. If the table plays loose, you play tight.

Now, that can vary. At the same table, a loose player may raise, and your calling range is 'tight'. A tight player may raise, and you may loosen up calling requirements to try and snap someone off.

i tried the tight way......but that doesnt work when you dont get cards, therefore blinds and 5 dollars every half hour hurt your stack when you can only buy in for $100

i tried loosening up but when you call a raise with something like a suited connector hoping to crack somones big pair.....and the flop doesnt work along with your plans.....what then?

Im not a fan of that rule of thumb. When u sit at a live loose table, screw tightening up. These people are limping with junk, get in there and show them some gamble. They are playing such bad hands preflop so you should be able to loosen up your range and dominate them postflop b/c most the times their hands are junk.

You need to be in there with any suited ace, get in cheap with any speculative hand you can.

AS far as your bread and butter pocket rockets and other big hands of the like, you do have to raise more with them preflop. You just simply cant play aces on the flop against four other loose opponents because their range of hands is so endless that playing the rockets at the postflop speed you desire is too complicated. But, it would also be silly to make it a huge overbet and just take down the blinds, but somewhere in there lies a happy middle ground.

If you can see cheap flops with small pocket pairs/suited connectors/suited one gappers, then do it..but, I think some people use a loose table as an excuse to abandon all poker rationale and reason.

"Oh, screw it, *he* won a pot with J3o, I might as well play it.."

..and when I say, tight approach, I don't mean, "Aces, Kings and Queens".

..and if the cards aren't coming, well, wait longer.

Patience does work, I promise.

100 buy in 1/2 is a joke, if thats what you are playing. A joke b/c the buyin needs to be atleast 200.

However, if someone raises and three people call and you are sitting there with 56 suited, you HAVE to call, that is a winning play.

A loose table is a poker players gold mine, except it can be frustrating as well. Dont worry about dropping 200 or more before making money in this game, b/c 200 should be the real buy in. The time you win a pot, with so much loose money in there, it makes up for it. And the times you stack people when they make 7's and 2's two pair to yoru set of 10 10 10, then you are rolling. You just gotta handle the times your suited connectors are hitting flops of AAK and your black AA is running into flops of 5d6d7d .

Actually I think the poker pros rule of thumb here is the opposite. If the table is loose you need to loosen your starting requirements otherwise you will bleed dry. If the table is tight and you start playing too many pots you will no doubt steal blinds from time to time but will only lose big pots to tight players with premium hands.

The truth is that these players are willing to gamble and are playing every hand so you need to start playing more hands. They will more often than not, have mediocre holdings and you can take down some nice sized pots with top pair. The problem with these types of players is that they like to play for lots of money and so they will not shy away from the 'big pots'. It is not difficult to have a big pocket pair cracked with 3-4 players in the pot. Id recommended playing more drawing hands that play well multiway and if you are playing NL and these guys are calling big bets regardless of their holdings, then dont play a big pot. keep the pot small and if/when you flop a set against them you know you will get paid off, otherwise keep the pot small and chuck it if the board gets scary.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is that if you are playing at a limit where you are scared of 'action donkeys' then you are probably playing too high. These are the type of players you should want at the table. They are the cash cows.

YEah, i miscommunicate sometimes b/c my loose game is still probably considered tight by most. But when I do find a loose table, I loosen up from my standard approach.

I think at tight tables, you need to keep playing tight, but pick more spots to take down small pots and stealing the blinds more frequently.

Depends if its a loose-aggro game. These are the toughest to play. I tend to stay out of these. Loose-passive, you should be limping alot more. Tight-passive, seeing flops, and betting them. Tight-aggro, raising and picking up small pots.

My suggestion for you is simply limp for when you can, and keep charging people lots of money preflop when you hold big pairs. Dont overplay AK, and hands like that.

thanks for your comments. i have thought and tried many of these things at one time or another. im just super frustrated because nothing seems to being going my way at the tables lately....i feel like i played better poker a year ago when i first started and didnt know sh&t.

..and the poker pros rule of thumb doesn't apply to the typical 1/2 or 2/5 game. They're talking about a loose aggressive game. Not a 'loose' game where 3, 4, 5, and sometimes 6 and 7 people are trying and sucessfully limping into pots.

Post some hands and maybe you can get some help.

You're probably just running bad, but let's make sure there's not a leak.

When you say "a ridiculous amount", how much is that? How large are the blinds and more importantly the stack sizes?

Let's assume their strategy is to call with random junk preflop and hope to stack you when they hit hard but fold otherwise. You can defeat this strategy by doing one of these things (or some combination):

1. Raising such a large percentage of the relevent stack that their call isn't justified by the implied odds of that entire stack.
   
2. Folding when your one pair is beat.

Knowing when one pair isn't good is, of course, not trivial. And making a large raise exposes you to even bigger hands behind you or limp-raising. But you have to try to do at least one of these things when you enter the pot with the hand you believe is best.

ok last night for example, this type of play was common. Blinds 1 and 2 Standard prelop raise was 10 and would still get 3-5 callers. I pick up a hand like QQ make what I think is a silly large raise of 15 get 3 callers. flop 8 3 6 and no flush draws. I make a post flop bet about 1/2 the size of the pot....2 callers. turn is J...... bet half the pot .....one fold and then get reraised. i call....river is a 2. he puts me all in I call ......he turns over 8 2......for two pair. WTF!!!???

My opinions on the hand.
PF=good for 1/2 live.
flop-bet more. If you dont wanna be sucked out on, go all in. You make less money, you learn less, but you decrease a chance for a bad beat.

turn-fine, 1/2 pot on flop is good here, but now you're pretty well commited, might as well make a large bet here (assuming you started with 100). Besides that, dont know why you didnt push back, yet calld the river all in. At least one way you get your money in good, instead of bad.

river=shouldnt be anywhere but all in.


If you play 1/2live, and make large raises preflop, and assuming you buy in for 100, you should usually be all in on the flop or turn. This of course is barring there are no overcards, and crazy action, etc.

First of all you are not raising enough preflop. If the standard raise is $10 you need to make it $20. Also you need to bet at least the size of the pot on the flop. NL is about reading your opponent and gathering information. With those betting patterns you dont know enough and can not gather enough info to put your opponents on a hand. You need to bet more to get more info. You are letting top pair draw for cheap. If he calls on the flop you need to pot it again to eliminate any odds he may be getting to draw at whatever. Think about it. if he called your raise with 4s5s you are giving him pot odds to draw to an open ender.

It seems your problem is betting. you are not sitting down with enough money in a 1/2 nl game where the standard raise is $10 either. sit with $200 and you have some flexibility to make normal sized raises and bets.

Yeah, that's screwed up.

You got about $200 in when you were ahead. How much did you pay off on the river? If it's not that much more, then you have to try to be happy about having played the hand well.

max you can sit with at Foxwoods 1/2 nl is 100

If thats the case then you need to be all-in on the flop or turn.

If he is going to call you with middle pair no stick then thats what you want. You have given him no reason to fold though with your betting pattern.

Half-pot bets offer his opponent 3:1. Odds against an open ender hitting in one card are 4.8:1. So no, he's not getting sufficient pot odds to draw. That doesn't, in itself, mean that betting more is better or worse, because he may have some implied odds and deception.




The action he describes gets more than $100 in on the turn. This discussion is basically meaningless without stack sizes.

I don't believe in the tighten up philosophy here. I will typically take as many cheap flops as possible with about any hand that can turn into a huge hand. Any pair suited conectors etc. When you miss the flop, then bail, but when you connect then you stand a great chance of getting paid off huge every time. Make sure when you connect to get as much value as possible. (they will call)

If you get a Huge pair and you make rediculously large raises that are still getting called, then make your raises even more rediculous.

just my 02c.

I think some people get confused w/ the meaning of tightening/loosening up. For me, in a tight game, I loosen up by raising w/ more totally marginal hands like kj and the like because flops usually get heads up and these hands are easy to play heads up. I tighten up by removing those hands from my preflop selection in a loose game so that when I hit a flop, I can always play it fast and hard. tigthtening up does not mean taking pp's and small connectors out. It just means you play them passively preflop.

BINGO.

I'm gonna give you a hit of advice. A GOOD loose player will be in alot of pots, UNTIL it starts getting expensive. If you start seeing a loose player stay in most pots when it starts getting expensive, thats a mistake and you can make them pay for it. However, if you notice the loose player starts tightening up when the betting gets tuff, He's MORE than likley a good laggy player and wont commit too many chips with the worst of it.