If you see a player you know is sharp will you not play with them? Is there any wink and nod between the two of you to where you go after the others?
Idk is there a certain "demographic" of idiot that you like to go after? :laugh: drunk college guy? Trying to keep this somewhat humorous lol
It's usually not a big deal if there's a few other good players at the table. What's funny is that you don't even need to "wink and nod". Good players will just naturally tend to avoid big spots with each other and go after bad players, unprompted. You don't get a special medal for beating better players. If the table is just full of good players, I'll usually just leave for another. The truth is though, most live games have
no shortage of terrible players. It's not like I play in a nosebleed room at the Bellagio. I mostly play online anyway though - the rake is lower, I can multi-table, and it's easier to find games. I mostly play live to catch up with friends and goof around, to be honest.
Everyone spots the "ballcap kids" coming a mile away. They all wear the same stupid hoodie-and-shades combo, they've seen some latenight poker on ESPN and think it'll be easy, and they usually get thrashed. Occasionally one of them will actually be good, and you have to keep an eye for a bit just in case, but they almost always suck. I also hate them because they often play like they're in the damn WSOP and frequently call for time and go into dramatic staredowns for several minutes -
it's incredibly unnecessary and irritating. The ones that always actually seem to get me (and everyone else) are those elderly superstitious Asian/Russian/Middle Easter/whichever ladies that come in randomly of off the slot bays, seem like they barely know what they're doing, play unpredictably, and are virtually always a lot sharper than people would guess.
The easiest marks : Guys in nice suits that came from a business conference or something. Heaven help them if they're
still wearing a name tag from it. I don't know why, but they almost all think they're good, and they're almost all hopelessly bad.
I guess one question i would have is how do you pick your limits? What is your sweet spot in assessing what level of player/limits that gives you best ROI? I feel like that is a big part of the game and is really interesting.
Do you do cash games mostly or tourneys? What types of tourneys do you do if you play them?
I'm largely a single-table tournament specialist, for practical reasons. They're boring, but they're the easiest to multi-table (I usually play 12-16 of them at a time), and volume matters, a LOT. Anything I can do to lower variance is worth considering, because my bills definitely don't vary in response to how my month went. I'll mix in some regular cash games too, because SNG's get repetitive/mechanical. Full tournaments can be fun, but they're high variance, take a long time, and they don't suit my game as well, so I usually just play them for fun, or maybe to take a crack at one of the bigger online ones.
Picking limits is a combination of a lot of different things. I keep track of literally everything, so I have a pretty good idea of what makes the most per hour for me. Sometimes it's also worth sacrificing some money per hour to drop down and lower your variance. You have to be brutally honest with yourself about it. Pride can be expensive in poker. When I was first starting out, I'd periodically run into "I have the bankroll, but not the skill" situations as I moved up, so I'd have to drop down and work some kinks out, even though I had the money to play up. Sometimes downswings just happen, so it can be a good idea to drop down and just rebuild confidence a bit. Other times, I spot some familiar names in bigger games and it can be worth moving up for a bit. You find out
really fast if you can hack a certain level.
