Miller, Ed. Smallll Stakes No-Limit Holdem

Step 6: Adjust To Your

Opponents

Steps 1 through 5 have given you some easy-to-apply, basic rules of thumb for good no-limit play. Steps 6 and 7 are a little different. They require a little more interpretation from you, the reader, but if you master them, you’ll use them for the rest of your no-limit career.

This section is about adjusting to your opponents. All players have weaknesses. In your local $1–$2 game, you’ll find most of your opponents have huge, glaring weaknesses. Winning poker is about playing tight and staying in position and pulling the trigger, but more fundamentally it’s about attacking your opponents’ weaknesses. Every dollar you win comes from an opponent. Every opponent plays well in some situations and poorly in others. If you want to win the most money, you need to find the situations where your opponents give their money away and create them again and again. That’s what adjusting is all about.

Player Classification

You are probably familiar with the “standard” player classes: looseaggressive, weak-tight, loose-passive/calling station, tight-aggressive, and so forth. While I often use these classifications, they can be overly general. Three players might all play a lot of hands and raise a lot, thus falling under the loose-aggressive umbrella, yet play very differently and have very different weaknesses. Players aren’t defined just by how many hands they play and how often they raise. You also should look for what kinds of hands they play, how often they slowplay or checkraise, how often they like to bluff and in what situations, which hands they take to showdown, how deeply do they think when reading hands, and much more.

Nevertheless, I will use the umbrellas listed above for this article. Don’t take them too literally; weaknesses can show up large and small, and you want to exploit them all. But since you’re probably most familiar with those categories, we’ll talk about how to adjust to exploit them.

Exploiting Weak-Tight Players

Weak-tight players fold decent hands too often after the flop, and they don’t raise often enough—either as a bluff or with good made hands. They tend to play tight preflop as well.

Whenever someone doesn’t raise often enough, you can bet more hands. Betting puts pressure on your opponents, and if you tend to play in position (as you should), relentless betting is hard to defend against. The best defense is a checkraise, but weak-tight players don’t use it often enough. So they end up as sitting ducks.

Their strong point is in playing big pots. Since they fold all but their best hands, it’s hard to win a big pot off of them because they will always show up with an excellent hand in the big ones. So don’t try to win a big pot. Win lots of small and medium pots instead.

Here’s the basic strategy. When the weak-tight player enters the pot and you have position (preferably on the button or in the cutoff to discourage interference from others), raise. You don’t need a great hand; more important is that you can isolate the weak-tight player. Though avoid really bad hands until you get comfortable changing gears.

This is an exception to the Play Tight rule from Step 1. If you can count on your opponent to fold without an excellent hand after the flop, it doesn’t much matter what you have. Try to ensure you end up playing against only the weak-tight player, though. If others slip into the pot, you’re just playing a bad hand.

The goal of the preflop raise is two-fold:

1.Isolate the weak-tight player.

2.Get more money into the pot.

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You want to get more money in the pot because you want to win more when your opponent folds. Just make sure that you have left enough money behind to launch credible bluffs on the flop and turn. After your opponent calls and checks the flop, make a modest-sized bet. If your opponent calls, look at the flop and try to figure out what hands he might have called with and if he’d fold them to a turn bet. Follow up with a turn bluff when you think it has a good chance to work.

If you’re new to adjusting to opponents, you don’t have to go crazy at first. Just make the occasional extra button raise when a weak-tight player enters. Follow up on the flop and turn and watch what happens. Then try it again a few times. Learn what works and what doesn’t, and do more of what works. Learning poker is largely a trial and error process, so be prepared to make your share of errors.

Beating Loose-Passive Players

Loose-passive players don’t bet and raise often enough and call too often after the flop. Because they don’t raise often enough, you can respond by betting more often. Unlike the weak-tight player, they call too often, so big pots are their weakness. Simply put, the goal is to make a good hand and win a big pot from them. Also, you can generally win medium pots against them with hands too weak to bet against a solid player.

Preflop, you should generally stick to playing tight. You can loosen up a bit when you have position and you can isolate the loosepassive player with a raise. Raising preflop is often more for isolation than building the pot, as loose-passive players will build the pot after the flop by calling with weak hands.

Postflop, you bet your good hands. Play for the big pots when you flop excellent hands like two pair or a set. You can also play for big pots with top pair/good kicker. Solid players typically won’t call off their stack with a hand that can’t beat top pair/good kicker, but loosepassive players often will. Since their calling standards are lower, you

can push some marginal hands harder. If you flop top pair with aceking, you should often look to get all-in against a loose-passive player.

You can even bet some weaker hands. Hands like K♠4♠ on a K♥9♦6♦ flop and Q♥T♠ on a K♠T♣2♦ flop can be worth a couple value bets against a loose-passive player. You don’t want to play for all-in (unless the stacks are short), but you’ll tend to have the edge as long as your loose-passive opponent doesn’t raise you.

Don’t launch big bluffs. You can try some smaller bluffs when it looks like the loose-passive player really has nothing. But the basic strategy is to play in position, flop a decent hand, and bet it.

Beating Loose-Aggressive Players

Loose-aggressive players frustrate a lot of people. They play “crap,” but they are aggressive and can put pressure on you. Their fundamental weakness is that they put too much money in the pot with too weak a hand. You exploit it this way:

Step 1: Play Tight

Step 2: Don’t Play Out of Position

Step 3: Don’t Overcommit in Small Pots

Step 4: Big Pots for Big Hands

Step 5: Pull the Trigger

It may sound glib, but what you’ve learned in the first five steps is the recipe for beating loose-aggressive players. They put too much money in with weak hands, so they are vulnerable to losing big pots against strong hands and to getting bluffed out. You want to avoid big confrontations with them when you are vulnerable. And if you play tight and play in position, you’ll have the edge on them. The same recipe beats tight-aggressive players too; you’ll just start with less of an edge because they are playing tight and in position as well.

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Wrapping It Up

Adjusting to your opponent is a critical aspect of no-limit. If you play the same way against everyone, you will miss some of the most profitable opportunities. Look for the weaknesses in your opponents’ play and then create situations that take advantage of them.

Aggression is the primary no-limit weapon, and passive players don’t use it very well. You can exploit that weakness by betting more hands. You bluff more against weak-tight players, and you bet more hands for value against loose-passive ones.

Loose-aggressive players use aggression, but they can be reckless with it. They put too much money at risk without the goods to back it up. You exploit that fact by keeping the pot small when you’re vulnerable, but making big bluffs and value bets when you have a good situation. That way you’ll tend to lose small pots and win larger ones.

Most of your opponents won’t fit nicely into any category or pigeonhole. Don’t try to jam them in where they don’t fit. Examine how each of your opponents plays, think about all the things they do wrong, and tailor your strategy to create and exploit those situations.

Step 7: Keep Your Head In

The Game

Most good poker players fail. Or, at the very least, they fall well short of their potential. Even when they have mastered the small games and can easily play profitably at the medium levels, they tend to end up back at the bottom time and again, looking for a stake or rebuilding their roll at the $1–$2 game.

There’s no shame in it. Fulltime poker is a grueling endeavor, even for the talented and experienced. But the problem most of these players have is they don’t keep their heads in the game. It’s not that they’re playing in games that are too tough for them. It’s that they consistently make mental errors and errors in judgment that keep them from getting where they want to go.

It’s impossible to have no-limit hold’em success without tackling the mental side of the game. I can’t cover all the bases in this article, but I’d like to share a few tips with you.

You’re Going To Get Stacked Sometimes

My first mental roadblock when I switched from limit to no-limit was getting stacked. Frankly, I was afraid of it. It didn’t matter how much money was involved. I played in limit games where $300 was a run- of-the-mill loss on a hand that went to showdown. These losses didn’t phase me a bit. I’d lost over $5,000 in a session and went back in and played the next day.

But it was a whole different story in no-limit. I protected my $100 stack like it was my baby. I wasn’t afraid of losing the money; I was afraid of getting stacked. To me, getting stacked in no-limit meant getting outplayed. It meant getting tricked. It meant being had. I had visions of some Doyle Brunson-like Texas rounder from the 1950s

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stacking my chips cagily reassuring me, “Son, you win some and you lose some.”

It’s all nonsense. Getting stacked doesn’t mean any of that. It’s a normal part of the game. In fact, if you play no-limit regularly and you don’t get stacked, you’re either buying in for a million dollars or you’re playing like crap.

Good no-limit means putting your stack on the line when you have the edge. And having the edge is nothing like having a sure thing. You may have the edge with a big all-in bluff, but sometimes you’ll get unlucky and get called. You may have the edge by getting all-in on the flop with the nuts, but sometimes you’ll get drawn out on by the river.

If you have top pair against a really loose player, you often play to get all-in. It’s a winning play because they’ll call with even worse hands. But naturally they’ll call with better ones too. If you’re playing right and taking the right risks, sometimes you’re going to end up allin with top pair against a bad player with a set. And you’ll get stacked.

Leave Your Ego At Home

Think about that last scenario. You make a big all-in bet with top pair. A terrible player you’ve been targeting all night calls—and rolls over a set. Would you feel foolish? Be honest.

Most people would. I sure would have when I started playing nolimit. Where does that feeling come from? It comes from your ego. Most poker players lose a lot due to their egos. Either they make unsound plays with bad hands because they have undue confidence, or they avoid taking sound risks to protect their ego from the bruising of an unlucky outcome.

The ego needs to go. It doesn’t belong in your decision-making at all. If your opponent is bad enough to call an all-in bet with middle pair, then moving in with top pair is the right thing to do. Who cares what he showed up with this time? Don’t feel foolish just because you got unlucky—not even if he needles you about it. Who cares? Your

job is to make the best decisions you can, and if that’s what you are doing, you should feel proud no matter who is stacking the chips.

Grousing about bad beats is another symptom of overactive ego. In fact, if you’re grousing about bad beats, you have an especially acute ego problem. After all, if you lose to a bad beat, everyone can see perfectly well that you played your hand fine and got it in with an advantage. And with the release of everyone knowing you should have won, your ego is still bruised? What about when you get it all-in against a better hand? I can only imagine the internal mushroom cloud that scenario must generate.

It’s ridiculous. Every poker player wins, and every poker player loses. No one cares whether you’re winning or losing today, for the month, or for your life. No one cares whether you got your money in with the best of it or not. They may pretend they care, but they don’t. Losing a hand doesn’t make you lose face. It’s all in a day’s work.

If you feel anger, despair, or embarrassment at the poker table, chances are your ego is making your decisions instead of your poker brain. Tell your ego to stay out of it.

Every Session Is A Learning Experience

No one has completely mastered no-limit. Everyone has more to learn. Even the best players in the world need to keep learning, or soon someone else will take their place.

You’re going to make a mistake in virtually every session. Sometimes you’ll make several. Sometimes you’ll make a whopper. It’s natural, and if you let it get to you, then you’re making another mistake.

Why are you playing today? Are you playing to show everyone how good you are? I hope not. I think playing to learn promotes the healthiest mindset. If you are learning, then it’s okay to lose. It’s okay to make mistakes. And it’s okay to get stacked. You’re just learning, and tomorrow you’ll be better for the experience.

That’s how I see the game—as a perpetual learning experience. And it’s the method I’ve used to gain control over the tilt monster.

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Tilt is a problem for every player, but when you leave your ego out as much as possible and you permit yourself to make mistakes because you’re still learning, playing poker will be a happier experience, your decisions will improve, and your results will eventually show it.

Keep The Stakes Comfortable

To have no-limit hold’em success, you need to risk your stack when the situation calls for it. After you’ve lost four buy-ins, you still need to risk your stack when the situation calls for it. If you can’t—if you play in fear of losing—you simply won’t play well, and you should quit.

Take the money out of it as much as possible. Play for stakes where you can lose 10 buy-ins and still be willing to risk the 11th. Some people say, “I can’t play at those stakes because the money isn’t meaningful. I just don’t care anymore.” You do need to keep the game meaningful, but playing high stakes isn’t the only way to do it. One trick I use when playing for small money is to focus on one player and try to learn everything I can about how they play. Then I try to find situations where I can use what I’ve learned to win something extra that I’d normally have missed. It turns into a game on its own; I’m not worried about the money so much anymore, and I start playing better.

The bottom line is, if winning money is what motivates you most to play (or losing money what scares you most), you’re likely to end up in some very negative mindset situations at some point down the line as variance carries you one way or the other. Try to find nonmonetary reasons to play, to keep you interested. If you don’t, you won’t have anything to cushion the emotional impact when the results roller-coaster begins speeding downhill at top velocity.

Losing is as integral a part of poker as winning is. You don’t necessarily have to love losing to succeed, but you do have to make peace with it. Whenever you lose, just remember that you start again tomorrow, totally afresh. The only thing different is that you’ll be better prepared.

Congratulations

You’ve made it through all 7 Easy Steps to No-Limit Hold’em Success. Steps 1 and 2 will keep you out of the trouble many players get themselves into. By sticking to strong hands and refusing to play out of position, you’ll start every hand with the advantage.

Steps 3 and 4 give you the basic fundamentals for postflop play. With small hands, avoid major confrontations, but with big hands, build big pots.

Step 5 outlines the principles of bluffing and tells you to go for it, because you’ll never learn to do it well if you never have the heart to try.

Step 6 stresses the importance of adjusting to your opponents. After all, you win money not from your brilliance, but from their mistakes. If you tailor your play to take advantage of what they do wrong, you’ll make a lot more money.

And Step 7 tackles some of the mental demons that haunt nearly every no-limit player. We’ve been taught that losing is something to be ashamed of, but in poker that couldn’t be more wrong. You flat-out cannot win at poker without also losing as well. Your ego belongs well outside the equation. Learn to enjoy taking smart risks, and accept the sometimes unlucky consequences with indifference. If you treat every session as a learning experience, then unless you let your ego get the better of you, each day you are guaranteed to succeed.

Now go out and crush that local $1–$2 game. They’ll never know what hit ’em.