When There Is one Really Bad Player at the Table
Once you’ve been playing in a cardroom for a while and have gotten to know the players, you’ll sometimes run across a player who plays very badly and is almost certain to lose all his money.
Usually that alone is enough to make it worthwhile to pick the seat , but not always.
First you need to make certain that player isn’t already close to losing all his money.
If he only has a few chips left, then it probably isn’t worth sitting in the game unless the game has other characteristics that would make it profitable.
Once you’ve ascertained that the really bad player still has plenty of chips, you need to consider how your skills compare with the other players the table. As a general guideline:
1. If seven or eight of the other online poker players are all better players than you, then you should pass the game.
2. If six of them are better than you, you can probably still play if the other two players are worse players are worse players than you.
3. If five of the players are better than you, then you can probably still play if at least one of the other three players is worse than you, and the other two are no better than you.
4. If no more than four of the players are better than you, then play.
Target Seats and Flush Draws
As I’ve mentioned before, in loose games you’ll make a large portion of your money from flushes if you play your draws aggressively in a way that keeps many players in on the flop.
Seat selection can help you do this.
In a typical lineup of a loose-aggressive game, you’ll often have at least one near maniac player, a player who plays a lot of hands and raises with most of them.
You’ll also often have a player with some FPS symptoms, in particular you’ll find players who like to check-raise a lot. When you have a flush draw on the flop, particularly a flush draw with overcards, you want to get as many players calling as many bets as you can.
If you have these two players (a maniac and an FPS player) in the right seats, you can do this easily.
If you can sit in between the maniac and the FPS player, with the maniac on your left and the FPS player on your right, then you have a perfect situation to get a maximum number of players to call four bets on the flop.
In fact, if you can arrange that seating, the implied odds you get from potential flushes will be large enough to make any two suited cards worth playing in a loose game.
The way to play a flush poker draw in this situation is to check. The maniac will bet, and he’ll get a lot of callers because they know he’ll beat almost any hand.
The FPS player will raise, you can call, the maniac will reraise, everyone who already has one bet in the pot will call. Now, if the FPS player doesn’t put in the last raise, you can do it.
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Theories of Poker / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
