WEAK WHEN STRONG AND STRONG WHEN WEAK
A frequent and very consistent pattern you’ll note in players who have a deception perspective on the poker game is the weak-when-strong and strong-when-weak pattern.
If such players have a hand in early position like 8 
7 and the flop is Q 
8 
8 
, they will always check-raise.
They might check-raise on the flop, or they might wait until the turn, but their initial reaction will be to check.
They have a strong hand, their initial impulse is to disguise that by checking, and they will follow that impulse.
From your perspective the beauty of that pattern is that if they bet when the flop looks like that and you have a hand like A Q , then you can be almost certain that you have the best hand.
TARGETING PLAYERS
It’s important to evaluate the table as a unit rather than individual players.
Once you sit down at a poker tebal, you need to be concerned with individual players, but in picking a table, a focus on individuals can easily steer you away from a good table or even steer you toward a bad table.
The presence of a few very good players at a table is not enough of a reason to avoid that table.
You don’t need to avoid players who are better than you, as long as there are a few players at the table who play very badly.
Money doesn’t flow from all the players straight to the best player at the table.
It flows from bad players to all the players who play better than them, even if only slightly better.
The bad players at a table will lose to everyone, even to other bad players. Don’t avoid a table just because it has a few very good players
By the same token, don’t sit at a table just because it has a single very bad player.
Unless the limit is very high (3/60 or above), a single bad player will not lose enough money to provide more than a mediocre win money to a table full of good poker players.
Most of the losses of a single bad player will be soaked up by the rake.
You need at least two bad players at a table to provide enough losses to cover the rake and have enough left over for the rest of the table to book a meaningful win.
The key points are that one very bad player isn’t enough and that the more bad players there are, the less each one is losing, even though the wins of the good players are increasing.
This illustrates two things about loose games (bad players are always loose players): not only will you win more by playing in very loose games, but also the losers won’t go broke as quickly, making loose poker games longer lasting.
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
