Hi. Come on in. Sit down and take the chill out of your bones with a bowl of my grandma's recipe for chicken soup. It's been simmering for several hours in my crockpot.
Here's a question you can roll around in the dark corner of your poker mind: What type of poker player do you
least like playing against?
There are probably as many answers to that question as there are players answering. Maybe it's a hard rock, tight player. Or, maybe it's a good player with a solid mathematical knowledge of the game and a good psychological read on his opponents. Maybe your bugaboo is any "name" player.
How do you do against a bad player? How about someone who writes about the game in a magazine for poker players? A tourist? A local?
Personally, I don't like playing with people who don't have a healthy respect for money, whether a good player or bad.
If they have a pile of money socked away and they're playing just for fun, losing just doesn't matter that much to them. They just keep coming at you with their long-shot draws, and they don't care terribly if they lose - and sometimes, they win. Their play often mimics that of the maniac player.
It's actually easier to read players who are playing for a living, at the medium limits. And they are some of the toughest poker players. They have to be, because that's how they get their money for gasoline and cheeseburgers. They don't have a big butter and egg farm out in the country, or oil pumping out of the ground somewhere. So, they have a high regard for money. There are exceptions, however.
The airlines regularly bring us those who come to town for a weekend with their jeans full of Franklins, and a lack of poker skills, who play $100-$200 and higher. If such a player loses a few grand, it's not a big deal. He has a story to go home and tell about how he played with the big boys in Las Vegas. He'll win some hands against the local pros, and those are the hands that he's going to tell his Friday night poker buddies about.
It's difficult to get a read on a player who has no strategy to speak of, because if
he doesn't know what he's doing, how are
you going to figure it out. He has no idea about what kind of strategy you're playing - and he doesn't care. He came to play. And sometimes he'll draw out on you - giving you a bad beat - and will take a big pot that you might have won against a better player, because the better player would have known better to get out of your way earlier and not be drawing to a long shot. But, you still want to be thankful for that guy, at any limit, because he is one of those who make the game of poker possible.
If all of the bad players suddenly decided to stop playing poker, the game would die in a month. We need the bad players in order to keep the game alive. If everyone were a good player, luck would play a much more important role in winning and losing. If everyone were a good player, it would be almost impossible to eke out a living at poker, as many are doing now. The mystery is, why do bad players almost never know that they are bad players? Oftentimes, those players take up the game without much preparation or study, lose a lot of money, and eventually leave the game and never come back.
But, more bad players always show up to try to make their mark on the poker world. Most don't, and become contributors. For most who keep playing, they don't lose very much. Perhaps they lose a thousand or two over a year's time. And if you ask, most of them will say, "I'm about even, maybe a few bucks ahead," when in actuality they are more than a few bucks behind for the year.
About 90 percent of all poker players are losers. If not, how could there be that 10 percent who make a living or augment their incomes in the poker room so successfully. Whatever the limits, that other 10 percent is always there to make a living from the 90 percent who are "about even, maybe a few bucks ahead."
When a player you judge to be one of the worst in the world stomps on your stack with a horrendous beat, do as I instruct my students: Smile and say, "Nice hand. Let's play another." It's just tough luck that you had to be the one to take the beat. But if these players didn't win now and again, they wouldn't come back.
Now, tiredness overtakes me and I require soothing repose. Take a baggie full of the chicken soup for your breakfast and kill the light on your way out.
Roy West, best-selling poker author, continues giving his successful poker lessons in Las Vegas for tourists and locals. Ladies are welcome.
