Change Your Game as Your Opponents Change

Whether you choose to thank Steve Lipscomb and Chris Moneymaker, or the Travel Channel and ESPN (with shows like Bravo's new Celebrity Poker Challenge helping to keep the momentum going), you have probably never faced so many inexperienced players, no matter what limits you chose to play.

These television shows are, for the moment at least, changing poker, and you'll find your results improving if you change along with it. Except for the localized phenomena that one sees when live poker moves into a town for the first time (ah, to have been living in Los Angeles when hold'em was legalized here … ), poker has never experienced a time when so many new players were coming into games at the same time.

New players are invariably weaker players. Although most players recognize that they want weaker players in the lineup, many struggle adjusting to their presence. Too many of us are "clueless against the clueless." Thinking three levels ahead does no good when your opponent can't think one level ahead. You can't automatically muck your called bluff on the end, because you might find that your opponent called with a 10 high. For that matter, what are you doing trying to bluff a new player, anyway?

Although no single strategy is correct against newcomers, because they come in all shapes, sizes, and intelligence levels, and unless you play in a "regulars" home game, you likely have been, and will continue to be, playing in games with more unpredictable players than you are accustomed to facing.

How can you maximize your profits/improve your results in games like these? I'm about to give you some hints, but unless your table is filled with newcomers, you shouldn't shift entirely to the scheme discussed below. These hints come into play mainly when you're isolated against a newcomer. Your regular game is fine (hopefully!) against experienced opponents.

Hopefully, you're already expending considerable time, attention, and energy to assessing your opponents as strong, average, or weak; if you're not, your "regular game" is probably a losing game, at least if you play at any limit higher than $3-$6. The hints are nothing more than an extrapolation of this regular approach.

Employing a coarse label of strong, average, or weak is much better than no analysis at all, but you can and should do more. Ideally, you'll eventually know how a regular opponent handles almost any situation. Meanwhile, the faster you can identify someone as a newcomer, the faster you can shift your approach against him.

1. Try to distinguish between newcomers and bad experienced players. Just because someone has played for a lifetime doesn't mean he's any good; some of the worst players I have ever seen are those who proudly proclaim they've been playing forever. An experienced player may just be practicing his mistakes and refusing to learn. You can probably assess the weaknesses in a bad experienced player's game, and correctly assume that he will continue to make the same kinds of mistakes.

A newcomer, on the other hand, may make a mistake, but he stands a much better chance of learning from his mistakes and improving – sometimes quite rapidly. This is one of the reasons why it's not merely offensive, but actually an error, to call (or consider) someone who makes a bad play an "idiot." If you characterize the blunderer as an idiot, you won't allow for the possibility that he'll improve. There's an immense difference between experience/education and intelligence.

As a result, if you distinguish between new bad players and experienced bad players, you won't make assumptions that will get you in trouble.

2. Don't get too fancy. If you can't figure out what kind of cards your opponent is holding, it's awfully difficult to make a special play that targets him. It may sound heretical, but you need to regress a bit yourself, and go back to a habit you probably had when you were first starting: Focus more on your own hand and less on your opponent's. This means you're betting with decent hands and tossing junk away (doesn't sound too risky, does it?). It means you're not trying to buy pots with aggressive betting plays that would discourage a sound opponent from calling.

Worry less about making bets on the end that can only lose if they're called, because an inexperienced player may call you with a remarkably weak hand. Until the newcomer's style tells you to proceed otherwise, don't bluff much, and play ABC poker once you're isolated.

3. Talk and listen. Although some newcomers may come to the table planning on remaining quiet, that tends to be an experienced player's practice more than a newcomer's. Most newcomers tend to be a little nervous, and talking helps relieve the tension. A newcomer worried about breaking protocol may hesitate to start discussions, but he's likely to join in if you start. He may reveal how recently he's taken up the game, either directly or indirectly: Even if he's savvy enough not to cop to inexperience, if he talks enough, sooner or later he'll say something that reveals his inexperience.

This doesn't mean you should conduct a cross-examination. Even a newcomer can probably figure out that a ham-handed and overly aggressive series of questions is designed to extract information, rather than be a friendly welcome. Wait for natural opportunities to gather information.

What's the best way to get someone to talk about himself? It isn't by asking him to! Think about your own conversations. If you pay attention, you'll realize that many conversations don't stay on point. The other guy says something about himself, and you use that as an excuse to say something about yourself ("I just got back from Australia," he says. "Oh, really," you reply. "I was in Australia a few years ago … "). If you make a statement about yourself (true or not), there's a decent chance the unfamiliar face may jump in and talk about his own experience. "I've been playing in this game for four months, and I haven't won back-to-back sessions yet" opens the door for your opponents to discuss their own backgrounds – and you haven't asked a thing.

4. Stick your pride in your pocket. Moderately experienced players like to make fancy plays: That's how they demonstrate their experience/intelligence. They don't like to make plays that might seem questionable to someone who doesn't know the whole story. Betting with top two pair when the board shows both straight and flush possibilities sounds weak in the abstract, but isn't weak if you know your opponent will call with one pair. Don't worry about how the other players will judge your approach, as long as you are confident you're making a play for a good reason.

Note that I mentioned that "moderately" experienced players like to demonstrate their experience/intelligence. The best players learn how to keep their egos under control and do what it takes to get the money, even if that means doing something spectators may not understand.

A great player, for example, wouldn't hesitate to take 15-1 pot odds by calling all in before the flop in a hold'em game with a hand like 7-2 offsuit. That player understands he's getting way the best of it on pot odds, even if he's up against pocket aces (a 9-1 favorite). Actually, the worst hand to be up against with 7-2 offsuit is 7-7. The sevens are roughly a 12-1 favorite, and even higher than that when examining your chance of an outright win (much of the "equity" in the 7-2 comes when the board plays). Most of the time, the pot odds make this a clear play, but if you're worried about what lesser players will think of your move, you might not make it.

Certainly, most of us have encountered great players who have huge egos, and they still win – they're still great. That ego helps in certain situations (allowing them to keep fighting, for example, when others might quit), and sometimes the great player wins despite his ego. Probably the best example I can come up with of a player who is able to put his ego in his pocket is John Juanda. John makes lots of plays that are correct, but opponents who don't fully understand what's going on just think he's lucky. John doesn't mind this as long as he gets paid, and besides, owning a reputation as a lucky player can sometimes be even more intimidating than owning a reputation as a great player.

Naturally, if an experienced opponent makes a remark about your play, either at the table or later, you should consider the possibility that you were wrong. The key word is "consider." Just because someone says something doesn't make it so, even if the speaker is a better player. "Better" means that overall, a player will achieve better results than you; it doesn't mean he understands every single aspect of poker better than you do.

Treat such a player's input with respect, but don't assume it's gospel, at least not until you understand exactly why and where the player's skills exceed yours. One way to start learning about your advisor is to ask not merely what play is better, but the reasons why he considers it better.

Andrew N.S. Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is the tournament editor for Card Player, writes a weekly general gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, and is a consultant to PartyPoker.com, where people can sign up for his free biweekly newsletter. He welcomes your questions.