Speaker 1: So you want to be a those stas question. Yeah,
from the blinds to the river, Stay smooth, stay stuttle,
stack chips, stack skills, Let the feuds get muted.
Speaker 2: Welcome to this show.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome into another episode. You know that only
one percent of poker players understand the real secret to
crushing low stakes poker, and it really has almost nothing
to do with the cards. It's not memorizing perfect pre
flopped ranges, it's not finding more bluffs, not studying some
complicated soft outputs. The biggest edge available to you and
low stakes poker is sitting right there at the table
with you. It's knowing your opponents. Not just knowing that
somebody is a fish or a knit or a good player.
I mean knowing specifically how they play, what mistakes they make,
and exactly how you're going to exploit those mistakes. And
if you play regularly in the same poker room, you
have an enormous opportunity to build that edge. It's something
I like to call home filled advantage. So here's what
I mean. I make people tell me that playing in
the same room all the time can just hurt you
because everybody gets to know you. Everybody learns how you play,
Eventually they start exploiting you. I mean at one, two,
one three, no limit. Really, I'm not worried about that.
I mean, sure, there's a few good players who are
paying attention, but your average low stakes player isn't sitting
there developing some sophisticated counter strategy against you. Most of
them are just thinking, I got this hand. I like
this hand. I'm going to play this hand. Meanwhile, you
should be paying attention to everything, and that's where the
edge starts. So before playing the other night, I decided
to do an experiment. I was just gonna sit down,
look around the table and make some quick notes about
every player, like who do I know, what do I
know about them? And most importantly, how does what I
know change the way I'm going to play against them tonight?
If there were players I didn't know, we'd talk about
how I start figuring them out. If I knew everybody,
we talk about explos I've already developed. Perhaps, So I
sit down, I know almost everybody. I've logged extensive hours
or nearly everybody at the table. And it was a
juicy game, too perfect because now I can really show
you exactly what home field advantage looks like. So I'm
sitting in seat one, right, so let's go around the table.
Let's talk about this game. Seat number two is Betty.
She's immediately to my left. Betty is tight, not insanely tight,
but she plays reasonable speculative hands, like especially in position
ten nine suited, A nine suited, you know, things like that.
But generally speaking, she's playing solid starting hands and she
doesn't really get too out of line post flop, probably
somewhere around a break even player would be my guess.
So what's my adjustment to her? I mean, almost nothing, really,
Betty doesn't interfere with my strategy. If it folds to me,
I can open my normal range. If there's limpers, I
can isolate Rais like, I don't have to worry about
her constantly three betting me or attacking my opens. She's
dragging them out of left, but she isn't making my
life really difficult, and that's useful information, know. So now
I'll move two seats over and there everything changes. Seet
three is jum Marcus. JaMarcus is a whale, the waliest
of whales, and JaMarcus likes to gamble, like I've watched
him turn two hundred dollars into three thousand dollars more
times than I remember, and that sounds impressive, But I've
also sat there and watched him turn that same three
thousand back into zero, probably the same number of times,
if we're being honest. JaMarcus plays a ton of hands,
and most importantly, JaMarcus does not like folding top pair,
not folding second pair, probably not folding gutshot. Yep, he's
interested over cards. Oh one of those could hit got
a back door draw. Well, I need to hang around.
So if JaMarcus can imagine any possible way his hand
might eventually win, he's probably continuing, So you know what's
my answer, Like, I don't ever bluff JaMarcus. I need
to make a hand, and I need to bet that
hell out of it. That's it, that's the strategy. Don't
spend three streets trying to convince a man to fall
who came to the casino because he doesn't enjoy folding.
But there's another adjustment with JaMarcus. Right, he still sees
to my left. That means he's going to out position
on me most of the night, which isn't best really,
And I already know he's calling my raises extremely wide.
So here's another answer. I actually tightened some of my
opening ranges. When JaMarcus has position on me. This might
sound backwards. There's a terrible player behind you. Shouldn't you
want to play more hands against them? I mean not really.
If I raise a marginal hand, JaMarcus is probably calling.
Now I've created a bigger pot with a marginal hand
out of position to somebody who's not folding. I mean
that sounds like a nightmare trying to navigate that spy. Right,
So some hands become folds. Some hands, particularly as stacks
get deeper, can become limps. Sometimes they all Really isn't
to play more hands against a bad player. The more
has played more profitable hands against bad players, and in
position like that is the money tree bad players in position,
there is a difference. It's worth. I really like JaMarcus too,
like personally he's like a great dude. I'm friendly with him.
I joke around with him. Sometimes I'll show him my hand.
One night, I folded Queen's on a board where it
came pretty obvious. I was beat, and I showed him
and he looked at me and says, you're a better
player than I am. I ain't folding Queen's there, you
know perfect like I don't know. It's just play. We
play each other in that kind of a way. It
was also interesting that when players tell you things like
this at the table, you need to pay attention. Right,
he told you a lot about how he plays. You
should use that against him, all right, listen, we want
to seat for. This is an unknown player. Seat for
is the only person I didn't really know at the table,
older gentleman. Maybe I played with them before, but if
I had it, it really remembering thing useful from it.
So we're starting from zero in this game, and that's
going to be important.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So when you don't know somebody, you don't invent or
read about them, like collect information, watch what they're doing,
let them show you how they play. Fortunately, this guy,
he didn't wait long like I raised queen Jack and
he called to flop kame jack high. He don't let
into me. I called, uh, he fires again, I call.
He turns over something like king seven, like he didn't
have a pair, he didn't have a draw, he didn't
have anything. We won the hand, of course, but more importantly,
I learned a lot of information for this guy. He's
just gonna be in there bed with air. Now, I
assume on the whatever it was jackhi boardy, you know,
he assumed like a lot of players, I just had
Ace king and miss. But nevertheless, it's a good starting point. Right,
he's already demonstrating he's capable of putting money into pots
with extremely weak holdings, so to or otherwise, I'm leaning
towards a very simple strategy against this guy. Makes some
hands and make him put money in the pot. It's
not that complicated, all right, Seat five is we'll call
him Brody. Brody initially looks a lot like JaMarcus, right
if you if you don't dive too deep into it, like,
he plays a lot of hands, he calls wide, he
has likes weak pairs, he likes draws over cars, back doors,
you know whatever. But there is a difference between Brody
and JaMarcus. Right, Rody eventually folds, and that's huge. JaMarcus
never folds. Brody will start folding some turns and he'll
definitely fold some rivers. Uh sometimes he'll even hope full pairs. Right.
So against the Jamarcas, I'm almost completely value warned right
against Brody bluffing does come back into the tool box,
like not randomly. I'm looking for situations where his range
becomes obviously weak. Maybe looks like a bust to draw.
Maybe his line looks like a week one peran, you
know something I could take advantage of. Maybe the boarding
gets really scary and he caps is ranged by how
he acts, you know, I can attack this sometimes with bluffs.
And this is why simply saying the guy's a fish
isn't enough information. JaMarcus is a fish, right, He's a fish.
Brody's a fish. Like they're both fish, it's not really
the point. The point is they have some things about
them that will cause you to want to play them
different differently. And I think this is a pretty good
distinction between JaMarcus and play him a little bit differently.
Seat number six will call David. David is straightforward. He
plays ABC poker. He has reasonable ranges. He doesn't do
anything creative. He's not you know, three betting ten to
nine suited or queen jack suited. Very often. If ever,
he usually just calls with those hands. He's value betting
his good hands. He's generally playing what he has faced up.
He might be a slightly winning player. So what's the
answer against this pretty straightforward? Like this, like range him,
like he's very predictable, Like we can range him really well.
His pre flop action is gonna narrow his range down
a fair amount. His flopped action is gonna narrate it
as much further in a very predictable way. His turn
action will narrate it again. So I can use basically
every tool against him. I can value bet when he'll
call worse. I can bluff when his range can't with
stand pressure, you know, follow when his range becomes too strong.
You know, he's pretty straightforward and straightforward poker is relatively
easy to beat. Seat seven is John. We arrive at
John is knit. Whoever knitted his man doesn't have a range?
He doesn't. He has just pretty much everything. Right, let's
learn about the previous night John limped early. Right, there's
another limp. I'm on the button of queens and I
may get twenty five, and John just jams for two hundred.
So you know, what's the answer. What's the answer? John
probably just has aces, Like I'm barely even exaggerating by that,
Like I folded my queens. And then the next night
I almost watched the exact same thing happen again. Right,
Brody raised John jamser on fifty and Brody actually says,
you're the biggest, the tightest guy ever. You only have
one hand, and then he calls with queens and John
of course has aces. Of course he has aces, And
it just illustrates how gigantic low stakes mistakes can be
right so easily exploitable. Great example, this player correctly figured
out what somebody has and just paid it off anyway. Right,
So if you don't learn information about somebody, especially information
that is glaring, you got to use it against them.
You don't get bonus points because you correctly announced somebody
had aces and then putting your money in the middle.
You get bonus points for folding. Right, But John also
has got another weakness. He massively overfolds. So I watched
this guy full paget ace's post flop because somebody raised
him and he convinced themselves that they had to set.
So like, here's how we exploit him. Respect John's aggression,
but attack is fear pretty simple. Respect his aggression. Attack
is fear. Well, John suddenly wants to put him out
of money in the buy it just fold, he's nutted.
But if we're deep, but he's given me a reasonable price,
and I call him and can crack premiums like small pair,
suited asis, suited connectors, hands it making disguised monsters. You know,
I actually make one. He probably is gonna pay us
off a decent amount of the time. All right, ced
eight is Jamison Jameson is a professional and he's very good,
very good post flop. He also plays a really unconventional style,
plays lots of hands, lots of calls. But when as
a monster, he'll make it expensive, like he uses big bets.
He prices people out of draws, and when he flops big,
he's very good at getting people to pay him. Like
he has a knack for it, like nobody ever seen.
Like his game reminds me of something I noticed years
ago watching djaf on Hustler Life. I don't know if
you ever watched him play those games, but he was
play an absurd number of hands, like sixty five percent
of hands, but he was crushing. And I analyzed a
lot of what he was doing, and he's just calling
and playing a lot of hands in position for cheap
and the players are so bad in that game. He
just get paid when he hits, like it's just that easy.
So I want to play good hands against him. I'm
gonna take good prices, I'm gonna use position, but I'm
not looking to manufacture marginal situations against one of the
best players at the table, Like why would I look around?
We got your Marcus, we got Brodie, we got John.
You know I got another guy firing money at the
potway king high. Like poker doesn't pay you actual sure
for beating the best player at the table. You don't
have to go battle them out. So I'm sitting in
my in seat. One right to my left is a
is a type player doesn't interfere much with my strategy.
Then I got a whale who never folds. Then I
got another whale who may fold, turns in rivers. Then
I got a very ABC player. Then I got the
world's nitius knit. Then I got a strong professional that
I don't particularly want to tangle to to my right,
and then I've got that one and known player in
there that I'm gathering information on. So you know, what's
my strategy to this table, Well, there isn't one, and
that's the whole point. I'm playing a bunch of different games.
I'm playing Betty, I'm playing JaMarcus, I'm playing Brody. You
know I'm playing John. You know I'm not playing the table.
I'm playing several different opponents differently. Now, obviously you'll be
in a plot with you know, more than one of
them at times, so that goes without saying. I'm not
gonna get too deep into that. Now here's where the
whole point of this poker cash really comes into flow.
Put me in a different poker room, right, Imagine tomorrow,
I walk into a poker room I've never played in before,
same stak, same cards, same rules, But I don't know anybody.
Suddenly all this information I've just spent a lot of
time talking about in this game I was in the
other night. I don't know anybody here. I don't know
whoever folds. I don't know who never folds. I don't
know who you know three bets only aces, I don't
know who'll call three streets with second pair. I don't
know who can be bluffed. So what's the answer. Like,
when you don't have an information, you got to simplify
your strategy. Play very solid ranges, value about your good hands,
be cautious with unnecessary bluffs, and pay attention to everything.
Who limps, who raises, who calls to wide, who folds?
Start building dossier's on everybody at the table. Every showdown
is information, Every strange bet is information, every face upfold
is information. Every hand somebody shows you as information and
you just start to build a database on these players.
So let's talk about the one percent edge. Right, Let's
go back to where we started. Only one percent of
poker players understand the real secret to crushing low stakes poker,
and as almost nothing to do with the cards. The
secret is information, and you have a regular poker room,
you have an opportunity to accumulate an enormous amount of information.
Right after twenty hours of Monday, you should know a
few things. After one hundred hours, you should know a
ton of things. Like after hundreds of hours, you've watched
the same tendencies repeat over and over and over again,
and now you're just not guessing. Like, you know John
doesn't have enough bluffs, you know JaMarcus doesn't fold, you
know Brody eventually will fold sometimes. You know David plays straightforward,
you know Jamison is dangerous. And here's the important part.
And these things isn't enough, right, You've got to change
your strategy and hands because of the players in the
hand with you. That's the edge. Your regular poker room
becomes home filled advantage because you spent hundreds or thousands
of hours learning the people sitting in those chairs. While
they were looking at their cards or watching TV, you
were studying them. And if you're doing that better than
everybody else in the room, like they're not gaining an
advantage plan against you. You are the one with the advantage.
You are. That's home field advantage. So pay attention, build profiles,
find their weaknesses, exploit it. That's going to wrap it up.
I hope this episode has helped. I'll talk to you
guys in the next one.
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