When the Cards don't come.

[knightwalker]

It feels like a dumb question, but what the hell. I'm not that bright. Any advice for what to do when the cards just don't come in a SnG style home game. Playing with nine people mostly Loose Passive, one guy is Very Loose Aggressive likes to bluff to the river, and two Flat out calling stations. My strategy was to stay tight early on, and let the wild cards bump heads. Then open up as the blinds go up and use my tight image and aggressive betting to limit the field and protect my hands. Great in theory, but then I look down hand after hand to crap. With a loose table like this, I am usually willing to limp in in late position with connected suiters, Kxs or Axs. From Early and middle position, I am looking for Premium hands. But nothing comes. We had a very slow blind structure (doubling them as people bust out) so I figure I can wait. During 4 hours of play, I did not recieve more than a few "playable hands". I got one AKo from UTG. I had a 76o that looked really tempting after 2 1/2 hours of nothing. I saw an J3s that I didn't play. I seemed like if I got a high card, it came with a baby. I didn't see any suited cards and only the two connected cards I mentioned above. I know, quit whining, it's just a mathmatical variance.... That's poker. But my question is this. When you have a table with calling stations that you can't seem to get off a hand no matter how tight your image is and one or two maniacs that don't seem to let you limp in to a hand what do you do when the cards just don't come. Me I ended up using this as a lesson in patients. I have refused to play the crap cards facing a raise or out of position and folded more times than I have ever folded in a game. I took a stab at a few pots from the BB but nothing successfull. I floped two pair from the BB after a few hours of the bad cards. Betting aggressively into an inexperienced player lost me half my stack. ( I thought I could get away with it and ran into a full house)
Later I represented straight and got called by a Calling Station that didn't was willing to go all in with top pair (7's). I would love to have some better tactics to put into action in this situation.

Thanks in advance for your advice..... I've got a lot to learn.

[aokrongly]

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[knightwalker]

Great advice. I have a fairly good read on most of the players. Next time I am just getting crap cards like this night, I think I will switch to Loose Passive PreFlop to see more flops then tighten up after the flop. But I am thinking that I will have to play the Premium hands more passively before the flop or I will be giving away my cards.
Also When you have a LAG to your right who keeps 4X raising your blinds then ends up folding after the flop, is it right to reraise regardless of your cards to back him off, or is this just a recipe for disaster?

[aokrongly]

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[ka24_det]

I got really upset and almost didnt want to play at my weekly local game anymore. Its because I did what aokrongly is advising not to do. I tried to 'teach them a lesson'. But you have to let your ego go. I learned to do this and I havent lost our weekly game since. One guy, who I was heads up with one time, is really hard to read because he doesnt understand how to bet, so his bets are all over the place. So I folded mediocre hands to him a couple times and he took this as a sign that he had found a winning strategy. However risking 20$ for 3$ blinds is ridiculous and sooner or later you are going to beat the person doing this. You dont beat them by letting your ego step and and call with mediocre hands to show them they cant do that, because first off they will feel stupid when you call but they are still in the hand and you still have mediocre hands. Second you look even more foolish then them just calling instead of raising or folding with a mediocre hand like that.

Dont let your ego take over, play him, dont let him unintentionally play you.

[knightwalker]

After a few days have passed, I am not as unhappy with how my game went last week. Yeah I lost.... That's Poker. I've read that the cards can run cold, Now I know what it looks like. Whether I won or lost, I did keep to my strategy going in. I wanted to be the first one in the pot leading out with a 3XBB bet when I played a hand. I didn't smooth call raises with Mediocre Hands. The Cards just didn't match my strategy. At least I stayed with my strategy. Next Week I think I will try to play a little more Loose Passive preflop and then Tighten up after the flop. Then turn up the aggression in the latter rounds. Any thoughts?

[michael1123]

There's a home game I play in every other month that has many of the same type of loose passive players. I found in the last one that it really worked well to actually bet more preflop when I raised, instead of just limping a lot more or making my standard 3x BB raise. They don't respect normal poker raises, but they did seem to respect 5xBB raises (especially when everyone else just minraises or calls and they know I'm easily the most experienced player at the table). You still get some calls, but it seems to make it turn into more of a regular game, with just 1 or 2 calls per hand on a 9 player table, and you didn't have much risk of being reraised because the players were so passive. I'd follow up the preflop bet with an equal or higher bet often (a couple times with nothing, a few times with hands like 2nd pair and such), and actually was able to take down some pots on the flop.

You still can't bluff near as much as in a skilled game, but I found increasing my bets to have the limiting the field effect I was looking for, when the blinds were still rather low. Once they're bigger, and we were down to the last few players, the game did tighten up some on its own.