playing with fishes, donkeys & loose players

you have the complete wrong strategy
2-3x the blind is nothing
pop it to like 6-7x , and isolate these fools
if you cant outplay a donkey heads up post flop quit poker

 

I find that comment by Daniel quite interesting considering his PokerStars promotional commercial shows him in a game with a young Asian lad..Turn comes a J giving DN his trips(could be a boat as the flop cards escape me at this moment)

He feigns a big sigh and checks to the young lad who of course pushes..the next scene is DN making a nice trick shot(he's actually good enough to make money at it) at the pool table and then you see him raking in the chips of the youngster.

The whole premise of the commercial was that Representing Weakness(essentially a reverse tell) can win big pots...

This one IMO was overly obvious...but hey, whatever works for ya.

lol this keeps gettin more and more comical with you believing what you see in tv commercials and relating it to real poker.  negreanu has said many times tells are way overrated in his articles and on shows, as have many other pros. 

put a ton of money in before the flop and hope it hits you then when it misses completely fire ahead into someone who calls everything, what a great strategy.

 

Sounds like you are playing with a bunch of idiots, yourself included.

all the books you read are all beginner strategies, once you take off the training wheels and start playing for real youll figure that out, if it ever happens.

 

Man are you absolutely one of the lamest guys I've ever come across...I didn't say or comment on the substance of what he was promoting, only the disparity between the commercial and his comments...jesus grow the fuck up

tkf18ny you are playing into the donkeys silly game pushing more than you should (6x-7x BB) in the middle with a person who will call you down with Q high - that would be called a donkey party lol. As clown stated above it's not a very good strategy. Sand bagging is the key, don't trap yourself.

exactly what everyone should be doin pretty much.  these guys are making it way too hard.  they are concentrating on trying to fake guys out instead of worrying about getting max value on their hands.

Reverse tails do in fact work against the donks. I use an oreo cookie as my prop and when he bluffs big i simply say "no i dont have spades, aces full mike". MONEYMAKER

I played the pokerstars 2k qualifier freeroll tonight just for the practice of playing against the sort of players we've been talking about. This freeroll, for those who are not familiar receives up to 12k registered players, the most of any site i know. Tonight there was about 11700 players. And there's no better place to practice playing with donks and calling stations than this freeroll where almost 6000 donks/loose players (and those casualties who recieved bad beats) get felted within 30 to 40 mins. When i bust i was top 500 and i had only been playing for about 2 hr lol.


Anyway, this tourny is often filled with donkey party's early on as you all may know, then as it progresses the donks who have survived are the ones who have gone all in 10-20 times to get to where they are now with like 40-50k stacks so they are still around deep into these tourny's.


Throughout the tourny i opted to play a safe, tight game, well it's my regular game with some adjustments made accordingly  like raising mostly 2-3xBB, majority of the time just a mere 2xBB. I do this espeically for about the first half when all the crazies are still in town acting the fool. Then once i get over half way i then opt to not only raise more (3-4XBB but still majority 3xBB) but also my starting hand selection gets a little looser (K10, JQ, Q10, small to mid pocket pairs) - though i usually do this deeper than mid way. Then by the time i reached deep to 500 players i was playing hands like K9, J8, J9, J10, A4 as most tend to get tighter by that stage.

Note all throughout i hardly EVER bluff or make any creative moves UNLESS i am CERTAIN my hand is good especially in a hand with over 5 people playing then i will make the occasional bluff but it's usually for a small amount that won't dent my stack dramatically if somebody calls but enough at times to make players fold.

THe hardest situations are the ones where you have to decide on calling a large bet for a large % of your stack (usually from a crazy player making silly over bets and all ins)  - your forced to determine wether he is bluffing or not. It happened to me a few times tonight and though a large % of those situations i felt my hand was good i folded, more often than not unless i have 2 Pair or a Set i won't be calling any crazy over bets, raises or all ins.

- One good tip IMO and this is something i do often is when i get into hands heads up where i either fold to a bet or my opponent folds to my bet i already have a fair idea what they may be holding so then i ask them wether they had that hand or not and more often than not players will tell you what they had (in freerolls anyway). This is an excellent way to practice reading hands. I also do this even if i wasn't in a hand or in a hand where there are more than 3-4 players.




Anyway i just wanted to jot down how playing a safe, tight game allows you to go deep into tourny's, espeically ones that are filled with loose players that we have been talking about. This is the way i usually play tournament poker but i adjust acordingly depending on the sort of players on my table and here i told you how i deal with the crazies . There are different strategies to apply in the beginnning of the tourny, to the middle and then deep stack, i demonstrated how i played the start, middle and deep-ish stacked in context of loose players. Anyways i hope this helps even a little bit to anybody.

depends what happened betting wise pre-flop, what position i'm in, how many people in the hand, how much somebody bet out on the flop etc.

This might be the best post I've seen in this thread.  I have a buddy who played in a $1,500 NLHE in this years World Series.  He finished about 380 out of over 3,000.....just missed the money.  He went out very late on day 1.  He said he flat bluffed TWO hands in over 11 hours of play....won them both.  He said he probably played too tight, but the lesson is worthy IMO.....good, solid play will get you a lot further then the "fancy" man as NJ put it.