Strategy For Sitting at a New Table

You will see how to identify the bad players and good players at a new table after only a few hands if you stick to a handful of basic rules. Sitting at a new table is a hard thing to adjust to especially if you immediately put yourself in to tough spots or just get big pocket pairs right away. To adjust to a new table you should first look to see the players stack sizes. Identifying how deep a player is at the table will help you when making tough decisions. Also, it will tell you who to avoid at the table and who to attack. If you have big hands right away, you could stack up nicely when playing against deep stacked opponents, but you could also lose all your chips right away.

If you identify a big stack as more of a bully then a solid tight player, you can find that this is the player you will get credit for playing back at. If you play back at an aggressive bully, most of the time they will give their hand up. They will muck their hand more times than not because they aren’t use to players doing that type of stuff. If an aggressive player gets check raised or 3 bet on the flop or before the flop, you will see them not have a clue how to respond. Often times when you see a table bully you will be able to run them over without them even knowing it.

When you sit down at a live poker table you should be able to recognize the average age of the table relatively with ease. Once you recognize an average age of the table you should be able to predict the speed of the game. If there are a number of older players at the table you should realize that the game speed will be slow. This means that the hand ranges aren’t going to be all over the board like they would be with younger players at the table. With older men especially, you will notice that they only play pairs and big cards. There is no messing around when it comes to older players. The one exception with this is an older man who most likely has a steady job and kids, and is just coming to play some poker for fun. One of these players is someone who is more so unpredictable and is likely to shove all-in with various hands and draws. They don’t like to be bullied ever and you can get a ton of value from betting strong hands against them.

If you are sitting at a poker table and it is filled with youngsters, meaning players in their 20’s, you should more or less beware of reckless aggression. These tables can win you a lot of money or lose you a lot of money in the short run of things. These tables are great to sit at in cash games because the younger players are unpredictable at times, and it can make for exciting and extremely profitable poker sessions. This is also a bad thing at times because sometimes hands are almost unreadable because of the wide range of starting hands most young players have in their arsenals.

Mainly though when you sit at a new table you should begin to categorize players into passive or aggressive. If you pick two basic categories you can make some marginal decisions easier. If you begin to do this the moment you sit down at a new table, you will have a decent amount of success later on at the table. In a cash game, identifying passive players and looking at aggressive players should help you when determining hand ranges down the road. You should always look to constantly gather information and if you gather enough information you should be able to make informed decisions with that information. Poker is a game of information and growth. The more you know the better you will feel and more comfortable you will feel when sitting in a game. If you are comfortable and begin to gain some confidence you will be a profitable poker player. Confidence is the name of the game, and once you have confidence at a poker table, you will be almost unstoppable.