Playing Poker with Beginners

Recently, I played poker with friends who are relative beginners. These friends are particularly stingy so the small stakes we played mattered. We played for a short period of time but there was one interesting hand.

Four players called a single raise preflop(no community cards). On the flop, the first three community cards, I decided to make a significant three-bet re-raise because I had three of a kind, a strong hand, and all players called my reraise. There was a flush draw (two out of three cards of the same suit) on the board. The fourth community card completed the flush draw. A bet was made, and the player to my right went all-in (bet all their remaining chips). I chose to fold my hand, and the original raiser called the all-in. Both remaining players had a relatively weak hand, top pair with weak additional cards (bad kickers). This is particularly surprising because many hands beat a simple pair.

Takeaways

It seems that new players play middling hands aggressively. I also noticed that these players also tend to play very strong hands passively allowing easy identification of the strength of their hand based on betting patterns.

Playing Poker with International Students

I also played poker over the holidays with international students with more significant stakes. Each player at the table started with 200 big blinds (a standard betting unit in poker), the usual opening bet was 5 big blinds, and a re-raise (three-bet) was 40 big blinds. The table frequently called bets with marginal (weak) hands. Over three hours, I played five hands, three of import:

Hand One: I had Aces. pre-flop an opponent re-raised to 40 big blinds. I decided to re-raise again to 100 big blinds out of position since this player often called with weak hands. I checked on the flop and then bet 50 big blinds on the turn, which caused the opponent to fold. In hindsight, I probably should have used a smaller bet.

Hand Two: The opening bet, pre-flop, was 5 big blinds, another opponent re-raised to 20 big blinds. I re-raised again to 60 big blinds with Ace-King (a strong starting hand) and being in a favorable position. The opponent folded her pocket queens contrary to the loose aggressive nature of the rest of the table.

Hand Three: I called a 30 big blinds re-raise with 8-10 while in position against the same opponent. The flop showed Ace, 9, and 9. The opponent checked, and the turn card was a 10. The opponent bet 15 big blinds on the turn, which I called. On the river (the final community card), the opponent checked again. This opponent often folds everything but the best hands to big bets as shown in the previous hand. I bet 1.5 times the pot, and the opponent folded Ace-Queen.

Takeaways

A small number of decisions make up a disproportionate portion of winnings. There is a paradigm among some players to have a balanced GTO approach to poker in all settings. This is wrong when playing against one-dimensonal players with exceedingly obvious characteristics.