Playing Against Rookie Flush Masters

In the low level online tournaments, drawing hands and dry ace hands are exceptionally dangerous to play with, and play against. With a slew of inexperienced opponents against you, many will be making mathematical errors while holding suited cards and weak aces, however these hands win often enough that you need to be aware of what your opponents may classify as good hands and know how to play against them. If you are in an early stage of a multi table tournament, your usual strategy should be simply to make other’s play in the hopes of the flop helping them, not you. In other words, get in ahead and make your opponents pay for trying to hit an ace on the flop or trying to hit the flush card on the turn or river. However, making it expensive by betting aggressive isn’t always the right play in low limit tournaments because your opponent will likely not take into account the correct math of the situation. Let’s say for example that you bet solid preflop with QhQd to get heads up with a notably loose player who calls from the small blind. This is still in the first blind level so chips are premium as you both see a flop of Th, 9s, 6s. This is a good flop for you and that pot of 200 chips now looks like it’s going to be part of your stack. However, the problem is your opponent has played 80% VPIP so far, and by just calling your preflop bet, you have no idea what he has. Regardless, you need to bet here because the chances are that flop didn’t give him a monster hand. Seeing that there is 200 in the pot and your opponent could have anything, I would bet pot here, happy to take it down and avoid a turn card. So that’s what you do. The pot is now 400 and your opponent quickly calls. Oh no. A quick call from a careless or reckless player usually means a draw of some kind. The pot is now 600 and represents nearly half of your 1,350 chips left in your stack. The turn brings a horrible looking Ace of spades which represents an over-card, a flush card and a potential straight card. Even though you may still have the best hand, at this stage I would back off and keep the pot as small as I could from there, possibly calling a reasonable bet on the river, which if it turns out is even a worse card, like a King, a Jack, an Eight or another spade, I am more likely to fold given the precious value of my chips in the early stages and the (slight) potential I may be behind to a set already. You see, pot odds make no difference to inexperienced players. They may only take note if you raise enough that calling may take them out of the poker tournament, and even then horrible calls are common. Change the scenario now where the turn card is actually a brick like the 2c. That’s when you really make your weak opponent pay for seeing one more card, because all of a sudden you become a substantial, mathematical odds favorite. Even though it is early in the poker tournament still, that would be a card to step on your opponent’s throat with where you would likely double up. In other words you can play more assertive with one card to come by over-betting the turn as opposed to the over-betting the flop where a wide-eyed rookie will feel he is making a good play to call his whole stack off to a draw with 2 cards yet to come.

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