How to play against beginners and regs

The best way to earn money in poker is to play against beginners and other bad players. If the tables aren’t swarming with these player categories, the next category to focus on is the so-called regs (the regular players).

The beginner and how to exploit this player type

A beginner in poker is a player that hardly know the rules and have not yet an understanding for many fundamental strategies in the game. If you spot one at the tables when you is online, this is your obvious target.

You want to play many pots against this player. Therefore, you could open your range some and you should also try to isolate (this tactic means that you raise to hopefully get other players to not get involved in the pot after the beginner player have join the pot or is be the big blind) this player when the opportunities are good.

The beginner doesn’t know the odds; therefore, you can skip everything about pot manipulation and instead let him call to huge overprizes with his drawing hands. Increase your value bet accordingly on the turn and river.

And if you get called after a big raise, don’t automatically assume that he has a strong hand, he may only be on a straight or flush draw.

Some beginners also tend to be hyper-aggressive. Play tight against this player and be patience. The mistakes are on the way and you can win big pots when you finally hit something.

The regs and how to approach them

Since the poker tables online no longer overflows with beginners as it once did, the regs have become the new main target for many players.

A definition of the regs may be motivated. As said in the preamble, this is an abbreviation for regulars. A regular is a player that plays regularly, but not only this. In this context a regular I characterized as a player that play s regularly and don’t improve very much.

The regulars don’t study the game and because of that they don’t have insights about the odds and their game understanding are missing a lot of details.

There are of course different grades of regs. The better ones have played a lot and have learn that works and not in many situations. Still, they have no proper insights about odds and haven’t studied the game enough to be aware of many subtle strategies.

An in-dept article on this subject to be recommended are Beating the Regs by Nathan "BlackRain79" Williams.

Written by Oscar Sand

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