I was playing $10/$10 at Parx yesterday(which now has a $3k cap btw) and the game was ok. I began to play at 12:30 and the game got pretty good after a few hours. There were two bad players directly to my right who people were trying to play pots with. Since they were on my direct right,and because they were the weaker players at the table, I was thinking for a long time about what I could do to get their money. It was especially important to analyze their games because it was likely that the bulk of my profit, and important hands I would play, would come against them.
Both players were still playing at about 10PM and a thought crept into my head, what is it that allows both of these players to still be in the game? Aside from being a bit lucky, they were both winning a lot of pots uncontested. Every time he was checked to(and he was cold calling in position a lot), one of the players would bet half pot and was picking up many, many pots of decent size. The other villain liked to overbet when it looked like noone was interested in the pot and also won a whole bunch of pots that noone wanted. This allowed them to stay afloat despite their other obvious flaws like calling too many river bets and bluffing in other bad spots.
This reminded me that poker players are not all good or all bad. Just because someone is breaking even or not a winner, doesn’t mean that they don’t do something well(and better than you do) that you can learn from. Everyone has good and bad aspects to their game and it is important to analyze what they do well(so you can stay away from it) and what they do poorly(so you can take advantage of it). There is something that everyone does well, and it is important to learn from them.
