Even if you just play free poker games, it’s essential, if you want to win that know how to play against the different types of player styles and habits you will face. That’s just common sense.
If you play free poker, low stakes money games and freerolls, you will find that there are 4 main groups of player styles. The quicker you are able to establish which player type you are up against, the quicker you can adopt your tactics for that particular type.
Almost all players fall into one of the following four groups. 1) Rocks, 2) Maniacs, 3) Calling stations or ATMs as I like to call them as they give you money so easy, and 4) The Pro. In this article we’ll focus on the Rock player type.
A rock player is unmoving, dependable, reliable stable and secure.
They are very tight, even tighter out of position and have a very narrow selection of cards they will play, on average they will play less than 12% of hands.
These hands are obviously AA, KK, QQ, JJ and as well include just about any combination of face/Broadway cards, low pocket pairs and sometimes suited connectors in position with a limp.
Rocks are honest and simple players, you will find that they hardly ever bluff. A big bet from a rock almost always equals a big hand, the kind of hand they will be willing to shove with if pushed to. Rocks will also rarely fight against three bets.
Once you’re identified a Rock which, when you get used to it won’t take long, you now need to play them in the best way to beat them (obviously!). One thing to know is that you don’t have to take too long to decide what to do, rocks to tend to telegraph their hands to you!
Let’s look at a rock away from the poker table.
If you needed to remove a big rock from the garden for instance what would be the better way? You would not try and pick the whole thing up all at once as you may hurt yourself, what you’re going to do is break it up into small pieces and shovel it into a skip, and this is how we will eliminate the rock from the poker table, bit by bit. We will chip away at them with small raises, particularly in position.
We will constantly be stealing their blinds with a massive range, almost any two cards. This works great in the later stages of a tournament when the blinds are bigger and you approach the bubble.
A rock isn’t a great post flop player, they either hit or miss in their own mind set. We should also be seeking to take pot control lines, and flat calling in position with suited connectors provides us with great implied odds.
There are a few things you ought not to be doing against rocks and these clearly include playing big pots with weak hands, like one pair. Playing hands which are easily dominated against a rock’s range can also be a big problem.
If you remember back to the type of hands I referred to that are in a rock’s range, then you’ll realise hands like AJ, A9, KJ, and Q10 are all in bad shape. Another thing to consider is, firing double barrel bluffs don’t work, these guys don’t play cabbage.
To recap, when playing against a marked rock.
Firstly, don’t immediately assume a player is a rock based on early actions, a few folds doesn’t mean a player is a rock, observe them over several hands and see how they act on their own blinds and when they’re in different positions. Always have in the front of your mind I am playing basic micro stakes or free poker games. A raise equals a good hand and a check means a fold coming up. Avoid big pots with rocks, use your shovel and chip away.
If you’re new to poker then I suggest you play free poker first in order to get a no risk feel for the game and learn to recognize and play against the various player types (you will find many rocks in free poker games).
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