Everyone’s got their own idea of what to look for when they want to get into a cash game. And of course, the more experience that someone has, the more information they can collect before they even sit down. With that in mind, we caught up with Brad Booth out in Vegas and asked him for his thoughts on the subject. Here’s the man himself – in his own words:
There’s a lot going on when you sit down to a cash game, and obviously you’ve got to be aware of all of it if you have any intention of being successful.
When you’re going to play – before you even sit down – you’ve got to decide how much you’re going to buy in for. It might seem like it goes without saying, but you’ve got to be aware of everyone’s chip stack when you decide where to start. For me, I generally like to start out at least equal with – or buy in for more – than the biggest stack at the table.
Another part of this is recognizing who’s properly bankrolled at the table. If there’s somebody that’s playing on case money, then he’s generally a good opponent to pick on: they’re the one’s taking a shot at the game. If they don’t succeed, they’re going to drop down or they’re done for a while. Recognizing this lets you manipulate certain situations and take full advantage of them.
As far as recognizing opponents goes, one of the most important things that you have to do whenever you sit down is develop an accurate profile of each person at the table. Profiling is a matter of getting exactly who all of the other players at the table are and how they’re playing. This is critical and you need to learn to do it quickly.
For example, if you sit down with an older guy that’s retired and just there to have fun, you know that you can probably get away (with) a lot. Of course, you could be sitting with a guy who looks exactly the same, but has been around the block more than a few times and has been playing poker for years. You need to be able to figure out the difference between the two real fast. A lot of this is intuitive, but it’s all about recognizing experience in a player; figuring out who’s strong and who’s weak. Also keep in mind that just because someone is an unknown doesn’t mean that they aren’t good – you’ve always got to watch how they act, what they do at the table and listen to what they say.
This is a little different with players coming from an online background. If you’ve got an opponent with a reputation as a really strong online player, it’s probably a good idea to sit back and take a more passive approach until you figure out how they play live. I think that this is definitely a case where live players have an edge over online players. For myself, I’m accurate about 90% of the time when I put someone on being a particular type of player: solid, an amateur, a seasoned pro.
Of course, the flip-side of this is how they perceive you as a player. For me, if I’ve got any notoriety at a game, people recognize or greet me by name, maybe even comment on my play, I can use it to establish an image as an aggressive player that might check/raise with nothing. If I pick up on that, I can make moves like betting 4K into a 2K pot and get paid off with middle pair because this person thinks that I’m playing with nothing. On the other hand, if someone doesn’t think that about me or doesn’t know how I play, I have to adjust accordingly – it all depends on how I see their read on me.
Once you know how people view you, then it’s just a reverse psychology game. You can adapt to that in so many ways – this is one of the strongest parts of my game. It really lets me manipulate the table to my advantage.
If you can keep all of this in mind, you should be able to figure out what and who you’re dealing with right off the bat. Take full advantage of it, and you’ll be the one getting paid off.
