Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Profiles of Poker Players : The Bookworm

By Aeolus Jirou

As you play the game of poker you will encounter different kind of personalities as you go along. Here are some of the most common profiles of poker players that you might come across.

Ally or Foe?

A bookworm is not you ally. They seem to know a lot about poker and they tend to "impart their knowledge" to others at the table. They will teach you anything from what hands you should play to calculating if you're going to win or not. They also have a bad habit of criticizing and laughing at someone who's not a good player which is rude in every aspect. As an aftermath this player might leave the game to look for a friendlier table or will be playing better than anyone have expected. The bookworm's poker skill are average and its not your biggest concern, but you should watch out for their behavior and the way they talk at the table.

Aggressiveness and Selectivity

The bookworm personality plays tight during pre-flop; playing somewhere between 20%-25% of the hands they got. But it is during post-flop that this kind of players panic. They have read a lot of books about poker - they probably brought something in their bag for luck - but these books have a variety of ideas which push these bookworms to continue playing after the flop. The reasoning would be, all players have their own weakness and when they write a book they will correct their weaknesses. So the bookworm have all those weaknesses in mind from reading those books and will result in a too loose and too aggressive type of play during post-flop.

The strength of a starting hand is what almost all poker players agree with and this is the only part that the bookworm absolutely understands.

The type of play of the bookworm will fall in a partially aggressive manner. They are willing to bet but if someone plays along with them they will just call and call unless they are holding a the best hand in town.

Predictability

Yes, the bookworms know about deceptive plays as what they learn from the book. But they are nothing near to a deceptive player. Their style can be read clearly because they often use the same one.

Poker IQ

This sort of poker personalities have low poker IQ even though they might actually have memorizes the poker books they are reading. This is due to the fact that given a change in the gaming situation, the bookworm will not know how to adjust his game because their knowledge is only base on the books they have read and not on their own personal experiences. But they are not aware or ignore to be aware that the authors who wrote those books have written their advice under the general conditions and because situations vary in every play those general advice will not be really as effective. But then bookworms treat those books with reverie and will follow each steps like its the most important thing in poker.

"Hey, BOOKWORMS You're playing poker not building a desk, you can't just follow instructions!"

Bookworms will have a hard time comprehending the motives behind a player's move. They expect that all players must follow what they do and those who don't will be criticize and laugh at.

What You Should Do

One thing that can help you defeat a bookworm and put them in their rightful place is to befriend them, talk to them and try to worm out their game play through them. They are boastful enough to brag about it to anyone who will listen.

If the above mentioned strategy won't work, then the best thing that you should do while playing against a bookworm is to stay aggressive. Bet them to the hilt and let them know that their moves don't scare you.

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