If you think that in an online poker tournament only good-to-fair poker players play, I say you'd better think again. The vast majority of players entering these tournaments actually play worse than they would if they sat out the tournament altogether.
And what do you know about rakeback ?
Many players have had the experience to see that a player who sat out – and thus got his blinds posted and all his hands folded for him by the comp – did a lot better and outlasted many players who tried hard to get their game rolling.
This is especially the case in low limit holdem tournaments.
Being able to do better than nothing – by the looks of things – already means that one is an excellent player here, since doing nothing at all basicly makes one a good player as it is.
Capitalizing on opponents' weaknesses is a major strategy in poker, however, taking on opponents who only have weaknesses, is just about the only way a beginner poker player will make any money.
If you repeatedly see that somebody has called and raised you on a hand as meager as a pair up to the river you'll know you're at a table surrounded by fish.
The other interesting thing about the way these fish play is, that in the beginning they all seem to know what it's all about and seem to be winning the most of the chips around the table. They, however are always prone to losing everything in a couple of hands, and by the nature of the game they soon will too.
This is why the ever folding player who doesn't act anything at all can outlast the majority of the fish. It is kind of natural too if you think about it, because the folding-phase represents the second stage in a player's evolution.
It will surely make him/her last longer at the table, but from here all the way to actually securing a few bucks in winnings is a long way to go. According to experts, there is one thing in poker that – once achieved – can make a player a winning player. It is called "confusing the opposition".
Once you are there, once nobody at the table can categorize you as a tight, aggressive or passive player you have it made.
The reason is not only the fact that nobody will know how to act against you, but also the fact that together with the ability to mask your intentions, comes – in my opinion – the real tiebraker in poker: Knowing which hands to act on and how far to go on these hands. This thing alone represents the very essence of poker, together with, occasionally going in deep on a fiddlesticks hand just to throw everybody off balance even more.
Such low limit tables are excellent grounds for a beginner player to go on the prowl, as the fish all flock to these rooms. The reason why the pickings are so rich for a beginner player who knows his game is that these rooms offer great opportunities for fish to learn and build up experience and confidence while not risking much in the process.
The bottom line is that – especially in low limit tournaments, in online casinos or online poker rooms, the crowd that turns up is somewhat on the newbie side for the reasons described above. Provided one is patient enough to fiddle around with small change for long periods of time, it can provide a good opportunity not only to win money but also to win tournaments, as these newbies are sure to misfire in the longhaul.
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