5 Sharp Tips for Crushing Soft Games (ft. Uri Peleg) | Upswing Poker Level-Up #55

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady with poker pro Uri Peleg. You can watch or listen to the entire episode via the links above or read on if you prefer a written version.

Mike Brady (00:00):

Ready to level up your poker skills and crush soft games? I’m Mike Brady and I’ve got the world’s best poker coach, Uri Peleg on the line with me. He’s about to reveal his top five tips for destroying weak competition at the poker table and he saved his very best tip for the number five slot. If you play live or low stakes online games, get ready for some golden advice that will skyrocket your win rate. Welcome aboard Uri.

Uri Peleg (00:25):

Hey Mike. Happy to be here.

Mike Brady (00:27):

I wasn’t just sucking up to Uri when I called him the world’s best poker coach. Not only has he won millions on the felt himself, he’s coached some of the best players in the world on their way to reaching the top of the poker food chain. By the way, if you’re serious about poker, Uri has been working on something that will be amazing for you. It’s called Lab 2.0. It’s a massively upgraded version of the Upswing Lab that provides a clear path to poker mastery. We’ll fill you in more about that throughout this episode. Let’s get into the tips, Uri. What is your first tip for crushing soft games?

Uri Peleg (01:02):

Tip number one is to categorize players. And the reason I say that this is tip number one is I feel like it gets people into the correct mindset. When you’re in a very soft game, you really want to think of yourself as, “I’m the only one who knows what he’s doing. Each of these other guys is doing something wrong, and it’s up to me to figure out who’s a calling station, who bluffs too much, who bluffs too little, who overplays their hands…” all of these types of things. And I find it’s very common. For example, you see someone call a bluff successfully, you’re like, what did I do wrong, right? Because a guy caught you bluffing. But what you should be thinking is, “wow, this guy’s a calling station. Let’s get a ton of value from him.” This is to get you into that frame of mind of “it’s a soft game. These guys are not very savvy players. They’re leaning in one direction in a very clear way.” So figure out which way, and that’s your road to victory there.

Mike Brady (02:03):

It’s so funny you said road to victory there. That was truly a coincidence. Darren Elias in his Road to Victory course on Upswing Poker, the main structure of the course is around the five player types. He has five different player types that he breaks down for when you’re playing in large field tournaments. Large field tournaments are really interesting because the different player types you’re going to find yourself facing really run the gamut. You might be playing against some of the world’s best players and you also might be playing against someone who satellited in and is not particularly serious. And I’m talking about tournaments like the World Poker Tour World Championship, things like that where it’s a big buy-in, but you get a wide range of players. So Darren breaks down these categories as aggressive professional, tight professional, loose passive recreational and so on. It’s kind of wide categories like that and then he categorizes more deeply within those with regard to their specific tendencies. Since we’re talking about soft games here, I think the categorization method is a little different and I want to clarify that with you. Are you categorizing players in wide buckets that are not super descriptive or are you getting really into the weeds with regard to exactly how they’re playing? For example, this guy is too loose on the flop or this guy seems to have certain bet sizing tells. How exactly are you approaching that categorization?

Uri Peleg (03:32):

Great question, first of all. Before I even answer the question, I want to point out how important to the skill this is both in tournaments as you mentioned. And if you think about a tournament player who’s perfect at playing against the best in the world, but who doesn’t take advantage of soft fields, he’s not necessarily going to have the best results. So taking advantage of soft games is a real skill. It’s a real muscle you need to build up in poker. It’s not like you can say, “oh, I want to battle a real stakes, so this is not important. I need to practice GTO”. This is really, really important all the way up. And even at the highest stakes of cash games, you see a big deviation in how well people are able to adjust versus the weaker players. There’s often a weaker player at the table. Even if he’s a pro, there’s a weaker pro, and being able to get the max value from him is extremely important.

Uri Peleg (04:27):

Now to your question about what type of categories there are, it’s very broad and with me it leans a lot on experience. So often I’ll see someone make, let’s say, call out of position and check down a busted draw and never try to bluff for the pot. So I’d categorize this guy as passive. He can be loose passive or tight passive, but he’s in a frame of mind where he doesn’t fight for small pots. By the way, this goes only for small pots. Everyone fights for the big ones. That’s an important distinction to make. Similarly, I look for bet sizing tells, I look for tendencies like people who love calling. People who love folding is tougher. They have to show you what they folded. So that’s a tougher one to catch. But in soft games they often will show you. I actually back in the day had a hand… back before overbetting was common

Uri Peleg (05:25):

I overbet the turn against a player and he folded a set face up. And if someone shows you something like that, you kind of know the direction that they’re leaning. But yeah, if I had to, sorry for the long-winded answer, but if I had to give you simple things to look for, I’d say look for is he passive or aggressive? And sometimes he’ll be passive with a certain bet size and aggressive with a different bet size, or passive with a certain hand strength and aggressive with a different hand strength. So you can always flesh it out, but at the base level there’s passive or aggressive. You look for loose or tight and you look for whether the guy likes calling down, which is very evident. The guys who do show down crazy hands and they often lose their money very, very quickly.

Mike Brady (06:21):

Oftentimes you don’t even need to see them show down. You might be there for an orbit or two and you’ll be like, “man, this guy sure seems to reach the river quite often.” And then now you kind of know, I mean you don’t know for sure, maybe he was just getting a good run of cards, but it’s pretty likely that the guys in there may be a little bit too loose. You can also extrapolate a lot, right? For example, you see this all the time at low stakes. Maybe it’s a limped pot. Player limps in early position ends up showing down Ace Queen, Ace Queen suited, Ace Jack suited… A quite premium top seven percent hand. If that player ever puts in chips preflop, if they’re ever three betting me, if they’re ever raising to a normal size, I am going to respond incredibly tight compared to how I normally would. I mean hands that would be an auto call against their three bet are hitting the muck in my mind.

Uri Peleg (07:10):

An interesting example, because in my mind if I saw someone limp a premium, I wouldn’t be sure what he’s three betting with. You know what I mean? Because kind of statistically, if you limp top three percent, like three to ten percent of hand strenght in terms of, you limp Ace Jack suited, Ace Queen suited, King Queen suited, pocket Jacks, you limp all those hands. Now you three bet, there’s a two percent chance it’s a premium. And then there’s absolutely everything else where maybe the guy’s just getting fed up and he’s like, “I have this image”. People… I feel like everyone has their internal timer of when they get fed up because them being in it doesn’t work. So you need to look at who’s up and who’s down. People often shift gears and there’s also a very, very common player type which is important to mention in terms of passive versus aggressive and that’s the gambler player type.

Uri Peleg (08:10):

This is a very common player in soft games and he’s not exactly passive, nor is he exactly aggressive. It’s more like if you wanted to visualize this player, imagine someone playing a poker slot machine. He barely understands the rules, but if the cards in his hand match the cards on the board, he puts more money in. And this kind of player can often seem very aggressive, but he’s only aggressive when he hits the board. Whenever he misses it’s check and fold. So you can’t be calling him down with Ace high or something like that. You need to be very, very aware of what’s going on.

Mike Brady (08:46):

Great stuff there. Let’s go ahead and move on Uri. What is your second tip for crushing soft games?

Uri Peleg (08:51):

soft games tend to have a ton of multiway pots and there is a deceptive thing because if you think about it… Imagine you’re invited to a really soft game, you see no one knows what they’re doing. Every pot goes five-way to the flop and you feel like you’re supposed to win. You feel like “I’m the best player at the table, I should be winning money.” But in five-way pots, each player is supposed to win roughly twenty percent of the time and variants can easily make that you’re losing ten hands in a row. And so it’s very, very important to recognize this and to get used to it. If you’re used to regular games where pots are heads up a lot, you often win half the pots you play. So playing a soft game might feel very frustrating. It’s like “I have to fold again, I have to fold again, I have to give up again”. So you need to get used to playing multiway. You need to get used to the fact you’re often going to fold a top pair or a middle pair or a bad flush draw, sometimes even to one bet. Don’t get frustrated by it, don’t feel like you’re doing something wrong. Basically, tighten up multiway.

Mike Brady (10:01):

There’s really common advice about multiway pots that goes around and it’s theoretically sound, but I’m curious what your take is on it when you’re playing against players against whom you don’t have to be theoretically sound, and I’m specifically thinking about bet sizing and more specifically small bet sizing. Theoretically, when you’re in a multiway pot, you’re going to be using a lot of small sizes, right? If it’s a situation where maybe there was a limp or two you raise over the limps, maybe one of the blinds calls, you go to the flat four-way. Oftentimes, if you’re going to be betting the flop, especially if you’re at out of position against some of the players, you’re going to be using a fairly small bet size. And the idea there to get wonky for a second is that the burden of defense among the other players is shared among them. So they all have to play tighter even though it’s a relatively small bet. But if you’re playing against people in soft games, maybe that’s not necessary. Maybe you can use some little tricks with your bet sizing, jack it up a little bit when you have certain types of hands maybe on certain types of boards. What’s your take on that?

Uri Peleg (11:05):

Again, great question. I think one of the things that often happens… Imagine you’re in a four-way pot and there’s one huge whale, basically a guy who calls everything, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The entire game is running around him. And I hope that’s okay to say, it’s not insulting to anyone… Some people like gambling and stuff. So in a situation like that, you’re very highly incentivized to size your bets kind of against that one player. He’s where most of your win rate is going to come. And in that sense, you want to never bluff. And whenever you have a good hand, you want to bet big. The issue with that is that once you do that, everyone else kind of knows what’s up, right? If it comes Ace Ten Five and you pot the flop into five people, no one’s going to be like, “oh, maybe he’s bluffing, maybe he has a balanced range, let’s call him with Ace Jack.”

Uri Peleg (12:04):

So there’s a trade-off where when you focus on the weaker players, you give the stronger players a lot of edge against you. And that’s generally what happen. So if you tell me all the players are weak, go ahead, do whatever you want, just be aware that there’s a trade-off and you want to be aware on both ends because this is information the other players at the soft game are going to be giving you. So very often… I guess Ace Ten Five isn’t the best example, but I’ve had a hand where it’s King Queen Eight two-tone, someone bets seventy-five percent pot, and I just fold King Jack straight away very, very confidently.

Mike Brady (12:42):

So I assume that was a player who might’ve been targeting one of the weaker players in the game and you know that they’re just not really messing around in that situation with a large bet.

Uri Peleg (12:50):

Yeah, and it’s not that I think he’s never bluffing, I just think his range is super duper strong. He can have a combo draw, maybe he has a nut flush draw, but once you break down and say if his range is top pair top kicker plus and nut draws, you have no business stay in the hand with one pair.

Mike Brady (13:11):

Especially multiway, right? Because again, to go back to that theoretical concept, the burden of defense is shared. It’s really not a huge deal if you’re overfolding in a multiway pot, particularly against a big bet size.

Uri Peleg (13:23):

For sure, for sure. So people are giving a lot of information away with these big bet sizes. It’s a trade-off. I’m not saying it’s the wrong thing to do. Whenever I play a soft game, it’s a dance really. There’s no one answer.

Mike Brady (13:38):

I want to quickly pause to talk about Lab 2.0 again. As you’ve been able to glean so far, Uri is incredibly knowledgeable about poker, that’s why he’s coached up some of the best players in the world. And he’s particularly knowledgeable on playing a practical game and that works really well against soft competition and that’s really what Lab 2.0 is all about. It’s not teaching you theory for the sake of theory just so you can feel smart. It’s teaching you practical strategies and giving you a clear path to improve consistently and build real skills. There are two amazing sections in Lab 2.0, level six is playing soft games and it’s all about what we’re discussing today but even in more depth. And then there’s also the Live Cash Launchpad, which is a long section that Uri put together that’s all about different live skills that will really boost your win rate. So if you’re playing one three, two five, even five ten or ten twenty live, I think this course is an absolute must get on Upswing Poker. Frankly, I’m not even sure when we’re releasing this episode of the podcast, so it might already be out, it might be coming out soon, but either way keep an eye out because it’s going to be a must grab.

Uri Peleg (14:43):

Yes. So just to explain how practical we’re trying to make this, I went ahead and covered theory of bomb pots, I covered the Seven Deuce game. I’m really trying to make it, what if someone raises 5x? What if someone raises 10x? How do you play versus limps? We’re going really into the weeds of what actually happens at the tables.

Mike Brady (15:05):

I’ve watched almost every minute of the content he’s put together. The edits are amazing. Again, I really think it’s a must get. I might be biased, but I think I’m right. Alright, let’s go ahead and move on. Uri, what is your third tip for beating up on easy competition?

Uri Peleg (15:20):

Third tip is something we kind of touched on before. I just feel it’s so, so important when you’re playing these soft games to not be egotistical about it. There’s a lot of variance in poker and by putting yourself in this mindset of “I’m the best player and therefore I have to win, if I don’t win, it means I’m not good. How can I not win in this game with these terrible players?” If you start thinking these thoughts, you’re stepping on your own foot. And in soft games really if you don’t step on your own foot, it’s very hard to be a loser long-term. But if you do step on your own foot, things can degenerate extremely quickly, because like we said, there are going to be a lot of multiway pots, start overplaying your hands, start running crazy bluffs and multiway pots against stationy players and your line is going to go down very, very quickly.

Uri Peleg (16:11):

And a way in which we actually saw this in practice, students I was working with for a while, we were playing in a game which would… again a very soft game which would often go multiway, it was online, it was extremely fast paced. And what we noticed is that whenever someone lost a very big pot, say he got an Aces versus Kings and lost, his brain would get angry and immediately he like next five minutes were danger zone. Everyone would be playing worse, playing looser. And in those soft games with the multiway pots, that’s very, very dangerous. You don’t have a theoretical background to lean on. It’s not… Multiway is the wild west of poker, so you really need to be in the, “I can’t always win. It’s fine to be down, it’s fine to lose.” Be very chill. You don’t need to do any magic to beat these games.

Mike Brady (17:07):

I think it’s important to say that this can be easier said than done. Checking your ego at the door of a poker room is not necessarily easy. I think a lot of us who are attracted to poker were previously obsessed with some sort of other competitive environment, whether it’s sports, whether it’s video games, whatever it might be, you were probably competitive at something else if you’re into poker now. And poker is a very unique game. It’s actually one of the most beautiful parts of it is that there is variance, there is luck. You are not guaranteed to win, you have earned nothing. You have to go to the table, play well and also get kind of lucky in order to win. And you could be up against the worst player in the world and it is possible they come out on top. That can be pretty tough to get used to as a competitive person. So if you are that type of competitive person, recognize that this is maybe going to be a challenge for you, but it is a critical challenge for you to overcome. It might just come with time, it might just come with repetitions, but just because you’re losing, it’s not because you’re worse, it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong. The mistake you can make is compounding the losses by trying to chase them, letting your ego get involved and then that’s where you really start to dust some money.

Uri Peleg (18:24):

Exactly. I would say poker’s very unique in the sense that you have to fold when you’re behind, you have to accept losing and actually very often losing is the best play. Tom Dwan has a quote, I think he once said, “you can’t win if you fold”. But that’s very untrue in poker because in poker you want to win the most when you’re ahead, lose the least when you’re behind. The second you try to not lose, that’s when it’s over for you. You really have to be in this frame of mind of winning is making a good decision. That’s where we want you to be in poker. And we want to give you the tools so that you can make good decisions and that you can judge your decisions. And that’s I think part of the thing with Lab 2.0 is if you make a decision, you know that you can take that decision to the community, to the coaches and ask them, was this a good decision or not? And very often in poker we actually know enough about poker that we can tell you, even though you lost, you made a good decision. And that’s not true in many areas of life. If you’re a brain surgeon and you killed your patient, I can’t tell you, even though he’s dead, you made a good decision. I think no one can tell you that, but in poker we do actually have the game to a point where we can confidently say that for almost any hand.

Mike Brady (19:46):

Alright, with all that said on zooming out, let’s jump onward. Uri, what is your fourth tip for our listeners who play soft games?

Uri Peleg (19:55):

Fourth tip, and this is a really big one, is it if you see someone doing something bad, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to win money from him. It doesn’t even mean that it’s good for you that he’s doing something bad. For example, if under the gun raises a forty percent range and you’re in the big blind, you basically just get screwed. You’re just facing raises more often. You don’t do well against the forty percent range, that’s the same range the button would raise against you. Certainly that’s bad for him, it’s bad for the entire table. And even simpler example is if someone cold calls a lot, so let’s say I open under the gun and there’s a guy right after me and he just loves cold calling every pocket pair, every suited connector, every suited Ace, he just loves playing these hands. He never folds them.

Uri Peleg (20:44):

That’s bad for him because he can get squeezed, but it’s not good for me that he’s calling those. I’m not doing great against his range. A lot of my opens are now losing. And so there are often these dynamics, first of all, I mean I guess my point with all of this is you have to… it’s a challenge, it’s a puzzle. I feel like soft games are some of the most interesting games in poker where you need to figure out how should I play in this environment? How should I play against this player and don’t be, “oh he’s bad so I’m going to win money”. And this is before I was saying don’t try too hard, don’t force it. But you do want to have a coherent strategy that fits the people you’re playing against. Just because someone limps, just because someone leads out without initiative, what’s known as a donk bet, that’s not enough for you to make money. You have to actively know how to adjust and what to do about it. And that’s how poker works as a game.

Mike Brady (21:45):

The key takeaway here is an opponent can be making a mistake that costs them money, but the nature of the mistake actually can cost you money as well. And that’s why you have to have an eagle eye for these types of mistakes and be constantly thinking, how can I adjust to exploit this player? Now, make sure you have reliable evidence. Don’t just cast dispersions and assume that you know what the opponent’s doing. Make sure the evidence is good before you’re making these massive adjustments. But you have to be making these adjustments, otherwise you’re just leaving so much money on the table. Especially if you’re playing low stakes games where people just aren’t paying attention and they’re making mistakes all over the place.

Uri Peleg (22:25):

And one thing that we do in Lab 2.0, Mike, I think that’s different from a lot of poker theory, is we don’t look at poker as black and white. So if we say that this is your opening range, but really there’s a bunch of the opening range that’s making very little money and a bunch of the folding range that’s losing very little money, I encourage people to freely play around the edges and be like, sure you can never fold Ace King suited, you can never not open Jacks. But there are a bunch of hands where even though in theory it’s an always open, you don’t need very much evidence to adjust with those hands. You can do it very, very freely.

Mike Brady (23:04):

Great point. Super critical. Alright, moving on to your final tip. Tip number five, the one that you say is the very most important for soft games, take it away.

Uri Peleg (23:13):

I can’t believe I almost forgot this one, but you often get asked by people who don’t understand poker, and I’m sure everyone’s had this, they approach you and they say, “look, what if I just made random decisions? You’d never know what I have. I’m basically clicking buttons, I’m betting any amount with any hand. I’m completely unpredictable. How would you beat me?” And people who don’t understand poker don’t understand the answer. And the reason I’m going to answer this is because soft games are a variation of this. So we look at the extreme to draw the rule and the rule is actually going to apply. So against a guy who’s playing completely randomly, the way you would beat that guy in a simplistic sense would be, and I think this is a very convincing answer to say, rather than play randomly, I’ll just according to my hand strength, that’s the amount of money I’m willing to put in. Match those two strategies against each other and its clear mine is going to win against the random guys.

Uri Peleg (24:14):

So I think that’s kind of level one. But the next level to take it is to say if your opponent’s kind of random and you have a top ten percent hand, why not put in more money than the hand is supposed to? Why kind of limit it? Because he is being completely random and this is where this tip falls and what it says is overplay the top of your range. So generally soft games, you have a hand like an overpair or top pair top kicker, and you bet and the guy raises, don’t start telling yourself stories. No one bluffs here. “He has me beat or he is bluffing”. Don’t start going into these leveling wars with yourself. It’s a soft game. You have a good hand, close your eyes, that goes in and if you’re beat, you’re beat.

Mike Brady (25:00):

It makes sense because the reason you get a little cagey with a say top nine percent hand in a situation sometimes is because you need to have a holistic robust range. You can’t just always be betting when you have good hands and then checking with the medium hands because that makes you really predictable. It makes your strategy really easy to counter. But the hypothetical that Uri is throwing out here, that really isn’t a hypothetical in a lot of cases this happens in one three and two five and even five ten games, you’ll be up against someone who… they might as well be playing random, they’re just feeling their way out. You oftentimes can’t even pin them down. They might play a certain hand one way one hour and then an hour later they get the exact same hand in the exact same situation and they choose to do something differently and it’s because they’re playing by feel.

Mike Brady (25:47):

And that’s pretty close to random. And when that’s happening you can just take advantage of it. You don’t need to be cagey, you don’t need to have this holistic strategy where you’re, “oh, this board’s bad for me and I’m out of position, I’m just going to check everything”. No, if you have the overpair, bet, win money. Don’t you want money? That’s the whole point of this. So you just start putting in money right then and there and you don’t have to worry about the rest of your strategy maybe being a little out of whack because in practice it just doesn’t matter.

Uri Peleg (26:14):

Yeah, and I think a great example for this is… So we talked about multiway pots. Imagine you bet top pair top kicker multiway and someone puts in a raise. If this were a tough online game, I’d be terrified because top pair top kicker is close to the bottom of my value betting range five-way. You know you don’t bet very wide. Someone raised, he raised with three people left to act and I’m like, “wait, where does my hand fall? Is he capable of bluffing here?” And it’s very easy to be like, “I’m going to make a conservative fold.” But in a soft game, the guy who’s raising has no concept of everything I just described. He’s like, “I look at my cards, I look at the board, I haven’t gotten a hand in an hour, I have a top pair, there’s a flush draw, let’s raise”. It can be as simple as that. So you really need to not get into your own head in these kind of situations. Now I’m not saying that… There are extremes to it. Flush came in, maybe you can fold an overpair. I’m not saying be crazy, but don’t make the kind of folds that you’re used to in a regular game.

Mike Brady (27:19):

Yeah, I mean in that tough online game, your top pair top kicker is instantly reduced to a bluff catcher if you’re playing against players who understand the situation, because they’re not going to be raising with any hands that are not a bluff or a better hand, but in the soft games you very well could be up against a player who has some medium pocket pair that’s even under the top pair and they’re like, “oh, I want protection against the flush draw, or I want protection against Ace King. I put ’em on Ace King”. Classic thing that people do in soft games.

Uri Peleg (27:46):

And I think also, like you’re saying, it’s not like this is a spot no one bluffs, they don’t know that. They don’t recognize all the nuances of this spot. Maybe they’re bluffing now. You need to kind of be more “top of my range, money goes in”, end of story. No other thing to it. And it’s so sad when you see a guy bet top pair top kicker, another guy goes all-in, a third guy goes all-in, he makes the hero fold and they both have whatever random stuff they’re going crazy with.

Mike Brady (28:21):

Yeah, it’s definitely happened to me a time or two at the live tables. No doubt about it. I know you’ve got a bonus tip prepared as well Uri, what is it?

Uri Peleg (28:29):

This is actually inspired by a friend of mine. He’s been playing games with me even before poker and he played poker professionally for a year and he went to a live game and he told me “all these guys are limping all the time, why can’t I limp?” And he looks at Queen Five suited on the hijack or whatever and he’s like, “these guys are limping like crazy. They’re winning in this game, why can’t I limp? Why wouldn’t this work for me?” And there are variations of this. One of the variations is you’ll see a guy who’s playing every hand and getting in pots and three betting all the time and four betting all the time. You’ll often see a guy like that every night at a live game. So one thing is there’s a ton of variance and variance is distributed like a bell curve.

Uri Peleg (29:15):

So usually at the table there’s one guy who’s just going to get the lion’s share of good cards, he’s going to be the most active. It’s not because he is doing anything crazy like the guy who’s three beting all the time. Very likely if you see someone three bet three times in seven hands, it’s much more likely he has something the third time than that he doesn’t. He’s well aware that he’s been very active. This just happens. This is how it works and it plays tricks on people’s minds. But I guess my answer… maybe I’ll ask you, Mike, why can’t you limp Queen Five suited if everyone else is limping in?

Mike Brady (29:52):

It isn’t really the hand I want to be in there with in a multiway pot. I would tell your friend, “you absolutely can do some limping, but it’s got to be with the right stuff”, right? Pocket fours? Hell yeah, jump in there. Ace Seven suited? Absolutely. Those are hands that don’t really love raising over a bunch of limpers who are probably just going to call and you’re going to have to play a bloated pot, hopefully in position, but either way a bloated pot multiway with a hand that doesn’t flop that well. Meanwhile the other option, throw in the three dollars or the five dollars or whatever the big blind is, go to a six, seven-way pot and if you flop Gin, get ready to count some stacks, you’re probably going to win a bunch of money.

Uri Peleg (30:29):

Yeah, and… The fact that everyone’s making a mistake is good for you as long as you don’t make it. The second you start making the same mistake as everyone else it’s tougher to find your edge. And also when you limp Queen Five suited at a full ring table, there are just eight other people with hands. So statistically speaking, some people are going to have good hands and you’re going to get crushed. And that’s one of the issues that even if everyone’s terrible and everyone’s limping, there is no way around the fact that there’s a certain number of people at the table left to act. Statistically speaking, they’re going to have a good hand too much of the time to justify what you’re doing.

Mike Brady (31:06):

I feel like this goes back to our tip about checking your ego at the door as well, because when you see things happening at the table, you almost feel left out. You’re like, “man, they’re doing it, they’re having fun. Why can’t I, why do I have to retreat into my shell and fold the Queen Five suited?” But it’s not about that. It shouldn’t be an ego thing. It’s easy for egos to get involved in competitive things. But in an ideal world, let’s use kind of a more obvious example where your ego might be bruised. Let’s say you’re playing basketball, you go up for a shot and a guy who’s two feet taller than you jumps up and absolutely swats the ball right out of bounds. You feel like a little bit of a fool. In an ideal world, you’re not even feeling ego about that, you’re playing a game that’s part of the game. In poker, I mean it’s even less in your face than that, no one’s swatting a ball out of your hands, you’re just placing two cards a little bit further away from you. It’s not a very big deal, you just got to do it.

Uri Peleg (32:03):

Yeah, and just to talk about fun, one of the approaches in the live section of Lab 2.0 is that I do want people to have fun, so what I do is I try to… this is part of the reason we talk about the edges of profitability. So I’m very in favor of understanding if a play is losing you money, how much money is it losing you? And maybe it’s okay, you want a blend and you want to have fun, you want to have a good image. So understand where the border lies of what’s losing you a little bit of money and it’s fine. And what’s losing you a lot of money.

Mike Brady (32:38):

And maybe losing a little bit of money definitely preferred to losing a lot.

Uri Peleg (32:41):

I mean, depends. Depends what you’re trying to achieve. But yeah, generally speaking, I think when we play poker we want to have fun, but really we’re playing poker to make money. That’s the goal. And anyone who’s lost money in poker knows that poker is not fun when you’re losing money. So it’s very, very centered around that. That’s really where we want to get. Of course, you want to have as much fun, you want to participate, you want to get invited back to the game. Those are all things we take into account, but bottom line is if it’s not a good play, you need to be very careful making it.

Mike Brady (33:20):

I think that’s a great place to call it. Thank you very much for joining us in this episode of Upswing Level Up. If you enjoyed it, hit the like button, rate the podcast five star, subscribe, follow… Any of those positive things you can do we appreciate it. It helps us keep this podcast going and I’ll see you in the next one. Uri is going to be back and we’ll see you then.