Sunday, July 26, 2009

Profiles of Poker Players : The Bookworm

By Kallikrates Sabas

This is a progressive series about the various personages that you will come across while playing poker.

Enemy or Friend?

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.

Selectivity and Aggression

The bookworm is usually tight during pre flop. But their game play crushes during the post flop. This is because they have read a lot of books which causes all those ideas to rumble into their heads. You see, the authors of those books have justified all their mistakes in poker and write it out. As a result the bookworm will stack all those ideas and will cause his play to be too loose and too aggressive during post-flop.

And because the only aspect of poker wherein the general poker players agree would be the strength of your starting hand, then its the only part that the bookworm truly 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.

How To Predictable They Are

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.

But if that won't work, you can just play aggressive. Don't let them scare you, make it the other way around. Make sure that you will put up with their game play and show them that you are not afraid of them.

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