September 3, 2025 • 33 mins
Want a sneak peek at the Lab 2.0, coming to Upswing Poker on September 8th? Register here for early access.
The world's best poker coach, Uri Peleg, shares his five best strategies for dominating soft games. Alongside co-host Mike Brady, he breaks down how to exploit common mistakes without falling into the same traps. Whether you play live or low-stakes online, these tips will help you maximize value and boost your win rate.
View the written version of this episode here.
00:00 Tip #1: Categorize Players
08:46 Tip #2: Adjust for Multiway Pots
15:20 Tip #3: Check Your Ego
19:55 Tip #4: Bad Play Doesn’t Always Benefit You
23:04 Tip #5: Overplay the Top of Your Range
28:29 Bonus Tip: Don’t Copy Bad Habits
In this episode of the Upswing Poker Level-Up, host Mike Brady is joined by world-class poker coach Uri Peleg to share five powerful tips for dominating soft games, whether live or low-stakes online. Uri, who has coached some of the best players in the game and won millions himself, opens by stressing the importance of categorizing opponents to quickly identify calling stations, over-aggressors, and passive players. From there, the discussion moves to one of the most common features of soft games—multiway pots—and how to adapt by tightening up, folding more marginal hands, and resisting the urge to chase every pot.
Uri’s next tip tip focuses on controlling ego and avoiding tilt. In soft games, variance can mask skill in the short term, and chasing losses often leads to disastrous results. He emphasizes patience, discipline, and judging your play based on decision quality rather than short-term outcomes. Next up he flips a common assumption on its head—just because an opponent makes a bad play doesn’t mean it benefits you. Some mistakes, like over-raising or over-calling, can actually hurt your win rate if you don’t adjust strategically.
The final and most important tip is to overplay the top of your range against unpredictable opponents. In soft games, players often act randomly or inconsistently, so hands like overpairs or top pair/top kicker should be pushed aggressively for maximum value instead of overthinking and making cautious folds.
As a bonus, Uri warns against copying the bad habits of weaker players. Just because others limp or splash around with subpar hands doesn’t mean you should follow suit—it erodes your edge and invites unnecessary losses.
Throughout the episode, Uri ties these lessons to the upcoming Lab 2.0 training platform (available soon), which focuses on practical, real-world strategies for crushing live and soft games. Whether you’re a seasoned player looking to refine your approach or a low-stakes grinder aiming to boost your win rate, these insights will help you exploit weaker competition while avoiding common pitfalls.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike (00:00):
Ready to level up your poker skills and crush soft games?
I'm Mike Brady and I've gotthe world's best poker coach,
Uri Peleg on the line with me.
He's about to reveal his top five tipsfor destroying weak competition at the
poker table and he saved his verybest tip for the number five slot.
If you play live or lowstakes online games,
(00:20):
get ready for some golden advicethat will skyrocket your win rate.
Welcome aboard Uri.
Uri (00:25):
Hey Mike. Happy to be here.
Mike:
I wasn't just sucking up to Uri when Icalled him the world's best poker coach.
Not only has he won millionson the felt himself,
he's coached some of the best players inthe world on their way to reaching the
top of the poker food chain. By theway, if you're serious about poker,
Uri has been working on somethingthat will be amazing for you.
It's called Lab 2.0.
(00:46):
It's a massively upgraded version of theUpswing Lab that provides a clear path
to poker mastery. We'll fill you inmore about that throughout this episode.
Let's get into the tips, Uri. What isyour first tip for crushing soft games?
Tip number one is to categorize players.
And the reason I say that this is tipnumber one is I feel like it gets people
(01:10):
into the correct mindset. Whenyou're in a very soft game,
you really want to think of yourself as,
"I'm the only one whoknows what he's doing.
Each of these other guysis doing something wrong,
and it's up to me to figure out who'sa calling station, who bluffs too much,
who bluffs too little,
who overplays their hands..."all of these types of things.
(01:32):
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." Thisis to get you into that frame of mind
of "it's a soft game.
(01:54):
These guys are not very savvy players.
They're leaning in one direction in avery clear way." So figure out which way,
and that's your road to victory there.
Mike (02:03):
It's so funny you said road to victory there.
That was truly a coincidence.
Darren Elias in his Road toVictory course on Upswing Poker,
the main structure of the courseis around the five player types.
He has five different player types thathe breaks down for when you're playing
in large field tournaments.
Large field tournaments are reallyinteresting because the different player
(02:24):
types you're going to find yourselffacing really run the gamut.
You might be playing against some of theworld's best players and you also might
be playing against someone who satellitedin and is not particularly serious.
And I'm talking about tournaments likethe World Poker Tour World Championship,
things like that where it's a big buy-in,but you get a wide range of players.
(02:45):
So Darren breaks down thesecategories as aggressive professional,
tight professional, loosepassive recreational and so on.
It's kind of wide categories like thatand then he categorizes more deeply
within those with regard totheir specific tendencies.
Since we're talking about soft games here,
I think the categorization method is alittle different and I want to clarify
(03:09):
that with you.
Are you categorizing playersin wide buckets that are
not super descriptive or are you gettingreally into the weeds with regard to
exactly how they're playing? For example,
this guy is too loose on theflop or this guy seems to
have certain bet sizing tells.
How exactly are you approachingthat categorization?
Uri (03:32):
Great question, first of all.
Before I even answer the question,
I want to point out how important tothe skill this is both in tournaments as
you mentioned.
And if you think about a tournament playerwho's perfect at playing against the
best in the world, but who doesn'ttake advantage of soft fields,
he's not necessarily goingto have the best results.
(03:54):
So taking advantage ofsoft games is a real skill.
It's a real muscle you need to buildup in poker. It's not like you can say,
"oh, I want to battle a realstakes, so this is not important.
I need to practice GTO". This isreally, really important all the way up.
And even at the higheststakes of cash games,
you see a big deviation in how well peopleare able to adjust versus the weaker
(04:16):
players. There's often a weaker playerat the table. Even if he's a pro,
there's a weaker pro,
and being able to get the max valuefrom him is extremely important.
Now to your question about whattype of categories there are,
it's very broad and with meit leans a lot on experience.
So often I'll see someone make,
(04:40):
let's say,
call out of position and check down abusted draw and never try to bluff for the
pot. So I'd categorizethis guy as passive.
He can be loose passive or tight passive,
but he's in a frame of mind where hedoesn't fight for small pots. By the way,
this goes only for small pots.Everyone fights for the big ones.
(05:01):
That's an importantdistinction to make. Similarly,
I look for bet sizing tells, I look fortendencies 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. Butin soft games they often will show you.
I actually back in the day had a hand...back before overbetting was common
(05:25):
I overbet the turn against aplayer and he folded a set face up.
And if someone showsyou something like that,
you kind of know the directionthat they're leaning. But yeah,
if I had to, sorry forthe long-winded answer,
but if I had to give yousimple things to look for,
I'd say look for is hepassive or aggressive?
(05:52):
And sometimes he'll be passive with acertain bet size and aggressive with a
different bet size,
or passive with a certain hand strengthand aggressive with a different hand
strength. So you can always flesh it out,
but at the base level there'spassive or aggressive.
You look for loose or tight andyou look for whether the guy
likes calling down, which is very evident.
(06:14):
The guys who do show down crazy handsand they often lose their money very,
very quickly.
Mike (06:21):
Oftentimes you don't even need to see them show down.
You might be there for an orbitor two and you'll be like, "man,
this guy sure seems to reach the riverquite often." And then now you kind of
know, I mean you don't know for sure,
maybe he was just gettinga good run of cards,
but it's pretty likely that the guysin there may be a little bit too loose.
You can also extrapolatea lot, right? For example,
you see this all the time at lowstakes. Maybe it's a limped pot.
(06:44):
Player limps in early position ends upshowing down Ace Queen, Ace Queen suited,
Ace Jack suited... A quitepremium top seven percent hand.
If that player ever puts in chipspreflop, if they're ever three betting me,
if they're ever raising to a normal size,
I am going to respond incredibly tightcompared to how I normally would.
(07:05):
I mean hands that would be an auto callagainst their three bet are hitting the
muck in my mind.
Uri (07:10):
An interesting example, because in my mind if I saw someone limp a premium,
I wouldn't be sure what he's threebetting with. You know what I mean?
Because kind of statistically,
if you limp top three percent,
like three to ten percent ofhand strenght in terms of,
(07:31):
you limp Ace Jack suited, Ace Queensuited, King Queen suited, pocket Jacks,
you limp all thosehands. Now you three bet,
there's a two percentchance it's a premium.
And then there's absolutely everythingelse where maybe the guy's just getting
fed up and he's like, "Ihave this image". People...
I feel like everyone has theirinternal timer of when they get fed up
(07:53):
because them being in it doesn't work.
So you need to look atwho's up and who's down.
People often shift gearsand there's also a very,
very common player type which is importantto mention in terms of passive versus
aggressive and that'sthe gambler player type.
This is a very common playerin soft games and he's not
(08:15):
exactly passive, nor ishe exactly aggressive.
It's more like if you wantedto visualize this player,
imagine someone playing a poker slotmachine. He barely understands the rules,
but if the cards in his handmatch the cards on the board,
he puts more money in.
And this kind of player canoften seem very aggressive,
but he's only aggressivewhen he hits the board.
(08:37):
Whenever he misses it's check and fold.
So you can't be calling him downwith Ace high or something like that.
You need to be very, veryaware of what's going on.
Mike (08:46):
Great stuff there. Let's go ahead and move on Uri.
What is your second tipfor crushing soft games?
Uri:
soft games tend to have a ton of multiwaypots and there is a deceptive thing
because if you think about it... Imagineyou're invited to a really soft game,
you see no one knows what they're doing.
Every pot goes five-way to the flop andyou feel like you're supposed to win.
(09:07):
You feel like "I'm thebest player at the table,
I should be winning money."But in five-way pots,
each player is supposed to winroughly twenty percent of the time
and variants can easily make thatyou're losing ten hands in a row.
And so it's very, very important torecognize this and to get used to it.
If you're used to regular gameswhere pots are heads up a lot,
(09:31):
you often win half the pots you play.
So playing a soft gamemight feel very frustrating.
It's like "I have to fold again, I haveto fold again, I have to give up again".
So you need to get usedto playing multiway.
You need to get used to the fact you'reoften going to fold a top pair or a
middle pair or a bad flushdraw, sometimes even to one bet.
(09:53):
Don't get frustrated by it, don't feellike you're doing something wrong.
Basically, tighten up multiway.
There's really common advice about multiway pots that goes around and it's
theoretically sound,
but I'm curious what your take is onit when you're playing against players
against whom you don't haveto be theoretically sound,
and I'm specifically thinking about betsizing and more specifically small bet
(10:17):
sizing. Theoretically, whenyou're in a multiway pot,
you're going to be using alot of small sizes, right?
If it's a situation where maybe therewas 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 ofposition against some of the players,
you're going to be usinga fairly small bet size.
And the idea there to get wonky for asecond is that the burden of defense among
(10:42):
the other players is shared among them.
So they all have to play tighter eventhough it's a relatively small bet.
But if you're playing against people insoft games, maybe that's not necessary.
Maybe you can use some littletricks with your bet sizing,
jack it up a little bit when you havecertain types of hands maybe on certain
types of boards. What's your take on that?
Uri (11:05):
Again, great question. I think one of the things that often happens...
Imagine you're in a four-waypot 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 aroundhim. And I hope that's okay to say,
it's not insulting to anyone...Some people like gambling and stuff.
(11:29):
So in a situation like that,
you're very highly incentivizedto size your bets kind of
against that one player. He's wheremost of your win rate is going to come.
And in that sense, you want to neverbluff. And whenever you have a good hand,
you want to bet big. The issuewith that is that once you do that,
everyone else kind ofknows what's up, right?
(11:51):
If it comes Ace Ten Fiveand you pot the flop into
five people, no one's going to belike, "oh, maybe he's bluffing,
maybe he has a balanced range,let's call him with Ace Jack."
So there's a trade-off where whenyou focus on the weaker players,
you give the stronger playersa lot of edge against you.
(12:12):
And that's generally what happen. So ifyou tell me all the players are weak,
go ahead, do whatever you want,
just be aware that there's a trade-offand you want to be aware on both ends
because this is information the otherplayers at the soft game are going to be
giving you. So very often...
I guess Ace Ten Fiveisn't the best example,
but I've had a hand where it'sKing Queen Eight two-tone,
(12:36):
someone bets seventy-five percent pot,
and I just fold King Jack straightaway very, very confidently.
Mike:
So I assume that was a player whomight've been targeting one of the weaker
players in the game and you know thatthey're just not really messing around in
that situation with a large bet.
Yeah, and it's not that I think he's never bluffing,
I just think his rangeis super duper strong.
(12:56):
He can have a combo draw,maybe he has a nut flush draw,
but once you break down and sayif his range is top pair top
kicker plus and nut draws,
you have no business stayin the hand with one pair.
Mike (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 ifyou're overfolding in a multiway pot,
particularly against a big bet size.
Uri (13:23):
For sure, for sure.
So people are giving a lot of informationaway with these big bet sizes.
It's a trade-off. I'm not sayingit's the wrong thing to do.
Whenever I play a soft game, it's adance really. There's no one answer.
I want to quickly pause totalk about Lab 2.0 again.
As you've been able to glean so far,
(13:43):
Uri is incrediblyknowledgeable about poker,
that's why he's coached up someof the best players in the world.
And he's particularly knowledgeable onplaying a practical game and that works
really well against soft competitionand that's really what Lab 2.0 is all
about.
It's not teaching you theory for the sakeof theory just so you can feel smart.
It's teaching you practical strategiesand giving you a clear path to improve
(14:05):
consistently and build real skills.
There are two amazing sections in Lab 2.0,
level six is playing soft games and it'sall about what we're discussing today
but even in more depth. And thenthere's also the Live Cash Launchpad,
which is a long section that Uri puttogether that's all about different live
skills that will really boost your winrate. So if you're playing one three,
(14:27):
two five, even fiveten or ten twenty live,
I think this course is an absolutemust get on Upswing Poker. Frankly,
I'm not even sure when we'rereleasing this episode of the podcast,
so it might already be out,it might be coming out soon,
but either way keep an eye outbecause it's going to be a must grab.
Yes.
So just to explain how practicalwe're trying to make this,
(14:49):
I went ahead and coveredtheory 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 ofwhat actually happens at the tables.
Mike (15:05):
I've watched almost every minute of the content he's put together.
The edits are amazing. Again, I reallythink 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 forbeating up on easy competition?
Uri (15:20):
Third tip is something we kind of touched on before. I just feel it's so,
so important when you're playingthese soft games to not be egotistical
about it.
There's a lot of variance in pokerand by putting yourself in this
mindset of "I'm the best player andtherefore I have to win, if I don't win,
it means I'm not good.
How can I not win in this game withthese terrible players?" If you start
(15:44):
thinking these thoughts, you'restepping on your own foot.
And in soft games really if youdon'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 aregoing to be a lot of multiway pots,
start overplaying your hands,
start running crazy bluffs and multiwaypots against stationy players and
(16:09):
your line is going to godown very, very quickly.
And a way in which weactually 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 wouldoften go multiway, it was online,
it was extremely fast paced.
And what we noticed is that wheneversomeone lost a very big pot,
(16:32):
say he got an Aces versus Kings and lost,
his brain would get angryand immediately he like next
five minutes were danger zone. Everyonewould be playing worse, playing looser.
And in those soft games withthe multiway pots, that's very,
very dangerous. You don'thave a theoretical background to lean on. It's not...
(16:54):
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 anymagic to beat these games.
Mike (17:07):
I think it's important to say that this can be easier said than
done. Checking your ego at the door ofa poker room is not necessarily easy.
I think a lot of us who are attractedto poker were previously obsessed
with some sort of other competitiveenvironment, whether it's sports,
whether it's video games,whatever it might be,
(17:28):
you were probably competitive atsomething else if you're into poker now.
And poker is a very unique game.
It's actually one of the most beautifulparts of it is that there is variance,
there is luck. You are not guaranteedto win, you have earned nothing.
You have to go to the table,
play well and also get kindof lucky in order to win.
And you could be up against the worstplayer in the world and it is possible
(17:51):
they come out on top.
That can be pretty tough to getused to as a competitive person.
So if you are that typeof competitive person,
recognize that this is maybegoing to be a challenge for you,
but it is a criticalchallenge for you to overcome.
It might just come with time, itmight just come with repetitions,
but just because you're losing,it's not because you're worse,
(18:12):
it's not because you'redoing anything wrong.
The mistake you can makeis compounding the losses
by trying to chase them,
letting your ego get involved and thenthat's where you really start to dust
some money.
Uri (18:24):
Exactly.
I would say poker's very unique in thesense that you have to fold when you're
behind,
you have to accept losing andactually 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 pokerbecause in poker you want to
(18:47):
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 frameof mind of winning is making a good
decision. That's where wewant you to be in poker.
And we want to give you thetools so that you can make good
decisions and that youcan judge your decisions.
(19:09):
And that's I think part of the thingwith Lab 2.0 is if you make a decision,
you know that you can takethat decision to the community,
to the coaches and ask them,was this a good decision or not?
And very often in poker we actuallyknow enough about poker that we
can tell you, even though youlost, you made a good decision.
(19:29):
And that's not true in many areas of life.
If you're a brain surgeon and youkilled 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 thegame to a point where we can confidently
say that for almost any hand.
Mike (19:46):
Alright, with all that said on zooming out, let's jump onward. Uri,
what is your fourth tip for ourlisteners who play soft games?
Uri (19:55):
Fourth tip, and this is a really big one,
is it if you see someonedoing something bad,
that doesn't mean that you'regoing to win money from him.
It doesn't even mean that it's goodfor you that he's doing something bad.
For example,
if under the gun raises a forty percentrange and you're in the big blind,
you basically just get screwed.You're just facing raises more often.
(20:17):
You don't do well againstthe forty percent range,
that's the same range thebutton would raise against you.
Certainly that's bad for him,it's bad for the entire table.
And even simpler example isif someone cold calls a lot,
so let's say I open under the gun andthere's a guy right after me and he just
loves cold calling every pocket pair,every suited connector, every suited Ace,
(20:41):
he just loves playing thesehands. He never folds them.
That's bad for him becausehe can get squeezed,
but it's not good for methat 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 thesedynamics, first of all,
I mean I guess my point withall of this is you have to...
(21:04):
it's a challenge, it's a puzzle.
I feel like soft games are some of themost interesting games in poker where you
need to figure out how shouldI play in this environment?
How should I play againstthis player and don't be,
"oh he's bad so I'm going to win money".
And this is before I was sayingdon't try too hard, don't force it.
But you do want to have acoherent strategy that fits the people you're playing
(21:26):
against. Just because someone limps,
just because someone leadsout without initiative,
what's known as a donk bet, that'snot enough for you to make money.
You have to actively know how toadjust and what to do about it.
And that's how poker works as a game.
Mike:
The key takeaway here is an opponentcan be making a mistake that costs them
(21:50):
money,
but the nature of the mistakeactually can cost you money as
well.
And that's why you have to have an eagleeye for these types of mistakes and be
constantly thinking, how can Iadjust to exploit this player? Now,
make sure you have reliable evidence.
Don't just cast dispersions and assumethat you know what the opponent's doing.
(22:10):
Make sure the evidence is good beforeyou're making these massive adjustments.
But you have to bemaking these adjustments,
otherwise you're just leavingso much money on the table.
Especially if you're playing low stakesgames where people just aren't paying
attention and they're makingmistakes all over the place.
And one thing that we do in Lab 2.0, Mike,
I think that's differentfrom a lot of poker theory,
(22:31):
is we don't look atpoker as black and white.
So if we say that thisis your opening range,
but really there's a bunch of the openingrange that's making very little money
and a bunch of the folding rangethat's losing very little money,
I encourage people to freely playaround the edges and be like,
sure you can never fold Ace Kingsuited, you can never not open Jacks.
(22:54):
But there are a bunch of hands where eventhough in theory it's an always open,
you don't need very much evidenceto adjust with those hands.
You can do it very, very freely.
Great point. Super critical. Alright, moving on to your final tip.
Tip number five, the one that you say isthe very most important for soft games,
take it away.
I can't believe I almost forgot this one, but
(23:18):
you often get asked by peoplewho 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'mbetting any amount with any hand.
I'm completely unpredictable.
How would you beat me?" And people whodon't understand poker don't understand
(23:40):
the answer.
And the reason I'm going to answer thisis because soft games are a variation of
this.
So we look at the extreme to draw therule and the rule is actually going to
apply. So against a guy who'splaying completely randomly,
the way you would beat that guyin a simplistic sense would be,
and I think this is a very convincinganswer to say, rather than play randomly,
(24:04):
I'll just according to my hand strength,
that's the amount of moneyI'm willing to put in.
Match those two strategies against eachother and its clear mine is going to win
against the random guys. So Ithink that's kind of level one.
But the next level to take it is to sayif your opponent's kind of random and
you have a top ten percent hand,
(24:25):
why not put in more money than the handis supposed to? Why kind of limit it?
Because he is being completely randomand this is where this tip falls and what
it says is overplay the top of yourrange. So generally soft games,
you have a hand like anoverpair or top pair top kicker,
and you bet and the guy raises,
(24:45):
don't start telling yourselfstories. No one bluffs here.
"He has me beat or he is bluffing".
Don't start going into these levelingwars with yourself. It's a soft game.
You have a good hand, close youreyes, that goes in and if you're beat,
you're beat.
Mike (25:00):
It makes sense because the reason you get a little cagey with a say
top nine percent hand in a situationsometimes is because you need to have
a holistic robust range.
You can't just always be betting when youhave good hands and then checking with
the medium hands because thatmakes you really predictable.
It makes your strategyreally easy to counter.
(25:21):
But the hypothetical thatUri is throwing out here,
that really isn't a hypothetical in a lotof 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 wayone hour and then an hour later they get
(25:41):
the exact same hand in the exact samesituation and they choose to do something
differently and it's becausethey're playing by feel.
And that's pretty close to random.
And when that's happening youcan just take advantage of it.
You don't need to be cagey,
you don't need to have thisholistic strategy where you're, "oh,
this board's bad for meand I'm out of position,
I'm just going to check everything".No, if you have the overpair, bet,
(26:02):
win money. Don't you want money?That's the whole point of this.
So you just start putting in money rightthen and there and you don't have to
worry about the rest of your strategymaybe being a little out of whack because
in practice it just doesn't matter.
Uri (26:14):
Yeah, and I think a great example for this is...
So we talked about multiway pots.
Imagine you bet top pair top kickermultiway and someone puts in a raise.
If this were a tough online game,
I'd be terrified because top pair topkicker is close to the bottom of my value
betting range five-way. You know youdon't bet very wide. Someone raised,
(26:37):
he raised with three peopleleft 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 conservativefold." But in a soft game,
the guy who's raising has no conceptof everything I just described.
He's like, "I look at mycards, I look at the board,
(26:57):
I haven't gotten a hand in an hour, Ihave 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 yourown head in these kind of situations.
Now I'm not saying that... Thereare 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 thatyou're used to in a regular game.
Mike (27:19):
Yeah, I mean in that tough online game,
your top pair top kicker is instantlyreduced to a bluff catcher if you're
playing against players whounderstand the situation,
because they're not going to be raisingwith any hands that are not a bluff or a
better hand,
but in the soft games you very wellcould be up against a player who has some
medium pocket pair that's even underthe top pair and they're like, "oh,
(27:40):
I want protection against the flush draw,or I want protection against Ace King.
I put 'em on Ace King". Classicthing that people do in soft games.
Uri (27:46):
And I think also, like you're saying,
it's not like this is a spot noone bluffs, they don't know that.
They don't recognize all the nuances ofthis spot. Maybe they're bluffing now.
You need to kind of be more "topof my range, money goes in",
end of story. No other thing to it.
And it's so sad when yousee a guy bet top pair
(28:11):
top kicker, another guy goesall-in, a third guy goes all-in,
he makes the hero fold and they bothhave whatever random stuff they're
going crazy with.
Mike (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 gota bonus tip prepared as well Uri,
what is it?
Uri (28:29):
This is actually inspired by a friend of mine.
He's been playing games with me evenbefore poker and he played poker
professionally for a year and hewent 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 QueenFive suited on the hijack or whatever
(28:50):
and he's like, "these guys are limpinglike 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 aguy who's playing every hand and getting
in pots and three betting all thetime and four betting all the time.
You'll often see a guy likethat every night at a live game.
(29:11):
So one thing is there's a ton of varianceand variance is distributed like a
bell curve.
So usually at the table there's one guywho's just going to get the lion's share
of good cards, he's goingto be the most active.
It's not because he is doing anythingcrazy like the guy who's three beting all
the time.
Very likely if you see someone threebet three times in seven hands,
(29:32):
it's much more likely he has somethingthe third time than that he doesn't.
He's well aware that he's beenvery active. This just happens.
This is how it works and it playstricks on people's minds. But
I guess my answer...maybe I'll ask you, Mike,
why can't you limp Queen Five suitedif everyone else is limping in?
Mike (29:52):
It isn't really the hand I want to be in there with in a multiway pot.
I would tell your friend, "youabsolutely can do some limping,
but it's got to be with the rightstuff", right? Pocket fours? Hell yeah,
jump in there. Ace Sevensuited? Absolutely.
Those are hands that don't really loveraising over a bunch of limpers who are
probably just going to call and you'regoing to have to play a bloated pot,
hopefully in position,
(30:13):
but either way a bloated pot multiwaywith a hand that doesn't flop that well.
Meanwhile the other option,
throw in the three dollars or the fivedollars or whatever the big blind is,
go to a six, seven-way pot and if youflop Gin, get ready to count some stacks,
you're probably goingto win a bunch of money.
Uri (30:29):
Yeah, and...
The fact that everyone's making a mistakeis good for you as long as you don't
make it.
The second you start making the samemistake as everyone else it's tougher to
find your edge. And also when you limpQueen Five suited at a full ring table,
there are just eight other peoplewith hands. So statistically speaking,
some people are going to have goodhands and you're going to get crushed.
(30:50):
And that's one of the issues that evenif everyone's terrible and everyone's
limping,
there is no way around the fact thatthere's a certain number of people at the
table left to act. Statistically speaking,
they're going to have a good hand toomuch of the time to justify what you're
doing.
Mike:
I feel like this goes back to our tipabout checking your ego at the door as
(31:10):
well, because when you seethings happening at the table,
you almost feel left out. You'relike, "man, they're doing it,
they're having fun. Why can't I, why
do I have to retreat into my shell andfold 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 incompetitive things. But in an ideal world,
(31:32):
let's use kind of a more obviousexample where your ego might be bruised.
Let's say you're playing basketball,
you go up for a shot and a guy who'stwo feet taller than you jumps up and
absolutely swats theball right out of bounds.
You feel like a little bitof a fool. In an ideal world,
you're not even feeling ego about that,
you're playing a game that'spart of the game. In poker,
I mean it's even lessin your face than that,
(31:54):
no one's swatting aball out of your hands,
you're just placing two cards alittle bit further away from you.
It's not a very big deal,you just got to do it.
Yeah, and just to talk about fun,
one of the approaches in the livesection of Lab 2.0 is that I do
want people to have fun,so what I do is I try to...
(32:14):
this is part of the reason we talkabout the edges of profitability.
So I'm very in favor of understandingif a play is losing you money,
how much money is it losingyou? And maybe it's okay,
you want a blend and you want to havefun, you want to have a good image.
So understand where the border liesof what's losing you a little bit of
money and it's fine. And what'slosing you a lot of money.
(32:38):
Mike:
And maybe losing a little bit of moneydefinitely preferred to losing a lot.
I mean, depends. Depends what you're trying to achieve. But yeah,
generally speaking,
I think when we playpoker we want to have fun,
but really we're playing pokerto make money. That's the goal.
And anyone who's lost money in pokerknows that poker is not fun when you're
(33:01):
losing money. So it's very,very centered around that.
That's really where we want to get. Ofcourse, you want to have as much fun,
you want to participate, you wantto get invited back to the game.
Those are all things we take into account,
but bottom line is ifit's not a good play,
you need to be very careful making it.
Mike (33:20):
I think that's a great place to call it.
Thank you very much for joining usin this episode of Upswing Level Up.
If you enjoyed it, hit the like button,rate the podcast five star, subscribe,
follow... Any of those positivethings you can do we appreciate it.
It helps us keep this podcast goingand I'll see you in the next one.
Uri is going to be backand we'll see you then.
Ready to level up your poker skills and crush soft games?
I'm Mike Brady and I've gotthe world's best poker coach,
Uri Peleg on the line with me.
He's about to reveal his top five tipsfor destroying weak competition at the
poker table and he saved his verybest tip for the number five slot.
If you play live or lowstakes online games,
(00:20):
get ready for some golden advicethat will skyrocket your win rate.
Welcome aboard Uri.
Uri (00:25):
Hey Mike. Happy to be here.
Mike:
I wasn't just sucking up to Uri when Icalled him the world's best poker coach.
Not only has he won millionson the felt himself,
he's coached some of the best players inthe world on their way to reaching the
top of the poker food chain. By theway, if you're serious about poker,
Uri has been working on somethingthat will be amazing for you.
It's called Lab 2.0.
(00:46):
It's a massively upgraded version of theUpswing Lab that provides a clear path
to poker mastery. We'll fill you inmore about that throughout this episode.
Let's get into the tips, Uri. What isyour first tip for crushing soft games?
Tip number one is to categorize players.
And the reason I say that this is tipnumber one is I feel like it gets people
(01:10):
into the correct mindset. Whenyou're in a very soft game,
you really want to think of yourself as,
"I'm the only one whoknows what he's doing.
Each of these other guysis doing something wrong,
and it's up to me to figure out who'sa calling station, who bluffs too much,
who bluffs too little,
who overplays their hands..."all of these types of things.
(01:32):
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." Thisis to get you into that frame of mind
of "it's a soft game.
(01:54):
These guys are not very savvy players.
They're leaning in one direction in avery clear way." So figure out which way,
and that's your road to victory there.
Mike (02:03):
It's so funny you said road to victory there.
That was truly a coincidence.
Darren Elias in his Road toVictory course on Upswing Poker,
the main structure of the courseis around the five player types.
He has five different player types thathe breaks down for when you're playing
in large field tournaments.
Large field tournaments are reallyinteresting because the different player
(02:24):
types you're going to find yourselffacing really run the gamut.
You might be playing against some of theworld's best players and you also might
be playing against someone who satellitedin and is not particularly serious.
And I'm talking about tournaments likethe World Poker Tour World Championship,
things like that where it's a big buy-in,but you get a wide range of players.
(02:45):
So Darren breaks down thesecategories as aggressive professional,
tight professional, loosepassive recreational and so on.
It's kind of wide categories like thatand then he categorizes more deeply
within those with regard totheir specific tendencies.
Since we're talking about soft games here,
I think the categorization method is alittle different and I want to clarify
(03:09):
that with you.
Are you categorizing playersin wide buckets that are
not super descriptive or are you gettingreally into the weeds with regard to
exactly how they're playing? For example,
this guy is too loose on theflop or this guy seems to
have certain bet sizing tells.
How exactly are you approachingthat categorization?
Uri (03:32):
Great question, first of all.
Before I even answer the question,
I want to point out how important tothe skill this is both in tournaments as
you mentioned.
And if you think about a tournament playerwho's perfect at playing against the
best in the world, but who doesn'ttake advantage of soft fields,
he's not necessarily goingto have the best results.
(03:54):
So taking advantage ofsoft games is a real skill.
It's a real muscle you need to buildup in poker. It's not like you can say,
"oh, I want to battle a realstakes, so this is not important.
I need to practice GTO". This isreally, really important all the way up.
And even at the higheststakes of cash games,
you see a big deviation in how well peopleare able to adjust versus the weaker
(04:16):
players. There's often a weaker playerat the table. Even if he's a pro,
there's a weaker pro,
and being able to get the max valuefrom him is extremely important.
Now to your question about whattype of categories there are,
it's very broad and with meit leans a lot on experience.
So often I'll see someone make,
(04:40):
let's say,
call out of position and check down abusted draw and never try to bluff for the
pot. So I'd categorizethis guy as passive.
He can be loose passive or tight passive,
but he's in a frame of mind where hedoesn't fight for small pots. By the way,
this goes only for small pots.Everyone fights for the big ones.
(05:01):
That's an importantdistinction to make. Similarly,
I look for bet sizing tells, I look fortendencies 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. Butin soft games they often will show you.
I actually back in the day had a hand...back before overbetting was common
(05:25):
I overbet the turn against aplayer and he folded a set face up.
And if someone showsyou something like that,
you kind of know the directionthat they're leaning. But yeah,
if I had to, sorry forthe long-winded answer,
but if I had to give yousimple things to look for,
I'd say look for is hepassive or aggressive?
(05:52):
And sometimes he'll be passive with acertain bet size and aggressive with a
different bet size,
or passive with a certain hand strengthand aggressive with a different hand
strength. So you can always flesh it out,
but at the base level there'spassive or aggressive.
You look for loose or tight andyou look for whether the guy
likes calling down, which is very evident.
(06:14):
The guys who do show down crazy handsand they often lose their money very,
very quickly.
Mike (06:21):
Oftentimes you don't even need to see them show down.
You might be there for an orbitor two and you'll be like, "man,
this guy sure seems to reach the riverquite often." And then now you kind of
know, I mean you don't know for sure,
maybe he was just gettinga good run of cards,
but it's pretty likely that the guysin there may be a little bit too loose.
You can also extrapolatea lot, right? For example,
you see this all the time at lowstakes. Maybe it's a limped pot.
(06:44):
Player limps in early position ends upshowing down Ace Queen, Ace Queen suited,
Ace Jack suited... A quitepremium top seven percent hand.
If that player ever puts in chipspreflop, if they're ever three betting me,
if they're ever raising to a normal size,
I am going to respond incredibly tightcompared to how I normally would.
(07:05):
I mean hands that would be an auto callagainst their three bet are hitting the
muck in my mind.
Uri (07:10):
An interesting example, because in my mind if I saw someone limp a premium,
I wouldn't be sure what he's threebetting with. You know what I mean?
Because kind of statistically,
if you limp top three percent,
like three to ten percent ofhand strenght in terms of,
(07:31):
you limp Ace Jack suited, Ace Queensuited, King Queen suited, pocket Jacks,
you limp all thosehands. Now you three bet,
there's a two percentchance it's a premium.
And then there's absolutely everythingelse where maybe the guy's just getting
fed up and he's like, "Ihave this image". People...
I feel like everyone has theirinternal timer of when they get fed up
(07:53):
because them being in it doesn't work.
So you need to look atwho's up and who's down.
People often shift gearsand there's also a very,
very common player type which is importantto mention in terms of passive versus
aggressive and that'sthe gambler player type.
This is a very common playerin soft games and he's not
(08:15):
exactly passive, nor ishe exactly aggressive.
It's more like if you wantedto visualize this player,
imagine someone playing a poker slotmachine. He barely understands the rules,
but if the cards in his handmatch the cards on the board,
he puts more money in.
And this kind of player canoften seem very aggressive,
but he's only aggressivewhen he hits the board.
(08:37):
Whenever he misses it's check and fold.
So you can't be calling him downwith Ace high or something like that.
You need to be very, veryaware of what's going on.
Mike (08:46):
Great stuff there. Let's go ahead and move on Uri.
What is your second tipfor crushing soft games?
Uri:
soft games tend to have a ton of multiwaypots and there is a deceptive thing
because if you think about it... Imagineyou're invited to a really soft game,
you see no one knows what they're doing.
Every pot goes five-way to the flop andyou feel like you're supposed to win.
(09:07):
You feel like "I'm thebest player at the table,
I should be winning money."But in five-way pots,
each player is supposed to winroughly twenty percent of the time
and variants can easily make thatyou're losing ten hands in a row.
And so it's very, very important torecognize this and to get used to it.
If you're used to regular gameswhere pots are heads up a lot,
(09:31):
you often win half the pots you play.
So playing a soft gamemight feel very frustrating.
It's like "I have to fold again, I haveto fold again, I have to give up again".
So you need to get usedto playing multiway.
You need to get used to the fact you'reoften going to fold a top pair or a
middle pair or a bad flushdraw, sometimes even to one bet.
(09:53):
Don't get frustrated by it, don't feellike you're doing something wrong.
Basically, tighten up multiway.
There's really common advice about multiway pots that goes around and it's
theoretically sound,
but I'm curious what your take is onit when you're playing against players
against whom you don't haveto be theoretically sound,
and I'm specifically thinking about betsizing and more specifically small bet
(10:17):
sizing. Theoretically, whenyou're in a multiway pot,
you're going to be using alot of small sizes, right?
If it's a situation where maybe therewas 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 ofposition against some of the players,
you're going to be usinga fairly small bet size.
And the idea there to get wonky for asecond is that the burden of defense among
(10:42):
the other players is shared among them.
So they all have to play tighter eventhough it's a relatively small bet.
But if you're playing against people insoft games, maybe that's not necessary.
Maybe you can use some littletricks with your bet sizing,
jack it up a little bit when you havecertain types of hands maybe on certain
types of boards. What's your take on that?
Uri (11:05):
Again, great question. I think one of the things that often happens...
Imagine you're in a four-waypot 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 aroundhim. And I hope that's okay to say,
it's not insulting to anyone...Some people like gambling and stuff.
(11:29):
So in a situation like that,
you're very highly incentivizedto size your bets kind of
against that one player. He's wheremost of your win rate is going to come.
And in that sense, you want to neverbluff. And whenever you have a good hand,
you want to bet big. The issuewith that is that once you do that,
everyone else kind ofknows what's up, right?
(11:51):
If it comes Ace Ten Fiveand you pot the flop into
five people, no one's going to belike, "oh, maybe he's bluffing,
maybe he has a balanced range,let's call him with Ace Jack."
So there's a trade-off where whenyou focus on the weaker players,
you give the stronger playersa lot of edge against you.
(12:12):
And that's generally what happen. So ifyou tell me all the players are weak,
go ahead, do whatever you want,
just be aware that there's a trade-offand you want to be aware on both ends
because this is information the otherplayers at the soft game are going to be
giving you. So very often...
I guess Ace Ten Fiveisn't the best example,
but I've had a hand where it'sKing Queen Eight two-tone,
(12:36):
someone bets seventy-five percent pot,
and I just fold King Jack straightaway very, very confidently.
Mike:
So I assume that was a player whomight've been targeting one of the weaker
players in the game and you know thatthey're just not really messing around in
that situation with a large bet.
Yeah, and it's not that I think he's never bluffing,
I just think his rangeis super duper strong.
(12:56):
He can have a combo draw,maybe he has a nut flush draw,
but once you break down and sayif his range is top pair top
kicker plus and nut draws,
you have no business stayin the hand with one pair.
Mike (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 ifyou're overfolding in a multiway pot,
particularly against a big bet size.
Uri (13:23):
For sure, for sure.
So people are giving a lot of informationaway with these big bet sizes.
It's a trade-off. I'm not sayingit's the wrong thing to do.
Whenever I play a soft game, it's adance really. There's no one answer.
I want to quickly pause totalk about Lab 2.0 again.
As you've been able to glean so far,
(13:43):
Uri is incrediblyknowledgeable about poker,
that's why he's coached up someof the best players in the world.
And he's particularly knowledgeable onplaying a practical game and that works
really well against soft competitionand that's really what Lab 2.0 is all
about.
It's not teaching you theory for the sakeof theory just so you can feel smart.
It's teaching you practical strategiesand giving you a clear path to improve
(14:05):
consistently and build real skills.
There are two amazing sections in Lab 2.0,
level six is playing soft games and it'sall about what we're discussing today
but even in more depth. And thenthere's also the Live Cash Launchpad,
which is a long section that Uri puttogether that's all about different live
skills that will really boost your winrate. So if you're playing one three,
(14:27):
two five, even fiveten or ten twenty live,
I think this course is an absolutemust get on Upswing Poker. Frankly,
I'm not even sure when we'rereleasing this episode of the podcast,
so it might already be out,it might be coming out soon,
but either way keep an eye outbecause it's going to be a must grab.
Yes.
So just to explain how practicalwe're trying to make this,
(14:49):
I went ahead and coveredtheory 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 ofwhat actually happens at the tables.
Mike (15:05):
I've watched almost every minute of the content he's put together.
The edits are amazing. Again, I reallythink 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 forbeating up on easy competition?
Uri (15:20):
Third tip is something we kind of touched on before. I just feel it's so,
so important when you're playingthese soft games to not be egotistical
about it.
There's a lot of variance in pokerand by putting yourself in this
mindset of "I'm the best player andtherefore I have to win, if I don't win,
it means I'm not good.
How can I not win in this game withthese terrible players?" If you start
(15:44):
thinking these thoughts, you'restepping on your own foot.
And in soft games really if youdon'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 aregoing to be a lot of multiway pots,
start overplaying your hands,
start running crazy bluffs and multiwaypots against stationy players and
(16:09):
your line is going to godown very, very quickly.
And a way in which weactually 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 wouldoften go multiway, it was online,
it was extremely fast paced.
And what we noticed is that wheneversomeone lost a very big pot,
(16:32):
say he got an Aces versus Kings and lost,
his brain would get angryand immediately he like next
five minutes were danger zone. Everyonewould be playing worse, playing looser.
And in those soft games withthe multiway pots, that's very,
very dangerous. You don'thave a theoretical background to lean on. It's not...
(16:54):
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 anymagic to beat these games.
Mike (17:07):
I think it's important to say that this can be easier said than
done. Checking your ego at the door ofa poker room is not necessarily easy.
I think a lot of us who are attractedto poker were previously obsessed
with some sort of other competitiveenvironment, whether it's sports,
whether it's video games,whatever it might be,
(17:28):
you were probably competitive atsomething else if you're into poker now.
And poker is a very unique game.
It's actually one of the most beautifulparts of it is that there is variance,
there is luck. You are not guaranteedto win, you have earned nothing.
You have to go to the table,
play well and also get kindof lucky in order to win.
And you could be up against the worstplayer in the world and it is possible
(17:51):
they come out on top.
That can be pretty tough to getused to as a competitive person.
So if you are that typeof competitive person,
recognize that this is maybegoing to be a challenge for you,
but it is a criticalchallenge for you to overcome.
It might just come with time, itmight just come with repetitions,
but just because you're losing,it's not because you're worse,
(18:12):
it's not because you'redoing anything wrong.
The mistake you can makeis compounding the losses
by trying to chase them,
letting your ego get involved and thenthat's where you really start to dust
some money.
Uri (18:24):
Exactly.
I would say poker's very unique in thesense that you have to fold when you're
behind,
you have to accept losing andactually 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 pokerbecause in poker you want to
(18:47):
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 frameof mind of winning is making a good
decision. That's where wewant you to be in poker.
And we want to give you thetools so that you can make good
decisions and that youcan judge your decisions.
(19:09):
And that's I think part of the thingwith Lab 2.0 is if you make a decision,
you know that you can takethat decision to the community,
to the coaches and ask them,was this a good decision or not?
And very often in poker we actuallyknow enough about poker that we
can tell you, even though youlost, you made a good decision.
(19:29):
And that's not true in many areas of life.
If you're a brain surgeon and youkilled 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 thegame to a point where we can confidently
say that for almost any hand.
Mike (19:46):
Alright, with all that said on zooming out, let's jump onward. Uri,
what is your fourth tip for ourlisteners who play soft games?
Uri (19:55):
Fourth tip, and this is a really big one,
is it if you see someonedoing something bad,
that doesn't mean that you'regoing to win money from him.
It doesn't even mean that it's goodfor you that he's doing something bad.
For example,
if under the gun raises a forty percentrange and you're in the big blind,
you basically just get screwed.You're just facing raises more often.
(20:17):
You don't do well againstthe forty percent range,
that's the same range thebutton would raise against you.
Certainly that's bad for him,it's bad for the entire table.
And even simpler example isif someone cold calls a lot,
so let's say I open under the gun andthere's a guy right after me and he just
loves cold calling every pocket pair,every suited connector, every suited Ace,
(20:41):
he just loves playing thesehands. He never folds them.
That's bad for him becausehe can get squeezed,
but it's not good for methat 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 thesedynamics, first of all,
I mean I guess my point withall of this is you have to...
(21:04):
it's a challenge, it's a puzzle.
I feel like soft games are some of themost interesting games in poker where you
need to figure out how shouldI play in this environment?
How should I play againstthis player and don't be,
"oh he's bad so I'm going to win money".
And this is before I was sayingdon't try too hard, don't force it.
But you do want to have acoherent strategy that fits the people you're playing
(21:26):
against. Just because someone limps,
just because someone leadsout without initiative,
what's known as a donk bet, that'snot enough for you to make money.
You have to actively know how toadjust and what to do about it.
And that's how poker works as a game.
Mike:
The key takeaway here is an opponentcan be making a mistake that costs them
(21:50):
money,
but the nature of the mistakeactually can cost you money as
well.
And that's why you have to have an eagleeye for these types of mistakes and be
constantly thinking, how can Iadjust to exploit this player? Now,
make sure you have reliable evidence.
Don't just cast dispersions and assumethat you know what the opponent's doing.
(22:10):
Make sure the evidence is good beforeyou're making these massive adjustments.
But you have to bemaking these adjustments,
otherwise you're just leavingso much money on the table.
Especially if you're playing low stakesgames where people just aren't paying
attention and they're makingmistakes all over the place.
And one thing that we do in Lab 2.0, Mike,
I think that's differentfrom a lot of poker theory,
(22:31):
is we don't look atpoker as black and white.
So if we say that thisis your opening range,
but really there's a bunch of the openingrange that's making very little money
and a bunch of the folding rangethat's losing very little money,
I encourage people to freely playaround the edges and be like,
sure you can never fold Ace Kingsuited, you can never not open Jacks.
(22:54):
But there are a bunch of hands where eventhough in theory it's an always open,
you don't need very much evidenceto adjust with those hands.
You can do it very, very freely.
Great point. Super critical. Alright, moving on to your final tip.
Tip number five, the one that you say isthe very most important for soft games,
take it away.
I can't believe I almost forgot this one, but
(23:18):
you often get asked by peoplewho 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'mbetting any amount with any hand.
I'm completely unpredictable.
How would you beat me?" And people whodon't understand poker don't understand
(23:40):
the answer.
And the reason I'm going to answer thisis because soft games are a variation of
this.
So we look at the extreme to draw therule and the rule is actually going to
apply. So against a guy who'splaying completely randomly,
the way you would beat that guyin a simplistic sense would be,
and I think this is a very convincinganswer to say, rather than play randomly,
(24:04):
I'll just according to my hand strength,
that's the amount of moneyI'm willing to put in.
Match those two strategies against eachother and its clear mine is going to win
against the random guys. So Ithink that's kind of level one.
But the next level to take it is to sayif your opponent's kind of random and
you have a top ten percent hand,
(24:25):
why not put in more money than the handis supposed to? Why kind of limit it?
Because he is being completely randomand this is where this tip falls and what
it says is overplay the top of yourrange. So generally soft games,
you have a hand like anoverpair or top pair top kicker,
and you bet and the guy raises,
(24:45):
don't start telling yourselfstories. No one bluffs here.
"He has me beat or he is bluffing".
Don't start going into these levelingwars with yourself. It's a soft game.
You have a good hand, close youreyes, that goes in and if you're beat,
you're beat.
Mike (25:00):
It makes sense because the reason you get a little cagey with a say
top nine percent hand in a situationsometimes is because you need to have
a holistic robust range.
You can't just always be betting when youhave good hands and then checking with
the medium hands because thatmakes you really predictable.
It makes your strategyreally easy to counter.
(25:21):
But the hypothetical thatUri is throwing out here,
that really isn't a hypothetical in a lotof 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 wayone hour and then an hour later they get
(25:41):
the exact same hand in the exact samesituation and they choose to do something
differently and it's becausethey're playing by feel.
And that's pretty close to random.
And when that's happening youcan just take advantage of it.
You don't need to be cagey,
you don't need to have thisholistic strategy where you're, "oh,
this board's bad for meand I'm out of position,
I'm just going to check everything".No, if you have the overpair, bet,
(26:02):
win money. Don't you want money?That's the whole point of this.
So you just start putting in money rightthen and there and you don't have to
worry about the rest of your strategymaybe being a little out of whack because
in practice it just doesn't matter.
Uri (26:14):
Yeah, and I think a great example for this is...
So we talked about multiway pots.
Imagine you bet top pair top kickermultiway and someone puts in a raise.
If this were a tough online game,
I'd be terrified because top pair topkicker is close to the bottom of my value
betting range five-way. You know youdon't bet very wide. Someone raised,
(26:37):
he raised with three peopleleft 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 conservativefold." But in a soft game,
the guy who's raising has no conceptof everything I just described.
He's like, "I look at mycards, I look at the board,
(26:57):
I haven't gotten a hand in an hour, Ihave 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 yourown head in these kind of situations.
Now I'm not saying that... Thereare 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 thatyou're used to in a regular game.
Mike (27:19):
Yeah, I mean in that tough online game,
your top pair top kicker is instantlyreduced to a bluff catcher if you're
playing against players whounderstand the situation,
because they're not going to be raisingwith any hands that are not a bluff or a
better hand,
but in the soft games you very wellcould be up against a player who has some
medium pocket pair that's even underthe top pair and they're like, "oh,
(27:40):
I want protection against the flush draw,or I want protection against Ace King.
I put 'em on Ace King". Classicthing that people do in soft games.
Uri (27:46):
And I think also, like you're saying,
it's not like this is a spot noone bluffs, they don't know that.
They don't recognize all the nuances ofthis spot. Maybe they're bluffing now.
You need to kind of be more "topof my range, money goes in",
end of story. No other thing to it.
And it's so sad when yousee a guy bet top pair
(28:11):
top kicker, another guy goesall-in, a third guy goes all-in,
he makes the hero fold and they bothhave whatever random stuff they're
going crazy with.
Mike (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 gota bonus tip prepared as well Uri,
what is it?
Uri (28:29):
This is actually inspired by a friend of mine.
He's been playing games with me evenbefore poker and he played poker
professionally for a year and hewent 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 QueenFive suited on the hijack or whatever
(28:50):
and he's like, "these guys are limpinglike 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 aguy who's playing every hand and getting
in pots and three betting all thetime and four betting all the time.
You'll often see a guy likethat every night at a live game.
(29:11):
So one thing is there's a ton of varianceand variance is distributed like a
bell curve.
So usually at the table there's one guywho's just going to get the lion's share
of good cards, he's goingto be the most active.
It's not because he is doing anythingcrazy like the guy who's three beting all
the time.
Very likely if you see someone threebet three times in seven hands,
(29:32):
it's much more likely he has somethingthe third time than that he doesn't.
He's well aware that he's beenvery active. This just happens.
This is how it works and it playstricks on people's minds. But
I guess my answer...maybe I'll ask you, Mike,
why can't you limp Queen Five suitedif everyone else is limping in?
Mike (29:52):
It isn't really the hand I want to be in there with in a multiway pot.
I would tell your friend, "youabsolutely can do some limping,
but it's got to be with the rightstuff", right? Pocket fours? Hell yeah,
jump in there. Ace Sevensuited? Absolutely.
Those are hands that don't really loveraising over a bunch of limpers who are
probably just going to call and you'regoing to have to play a bloated pot,
hopefully in position,
(30:13):
but either way a bloated pot multiwaywith a hand that doesn't flop that well.
Meanwhile the other option,
throw in the three dollars or the fivedollars or whatever the big blind is,
go to a six, seven-way pot and if youflop Gin, get ready to count some stacks,
you're probably goingto win a bunch of money.
Uri (30:29):
Yeah, and...
The fact that everyone's making a mistakeis good for you as long as you don't
make it.
The second you start making the samemistake as everyone else it's tougher to
find your edge. And also when you limpQueen Five suited at a full ring table,
there are just eight other peoplewith hands. So statistically speaking,
some people are going to have goodhands and you're going to get crushed.
(30:50):
And that's one of the issues that evenif everyone's terrible and everyone's
limping,
there is no way around the fact thatthere's a certain number of people at the
table left to act. Statistically speaking,
they're going to have a good hand toomuch of the time to justify what you're
doing.
Mike:
I feel like this goes back to our tipabout checking your ego at the door as
(31:10):
well, because when you seethings happening at the table,
you almost feel left out. You'relike, "man, they're doing it,
they're having fun. Why can't I, why
do I have to retreat into my shell andfold 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 incompetitive things. But in an ideal world,
(31:32):
let's use kind of a more obviousexample where your ego might be bruised.
Let's say you're playing basketball,
you go up for a shot and a guy who'stwo feet taller than you jumps up and
absolutely swats theball right out of bounds.
You feel like a little bitof a fool. In an ideal world,
you're not even feeling ego about that,
you're playing a game that'spart of the game. In poker,
I mean it's even lessin your face than that,
(31:54):
no one's swatting aball out of your hands,
you're just placing two cards alittle bit further away from you.
It's not a very big deal,you just got to do it.
Yeah, and just to talk about fun,
one of the approaches in the livesection of Lab 2.0 is that I do
want people to have fun,so what I do is I try to...
(32:14):
this is part of the reason we talkabout the edges of profitability.
So I'm very in favor of understandingif a play is losing you money,
how much money is it losingyou? And maybe it's okay,
you want a blend and you want to havefun, you want to have a good image.
So understand where the border liesof what's losing you a little bit of
money and it's fine. And what'slosing you a lot of money.
(32:38):
Mike:
And maybe losing a little bit of moneydefinitely preferred to losing a lot.
I mean, depends. Depends what you're trying to achieve. But yeah,
generally speaking,
I think when we playpoker we want to have fun,
but really we're playing pokerto make money. That's the goal.
And anyone who's lost money in pokerknows that poker is not fun when you're
(33:01):
losing money. So it's very,very centered around that.
That's really where we want to get. Ofcourse, you want to have as much fun,
you want to participate, you wantto get invited back to the game.
Those are all things we take into account,
but bottom line is ifit's not a good play,
you need to be very careful making it.
Mike (33:20):
I think that's a great place to call it.
Thank you very much for joining usin this episode of Upswing Level Up.
If you enjoyed it, hit the like button,rate the podcast five star, subscribe,
follow... Any of those positivethings you can do we appreciate it.
It helps us keep this podcast goingand I'll see you in the next one.
Uri is going to be backand we'll see you then.
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