Monday, July 27, 2009

Poker Personages : The Bookworm

By Kallikrates Sabas

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

A lot of poker players agree that the power of your starting hand is essential and this is the only aspect that the bookworm truly understands. Other than that, they know nothing.

The bookworm is somehow aggressive. They are particularly happy to bet but if someone take the chance to play against them they will scared to wits unless they have an excellent hand.

Predictability

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

Poker IQ

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

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

They think that all people should follow what they think is right. They are ignorant of the motives behind the moves of other players. They are really like narrow minded folks of the worst kind. That's why they tend to criticize and laugh on other people's mistakes and teach them what they think is the right way.

Adjustments

Defeating a bookworm is quiet easy. You only need to befriend them and try to converse with them and because they like to brag about what they know they will eventually boast about it and will gradually give away their game play at once.

But if ever they strike out your effort in befriending them then its time to put up your aggressiveness into play. Stay aggressive and don't be afraid to bet against them if they will.

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