Finding a weak player is the easy part. Most tables at low and mid stakes have one, and the tells are visible inside an orbit.
Collecting from them is where players differ. The money that leaves a recreational stack gets shared among everyone at the table, and your share depends on decisions made before the cards are dealt.
Get to their left and stay there
The single highest-value adjustment, and it costs nothing.
Sitting to a weak player's left means they act before you on every street. You see their limp before you decide whether to isolate, you see their check before you decide whether to bet, and you close the action in every pot they enter.
Sitting to their right means the reverse: you commit first and find out afterwards. The same hand, played from the two seats, produces measurably different results over a month.
In club apps you can usually leave and rejoin a table. Do it. Thirty seconds of table management beats an hour of strategy.
Isolate, and size it properly
Your goal in every pot they enter is to be heads-up with them in position. Everything else is worse.
When they limp, raise. Not with a narrow value range, but wide, because their limping range is weak and you have position. Size it at 4bb plus a big blind for each additional limper, which is larger than standard for a reason: you are trying to fold out the players behind, not just charge the limper.
A five-way pot against a weak player is not the prize. Heads-up in position is the prize, and the extra chips preflop are what buy it.
Bet thinner than feels comfortable
Against a player who calls too much, the mistake is almost never betting too thin. It is checking.
Second pair with a decent kicker is often a value bet on the river against a station. Top pair is a three-street hand rather than a pot-control hand. The occasional pot you lose to a better hand costs less than the accumulated value of the rivers you checked back all month.
Size up, too. Somebody calling by default calls two-thirds pot about as often as they call a third, so the smaller size only wins less. This is the same arithmetic that governs value betting at low limits generally.
Do not bluff them
The most common way good players hand money back is bluffing the person they are supposed to be beating.
Their defining trait is not folding. A multi-street bluff needs somebody capable of folding at the end of it, and that is the other regular at the table, not this player. Keep the bluffs for opponents who are actually capable of laying a hand down.
Adjust to which kind they are
Weak players come in two shapes and the response differs.
The passive one calls too much and rarely raises. Against them, everything above applies at full strength: bet thin, bet big, never bluff, and fold to their river aggression because it is almost always real.
The aggressive one raises too much without the hands to support it. Against them, widen your value range further and let them bet into you, checking strong hands on dry boards so they can barrel at nothing. That case is covered in more detail in our guide to playing against a maniac.
A worked hand
NL10 in Allin Zone on ClubGG, 6-max, blinds 0.05/0.10, a bomb pot every ten hands and a 30 percent VPIP floor. The player two seats to our right sits with 40bb, tops up to 40bb again every time he loses a pot, and has limped six of the last ten hands. That is the profile, and at these tables the floor rule makes it common: he is required to play hands and has decided limping is the way to do it. He limps the cutoff. We are on the button with KdTd and 180bb.
Raise to 4bb. Both blinds fold, he calls. Flop Ks 9c 4h, he checks, we bet 60 percent. He calls. Turn 2s, he checks, we bet 65 percent. This is the bet most players skip, and against a 40bb stack it is also the bet that sets up the river: the pot is now around 24bb and he has about 25bb behind. River 7d, he checks, and we bet the rest. Top pair with a ten kicker against a limp-calling range is well ahead, and a player who tops up to 40bb every time is not folding a king or a nine for the last of it.
If he leads the river instead of checking, fold. The passive limpers in this pool do not bluff that node, floor rule or not. The floor forces them to play hands preflop. It does not make them aggressive after the flop.
What this looks like in our clubs
The VPIP floor on every table in Allin Zone on ClubGG changes what a weak player looks like. In a normal pool the recreational player is the loose one. Here everyone is loose by rule, 30 percent at the low limits and 25 percent higher up, so looseness preflop tells you nothing. The tells that still work are stack management and postflop behaviour: who buys in for 40bb and tops up to exactly 40bb, who limps to satisfy the floor rather than raise, who calls two streets and folds the third, and who never leads a river without a hand.
The bomb pots every ten hands are where this player gives away the most. Six players on a flop with no preflop action, and he treats two pair on a paired or flush board as the nuts. Sit to his left, wait for the bomb pot, and let him do the betting. Since fields in club unions are small and stable, the note you take on him today is still good next month, which is not true in a room with thousands of strangers.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find weak players quickly?
Watch for open-limping, unusual bet sizes and very wide preflop calling. One orbit is usually enough, and no showdown is required.
Should I sit to their left or right?
Their left, so they act before you. This is the highest-value decision available and it is made before any cards are dealt.
How wide should I isolate a limper?
Wide, especially in position. Their limping range is weak, so most suited hands, broadways and pairs are worth raising. Size at 4bb plus one per extra limper to fold out the players behind.
Is it worth bluffing a recreational player occasionally to balance?
No. Balance protects you against opponents who study your frequencies, and this player is not doing that. Bet for value and skip the balancing.
What if two regulars are also at the table?
Play tighter against them and normally against the weak player. If the regulars are between you and the weak seat, changing tables is usually better than adjusting.
Where to start
Next session, before you look at a single hand, check where the weakest player is sitting relative to you. If they are on your right, move. That is the whole exercise, and it is worth more than the rest of this page.
If you want to know which of our clubs has the softest games at your hours, message @rpunion, or compare the pools across the apps we run clubs in.
18+. Play within your means.