Your Winning Edge/Player Types

It's another shitty Monday, the day when all the regulars are playing and not a fish in sight. You probably prefer to do something else than poker, but the girlfriend is out of town, you are bored as fuck. You go on your favorite site, load up your handy dandy HUD software and open some 2/4 tables. The hell? Everyone is playing those 18/16, 19/17, 21/19 stats! Those stats are indicative of what winning TAGs are, your edge is seemingly limited.


The truth of the matter is.. yes, your edge might not be as big against these TAG stats guys as opposed to like 30/5/inf maniacs, but it's still there if you are indeed better! A question that I always ask myself is this: what is my edge? why am I winning(or losing)? what makes me different than everyone else who watches some CR videos or read some poker books?

Online poker is seemingly "readless". Everyone is classified with a name and (with most site) an avatar. But the truth of the matter is, anyone can follow a hand chart and play like a pro preflop. The most standard HUD stats are VPIP and PFR, we can easily cookie cut people with similar stats in the same basket and think they all play the same. This is FAR from the truth. I can teach anyone to play my exact stats, will he play similarly as me? Of course not. But it's easy to fool someone in thinking he plays a similar style.

Player types is completely underestimated. In the past, I admit that most of my decisions are made completely by classifying someone(TAG, LAG, weak tight, maniac). This is a fundamental mistake as you play stronger and stronger players, they will not be making this mistake. I, SirNeb, plays my nuts hand like X and no one else plays exactly X with the same hands. Of course X might not be the most optimal play but it is still unique to me. Each player has his own unique style and what he is capable of. But you can generally put that player in a certain "player type". Someone who is playing scared money is not going to splash around with air very much, so it would be completely against his player type to bluff randomly. But someone who is willing to 4bet shove light preflop is probably not going to be afraid to make a pot sized river bluff. The theory behind player types is based on how they think about the game. If he plays a really strong hand weakly, that means he's generally either slowplaying too much or he's afraid that he got outdrawn and will lose his stack. I can generally say something accurate about a player just from 1 significant hand history. So just imagine if you play with certain regulars for thousands of hands, you can really get a strong read on someone.

That said, it's obvious our biggest edge is against a donator. But the reality is that even those "TAG"s or "solid players" make fundamental mistakes ALL THE TIME. I can spot them easily because I've made those same mistakes in the past and learned from them. They are not obvious, but it's extremely exploitable and profitable. In a long run, those little edges really add a ton to your winrate. Even winning players make lots of mistakes, as long as you keep exploiting them(make less mistakes yourself!) and the money will continue to flow your direction. Keep in mind that the first step is to identify what the mistakes are, this could be difficult and usually you might have to pay for such information. What I mean is not buy some database from your local poker black market(whatever they are..), what I do mean is you might have to make a light call down and lose some dough. The short term -ev will be overcome as long as you use that information in the future.