Dealing with a new player part 1: Adjusting to a poker player who is drunk

When it comes to making adjustments against a particular opponent sometimes it’s not just their style of play that will play a major role in how you adjust your play, sometimes their frame of mind, their gender, or their experience that will play an important factor in the way you handle them at a poker table. With this in mind I have created this 4-Part series on adjusting to certain players which will include:

• Adjusting to a player who is drunk
• Adjusting to female poker player
• Adjusting to a jerk
• Adjusting to a clueless player

These adjustments often carry-over to the table as a whole, and as you will see in this part regarding drunken players can often test where you draw the line morally and ethically.

Many players are torn when a drunken player enters the game because they see his stacks of chips as easy money, but at the same time their conscious is telling them to go easy on the person since they are drunk. While I definitely feel bad for the person when they wake up in the morning, I also realize that they are the reason they are in this situation, and regardless of my moral feelings they are going to lose their money to someone tonight -be it the casino or another player-so it may as well be me.

Now, if a person is so drunk that they are incapable of playing cards -such as folding the nuts on the river, or some similar example that they are completely out of their mind– I would get the floor and inform them of the person’s situation. Anything less than that and the player’s money is fair game, especially if they combine their drinking with rude behavior.

The key to dealing with drunken players is to be helpful -they will often need to be prodded to act and informed of the situation-and to make sure the other players in the game do not get rude if the drunken player goes on a heater and gets lucky, or get insulting if the player is losing their shirt. Your goal is to keep the drunken player happy and feeling respected, this will keep them at the tables, and not cause them to leave in search of a ‘friendlier’ more accommodating group of players.

At the same time you need to realize that everything a drunken poker player gives you in money he will at the same time take back 10-fold in wearing on your patience, especially if they are rude. It’s your responsibility to keep your emotions in check, and to make sure the rest of the table also understands the situation, you need to lead by example: Compliment the player’s winning streaks, lament their losses, and always stay patient.

In Part 2 of this series I’ll look at what happens when a female poker player enters the game.