Dealing with a new player part 4: Adjusting to a clueless poker player

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 when it comes to clueless poker players you want to set the example for the rest of the table to follow.

Clueless players are the reason you show up to play poker: They are basically there to give their money away, and as a solid player you want to be the recipient of their donation! The proper way to treat a clueless poker player is to make them feel welcome, and set them at ease.

Clueless players make a ton of mistakes, and make extremely costly mistakes to boot, but as long as the game is friendly, and the atmosphere is right these players will just keep peeling $100 bills out of their pockets every time they get felted. As Paul “GiantBuddha” Hoppe calls them in his book, The Way of the Poker Warrior, clueless players are RFP’s, “the reason for poker”!

Laughing and joking is a good start, but you should also be willing to commiserate with them when they make a mistake, or play a hand very poorly - a good way to do this is to explain how you did something even more foolish when you first sat in a poker game.

The most important thing to do when a clueless player enters the game is make sure you keep the other wolves at bay: Don’t let anyone demean or otherwise insult the new player, and as I said, make sure you are there to listen to their reasoning and be helpful when they have questions regarding etiquette and protocol.

Hopefully this 4-Part series has shed some light on how different players change the dynamic of the game, and how even the smallest adjustments to how you behave at the table can keep a good game from turning sour really fast. Whether it’s a drunk, a woman, a jerk, or a clueless player, there are different tact’s you should take, and most of all set the example for the rest of the table to follow -don’t be afraid to criticize another player for being out of line either!