Just being the best internet poker player in the tournament does guarantee that you will win it. The honest fact is that poker still contains some percentage of luck. Aces can be beat and A-K often runs into small pairs. The truth is when you do play with weaker players; the luck factor comes in to play. The worse the players get, the higher percentage of luck is involved.

How to play against bad players

It happens all the time, and especially in larger field tournaments. There always seems to be a massive amount of bad players at your table. You see them raising from early position with really average hands. They over value any Ace. They will chase a three outer to the river. So what do you do? It is actually very simple. Play simple poker. Raise your big hands and fold your bad. Just do not try anything clever. However, the most important thing to remember is they will make mistakes. Look for the mistakes they make and then take advantage of the errors.

Let them make the mistake

The usual tactics that work against better players at Spade Club do not usually work against weaker players. Against strong opponents, an UTG raise means strength. Weaker players do not usually notice this and will actually call with average hands. This can actually cause you trouble against weaker players.
When you raise UTG with A-A against a weak table, it is not unusual to end up with four to five players left in the hand. This happens because another player in early position has K-J, so he calls, the person next to him has 7-8 suited so he calls, next thing you know everyone else thinks they are getting value, so they call, and you end up with five players going to the flop. It is important to remember what usually works on good players is not necessarily effective on weaker players. Always try to keep it simple and look for areas when your opponents make a mistake.

Where you find bad poker players

You can actually find bad players in any tournament. As a rule though, the smaller the buy-ins – the worse the field. However, that does not mean just because you are playing high stakes buy-ins they are no bad players. Take the Main Event at the World Series of Poker for example. The WSOP and club wpt has a buy-in of $10k, but I guarantee you that it will have a larger field of bad players than any of the smaller buy-in events at the World Series of Poker. So just keep an eye out for those bad players. Play simple poker against them and wait for them to make a mistake, and you can profit from them at your table.