First is that you’re missing out on lots of money that the bully is putting into pots with weak hands which you could win if you were braver.
In the poker setting, it also leaves you wide open to being exploited by other players who are smart enough to wait to trap both of you with a monster when you’re trying to out-bully each other with mediocre holdings.Ī second temptation is to go into highly defensive mode - that is, to tighten up even further, waiting for the rare premium hand before playing back at the bully. It might work, but it’s risky and costly. The problem is that you are pretty much reduced to flailing away wildly, kind of like Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he finally loses it and goes nuts on the bully Scut Farcus. One temptation is to try to out-bully the bully, to punch back even harder than he is hitting. Let’s talk about three general strategies for playing against the poker bully, two of them wrong, one of them right. Playing against them can be scary, like riding a bucking bronco. They bet and raise with reckless abandon. You can’t spend too long at the tables without running into one. Bullies are a fairly common subspecies of poker player.
