Extracting Money from an Action Player in a Cash Poker Game

Cash Games, Betting Strategy
June 30 2008

If you don’t know what an action player is, you haven’t been playing cash games very long. These players are the types that you might refer to as loose/passive, maniacs or calling machines.

Action players can take different forms, but one thing is for sure: They don’t play poker very well. They get into every hand and either bluff blindly or call down everything to the river. They’re often either rich and don’t care about the money, or they’re drunk and dumping it through pure stupidity.

You don’t find these players all the time, but when you do find one you can earn at a rate that’s as good as playing a 21-year-old college student on tilt. Finding them can be as easy as looking at the clock on the wall. If you wait for certain time zones to reach about 2:00 a.m., you can find lots of action players getting home from the bar. They’re not hard to recognize: They’re in every hand and they’re not winning any money.

Extracting money from action players usually only consists of isolating yourself with them and hitting a part of the flop. The more hands you get into with them, the more you stand to make. Raising pre-flop will help isolate yourself with them, as long as the other players at the table don’t realize what you’re doing. Once other players realize the opportunity, you’ll have to battle off the others to get to the action player.

If things get too aggressive at the table, your advantage may be gone and will shift to the action player. So don’t stick around if everyone is trying to get head-to-head with him.

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