08.06.09
Strategies for Handling the Mouse
When faced at a table with a online poker player who plays like a ‘mouse,’ in that they only play the nuts and won’t put money at risk without a monster, the general pattern of response is to play careful, but heavily aggressive poker. Because in the long run more hands will miss their aim than they will make it, often by sheer power of raising and reraising the meeker players, you will be able to make them lay down even when you have no hand.
For the most part, with the most meek and strategically disinterested mouse-style online poker players, you will know when you are beat, in that, when they raise, if you don’t have the nuts, you are almost always behind. Folding top pair top kicker on the flop against a meek player who suddenly check raises after hours of not making a player is by all means a move that is worthwhile to make. Often, against these players that won’t put in a dime without having it, you have to be able to give them credit for the hand when they finally step up and represent it. Continuing to bluff when they show strength is often also a sure sign of troubleare they the kind of player that will let you take the lead when they are ahead? Or are they actually drawing at a hand for once?
Regardless of which, it is best to keep up your online poker style and aggressive pitch against meek players until given reason to do otherwise. Often they will let you take down pot after pot in the mind of: waiting for the big one, at which point you can just fold out.
