Night games vs day games

Towards the end of the night games get good because people are stuck and need to work in the morning. 2PM is different then 2AM

Most people that have played live poker will agree that in general night games are of better overall quality than day games. This is due to a number of factors some of which include the average age of recreational opponents being younger at night, degree of alcohol inebriation being higher and what seems to be an overall gambling atmosphere that happens as the night turns into early morning.

One of the biggest things I have noticed, however, amongst the pool of recreational players is that weekday evening play tends to be somewhat erratic. Now I am not saying that I would rather play on a Monday night as opposed to a Saturday just due to the lack of selection in games but I have found through my experience that recreational players that have to go to work the next day, eg. have some sort of deadline as to when they have to leave the casino, tend to “blow up” at the end of their session and may lose their entire stack on one dumb play. It is as if these players may not have gotten their proper gambling fix for the day and want to get into a huge confrontation and thus gamble. These are absolutely not the best times to bluff these types of players as they will look at the clock and make a big call off knowing that they have to leave.

When you notice that someone is itching to go these are the times to really value bet more. No one wants to drive to the casino to fold and if nothing fulfilling has happened in their session they certainty do not want to be bluffed out or worse leave wondering if they got bluffed out of a pot.

You see, it is the same type of thing with small business owners that play during the day but have to get back to their jobs at some point. If you watch closely towards the end of their playing time they will get antsy and tend to drive the action or try to get involved in a big pot. Unfortunately the rest of the daytime recreational players are usually older retirees that are not on the same time restriction. Also the need to leave at night is much stronger during the week for normal recreational players than during the day, which is why late night games during the week can be so good.

Lastly you can really pound on opponents that play bad if they have been losing throughout their session. You have seen the type—the guys that only are at the casino late because they are “stuck”. Of course we know that they are going about it exactly the wrong way and extending their session with a bad image to chase their loses. Usually recreational players play very badly when they are behind in a session and you can easily pounce to exploit them.