1. You're paying a lot of attention to your opponents' skills and tendencies. That by itself puts you ahead of most players.
2. You're spending time evaluating your own skill level. This helps you avoid situations that are likely to be unprofitable.
3. You don't have the dangerous "I know it all" poker ego that has gotten so many players into trouble over the years. Understanding that you still have things you can learn is the first step in learning them.
In the long run, then, you do indeed have reasons to celebrate, and these reasons bode well for your chances of improving to the point where you don't encounter too many superior opponents.
In the short run, though, you still have to face the problem of that superior opponent or opponents. You can encounter that problem in any one of several variations:
1. Are there many players in the game who outclass you, or only one or two?
2. Is it a tournament or a money game?
3. Is the game limit, pot-limit, or no-limit?
4. If the game is a money game, is it relatively simple to switch to another table, where you might be the strongest or one of the strongest players, or are you essentially forced to decide to continue playing at that table or go home?
There's a big difference between playing at a table where you're the third-best player and one where you're the eighth-best player. You can try to avoid confrontations with one or two strong players: If you have a marginally playable hand, you might decide to play it against a weak player but muck it against a strong one. Just be careful not to take this approach too far. I've seen many good players so eager to get into pots against weak players that they lower their starting standards too far for their skill edge to matter. Similarly, you can't throw two queens away in hold'em just because it was Scotty Nguyen who made the first raise in the pot.
Having one or two superior players at your table is far more dangerous when you're playing pot-limit or no-limit, because those superior players can bust you in one hand. In a limit game, they can hurt you, but can't bury you, and you can win back money you lose to better players from the weaker ones.
Let's now look at the situation where you've looked around the table to see who the fish is, and can't figure it out. That means, of course, that you're the fish: You're the one the other players will be looking to as a source of chips.
If you're in a tournament, you can't decide to quit for the day, at least not without forfeiting your buy-in/entry fee. However, aside from deciding that a particular class of tournament might be outside your current capabilities, there are still some steps you can take.
First, check the "table break" list. If you see that your table is due to break sometime soon, you can opt to play more conservatively than you might ordinarily, hoping that when you move to your next table, you may get an easier mix of players. Of course, if you stay in the tournament long enough, eventually, all the tables become tough tables, but if you can dodge the toughest players for a while, it's in your best interest to do so.
If your table is not going to break for a long while, you're in essentially the same situation posed under option No. 4 above — a money game you can't leave. It isn't identical, because you can leave that money game without forfeiting anything more than your chance to play that night, and unless you've decided that you're willing to take some losses so that you can learn how to play against better players (a not too unreasonable decision, but make sure it's exactly that, a decision, and not a rationalization), you probably should leave that tough money game.
It's tough on the ego, but discretion can indeed be the better part of valor. It hasn't happened to me for a long time now, but I do remember a $10-$20 game in Atlantic City many years ago. I looked around the table and tried to figure out who the fish was. No, not him; nope, not him; no, not him or her; not this guy … uh-oh, it must be me. I didn't even wait until my blind came around: I got up and left. There were other games I could shift to, but I would have left anyway. I prefer to think of poker as investing rather than gambling, and a table full of sharks is a bad investment, unless you're in the shark fin soup business.
I figured if I could be that badly outclassed in a $10-$20 game, I'd either been horribly unlucky in my random assemblage of opponents, or (far more likely) I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was, from my home game successes (at that point, my only poker experience). I decided I had a lot of reading and studying to do before I returned to Atlantic City.
If you're trapped at a tournament table that isn't going to break anytime soon, you're left to make the best of a difficult situation. You can study your opponents to see if they are indeed trying to get into pots with you: If one plays very conservatively most of the time, entering few pots, but seems to play much more often when you're in, it's a good bet that he has indeed lowered his starting-hand standards, and that he's hoping to be able to push you around. If you push back, hard, you may be able to get him to lay his hand down. Don't worry about how confident he looks, or that he reraised you. Go ahead and bet right into him on the next card. He may decide he's found the right opponent but at the wrong time. Just be careful about pushing this play too far. At a certain point, the pot will become so large that your opponent may decide to call you down if he has any kind of hand.
You can't pull this play too often, or your opponents will figure you out. Just keep in mind that one of the best ways to deal with a bully is to bully him right back.
If you have correctly assessed your status as the weakest player at the table, you're obviously not in a good situation, but you can make it better by not playing the other guy's game. Great players tend to be fairly dynamic and aggressive, and if you're not ready to match their speed, don't try. Wait for real starting hands and push them aggressively.
To make sure you don't become too predictable, you can occasionally play a weak hand like 8-7 unsuited for the same raise you make with A-K. You may get everyone to fold just off your conservative reputation, or you may flop something huge. What you need to do is be very careful if the flop comes something like 7-3-2. You could easily be up against an overpair or overcards, and if you're facing enough opponents, your top pair is an underdog to enough overcards (for example, if you're up against J-10, K-Q, and A-9, if any of those cards hits the board, you're beat). Your top pair might be good at the moment, but it is more likely to be a good trap if your bet draws either a raise (indicating you're facing an overpair) or multiple calls (indicating you're probably facing lots of overcards and perhaps a set, as well).
When you have 8-7, you want to flop trips, two pair, a straight, or the top end of a straight draw. That is, you want a flop of Q-6-5, not 10-9-2, where the jack that gives you the straight gives someone who was loitering around with a two-way hand like K-Q (two overcards and a gutshot-straight draw) a better straight. You're often in danger when holding the bottom end (often called the "ignorant end," especially when there are three to a straight on board) of a straight draw: If you held 8-7, got that 10-9-2 flop, and found yourself up against someone holding Q-J, a jack on the turn would indeed be a great card (unless you were up against K-Q), but it would keep Mr. Q-J in the hand, where he could beat you with an 8 or king on the river. I'm not saying you should fold 8-7 if the flop comes 10-9-2, but you do need to proceed with more caution than you would with the Q-J draw.
In the long run, the only way to deal with stronger opponents is to get stronger yourself. In the interim, try to avoid them, unless there are enough players weaker than you to balance the scales, and be especially careful about playing pot-limit or no-limit against those better players.
It's a delicate tightrope you must walk, because it's hard to improve if you only play against weak players, no matter how much reading or computer simulating you do. If you play against great players only one or two at a time, you might be able to learn enough so that soon you'll be capable of taking them on three or four at a time … and eventually, you'll be the one everyone is trying to steer clear of!
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Poker is a game that goes on within you. Control yourself and you will be a winner.
