Basic Ben: The Baseline Player

1. Who Basic Ben is

His description in the app is four words: neutral baseline (all 50s). Ben is not really an archetype; he is the reference player every other seat is measured against. Each personality is a set of numbered dials — how loose, how aggressive, how easily moved by a big bet — and Ben's judgment dials all sit at the midpoint. The dials that describe a habit or a trick sit at zero: no bet-sizing tell, no overvalued pairs, no slow-plays, no open-limps, no floats, no delayed continuation bets, no deliberate randomizing. There is nothing to read and nothing to exploit, which is the point of him.

You have met the live version, even if you cannot remember a hand against him. He is the quiet player two seats over who opens a sensible range, folds when he is beaten, bets when he has it, and never does anything you would tell anyone about afterwards. He is neither good nor bad. He is what average looks like when it is genuinely average.

2. Basic Ben at a glance

Nothing on that list is a strength and nothing is a leak. He plays a bit over one hand in five, he arrives raised a little less often than a good regular would, and everywhere else he sits in the middle of the range because that is where every one of his dials is set. He does nothing well and nothing badly, and in a soft game that is enough.

3. How Basic Ben plays a hand

Preflop. He opens a standard range and never open-limps, so a call in front of you is a call and not a trap. His sizing is ordinary — a raise to about three big blinds, a little more with callers already in — and it never varies for effect. Position registers but does not dominate: he opens more on the button and will not attack your blinds like a serious regular. The gap between the hands he enters and the hands he raises is the most useful thing to know about him: that gap is where his weakest hands go.

Flop. He continuation bets around half the time, with a normal share of bluffs mixed in. He does not float — he will not call your flop bet with nothing, planning to take it away on the turn. He gets the price on his draws about right rather than exactly right, and he tightens up multiway. If you can beat an average stranger on a flop, you can beat Ben on one.

Turn. This is the street where the other characters do something odd, and Ben does not. He never delays a continuation bet, so a flop he checked is a flop he has usually given up on, and a turn bet from him is a turn hand. A scare card slows him a little, not a lot, and his commitment threshold is average: he gets a strong hand in and does not build a big pot with a medium one.

River. His river betting looks like a competent stranger's — value hands, an ordinary number of bluffs, ordinary sizes. Because he has no sizing tell, the big bet and the small bet come from the same kinds of hands. Facing your bet he folds what missed and calls with what did not. The one surprise left is the river check-raise with a monster, which sits at the midpoint: he does not trap earlier, but a checked river is not a free pot.

4. How to beat Basic Ben

Attack the calling gap preflop. He enters more than a fifth of all hands and raises barely more than a tenth, and everything in between is a call — the weakest holdings in his range, and the ones he has committed least to. Three-bet his opens a little wider than you would against a tight regular, and squeeze when he flats in front of you. He is neither the nit who folds everything nor the station who folds nothing, so the fold equity is real without being free.

Take the pots he declines to fight for. He bets about half his flops, never floats and never delays, so a flop he checks is a flop he has largely written off and the turn behind it is available for one bet. It works in your favor when you check, too: he attacks weakness at a midpoint rate, not a regular's rate. None of these pots is big. Added up over a session, small pots are where the difference between an average player and a good one shows.

Play fundamentals, because there is no read to find. There is no leak here to attack, so your edge against Ben is whatever your own game is worth: position, pot control, folding the bluff-catcher when his line is consistent, betting thin when it is not. That is unglamorous, and it is the test. If you cannot beat a player with no leaks, the money you win in your home game is coming from other people's mistakes rather than from your play. He is also a measuring stick: every dial of his sits at the midpoint, so setting your own game beside his tells you which way you drift.

5. Mistakes people make against Basic Ben

• Hunting for a tell in his bet sizes. People spend a session decoding his half-pot bets against his two-thirds bets. Nothing is encoded. That dial is at zero — the information is in the board, the line and the position.
• Reading a checked flop as a trap. He does not slow-play, at all. When Ben checks the flop he usually has very little, and checking back out of caution declines a pot that was being handed over.
• Filing him as a nit because he raises so seldom. A player who enters far more pots than he raises looks like a folder, so people start bluffing him relentlessly. He folds to pressure at an average rate, not a nit's rate, and that is enough to make a bluff-heavy plan lose.

6. Practice against Basic Ben

Ben has a seat at Online Grind — a nine-handed 1/2 no-limit game with $200 stacks — alongside Solid Sam, Agent Arthur, Optimal Olivia, Tight Tom, Aggressive Andy, Loose Lucy and Calling Carl. You do not need an account to sit down; the guest session asks for nothing.

Try without an account, or create a free account if you want your hands and your own numbers kept — the only way to see which way your own game drifts.

7. The rest of the table

Ben is one of eleven, and the one the others are defined against. Tight Tom is Ben with the looseness turned down and the fear of a big bet turned up. Calling Carl is Ben who cannot fold a pair. Loose Lucy plays twice as many hands and gives most of them back. Aggressive Andy pushes where Ben waits, and Maniac Mike, who has a table of his own (Maniac on the Loose), does it with no brakes. The full list is on the opponents index.