Timid Tina: how to beat a timid player

1. Who Timid Tina is

Her description in the app is short: timid, not tight — she calls when it's cheap and folds to big bets. Tina sees about as many flops as an ordinary tight regular does — she likes to call when calling is cheap. What she will not do is put in, or face, a big bet. A large bet frightens her off most of her hands; with her own good hands she bets small, or checks and hopes, and so she leaves most of the money on the table that a winning hand should collect. She calls cheap, folds to size, and fails to value bet. That is the whole character.

You have met her. She is the one nursing the same stack all evening, calling the small bets, asking what the big one is twice before folding, and turning over a set on the river after betting a quarter of the pot into you. She rarely loses a stack, because she is never in the pot when the stacks go in — and she never wins one either, because she never charges anybody for the privilege of drawing at her.

2. Timid Tina at a glance

What that adds up to is a timid player rather than a tight one: she plays a normal number of hands, calls along while it is cheap, gives up when it gets expensive, and undercharges you for every hand she wins.

3. How Timid Tina plays a hand

Preflop. She opens a modest range for a small raise — two to two and a half big blinds — and never open-limps. She barely notices where she is sitting, either: the button gets nearly the same range as under the gun, and she never steals blinds, so a late-position raise is a hand rather than a steal. The bigger tell is what she does facing a raise. She would much rather call than three-bet, so many of the pots she plays are cold calls out of position, and a three-bet folds her out of most of them.

Flop. She checks far more than she bets. She does not float, delay a continuation bet or bluff-raise, so a flop raise from her is a made hand almost every time, and the bets she does make are small and honest. Facing a bet she continues with pairs and draws at a fair price. Multiway she is more cautious still: one extra caller folds her off hands she would have called heads-up.

Turn. This is where she quits. Her turn and river commitment sits well below neutral and her scare-card awareness well above it, so a big second barrel takes the pot off most of her range — and an ace, a third suit or a fourth straight card takes it off nearly all of the rest. She will not float you, will not check-raise you, and has no plan for the river: she has a pair and a bad feeling.

River. Almost everything here is honest, and most of it is a check. She hardly ever check-raises, even holding a monster, and hardly ever bluffs a pot that has been checked through, so rivers against her reach showdown more often than they should. She does not value bet thin either. Facing your bet she folds anything that is not good; facing hers, especially a large one, you are beaten.

4. How to beat Timid Tina

Size your bluffs up, not down. Against most opponents a half-pot bluff is the efficient one; against Tina it is the wrong one, because what folds her is the size of the bet rather than the story it tells. Two-thirds of the pot on the flop and a genuinely big bet on the turn take pots away from hands that would call a small bet twice. Pick the turn cards she respects — an overcard, a completed flush, a fourth card to a straight — and fire whether or not the card helped you. If she calls two big bets, you are done.

Take her cheap cards, and pay her in small pieces. Her sizing leaks in both directions, and both are yours. When she bets small into you with a hand, you are usually getting the right price to draw, so call with your flush draws and straight draws and let her under-bet her winner all the way to the river; she will not raise the price on you. Going the other way, she folds to size and calls small, so value bet her in thirds rather than two-thirds: the middle pair that folds to a big river bet calls a small one, and those small calls are most of what she ever pays you. Do not try to build a huge pot with top pair; the attempt folds her off the money she was willing to give.

Raise her instead of calling her. Because she would rather call than raise, she arrives at flops with wide, weak, out-of-position ranges. Three-bet her opens with hands that flop well, isolate her when she calls in front of you, and get the pot heads-up and in position, where her fear has room to work. Two things go with it. A four-bet from her is the top of anybody's range, so your steal is a fold. And when she checks to you, bet: she almost never claims a pot nobody else wants.

5. Mistakes people make against Timid Tina

• Bluffing her small to save money. The small bluff is the one she calls. If a pot is not worth a two-thirds bet against her, it is not worth bluffing at all — check it back and take the free card.
• Treating timid as tight. She plays a normal number of hands; the timidity shows after the flop, not before it. Folding decent cards to a Tina raise because the name sounds like a nit is a leak she did nothing to deserve. Save the respect for her big bets, not her entry.
• Looking her up when she finally raises. Timid does not mean bluffy. She bluffs less than almost anybody at the table, so the curiosity call costs more than every pot her folding gave you.

6. Practice against Timid Tina

Tina is not one of the eight seats at the default table: the guest game — Home Game, nine-handed 1/2 no-limit with $200 stacks — seats two Loose Lucys, two Calling Carls, two Basic Bens, Tight Tom and Aggressive Andy. To play against Tina, pick Low Stakes Nits or Trap House when you start a game; both seat her, and no account is needed. A free account also lets you build your own table and choose who sits with you.

So create a free account if you want to practice against her in particular, or try without an account first if you would rather see the table — the guest session asks for nothing.

7. The rest of the table

Tina is one of eleven characters, and the adjustments that beat her lose money elsewhere, which is the point of a full roster. Size your bluffs up against Calling Carl and he calls them all night. Tight Tom does his folding early rather than late. Loose Lucy plays twice as many hands as Tina and will not let go of them, and Maniac Mike, who has a table of his own (Maniac on the Loose), bets so often that reading a bet as strength stops working. The skill worth practicing is not beating any one of them — it is working out which one you are sitting next to. The full list is on the opponents index.