I visited Foxwoods over the Thanksgiving weekend with my buddies Jim and Andre and spent much of my time playing $20-$40 limit stud. But after a while I realized that I was up against a table of very good stud players who were unlikely to be replaced by mediocre or poor players. So I dropped down a level to $10-$20.

$10-$20 is generally a more tightly structured game than its big brother $20-$40. This is due to the relatively smaller initial pot relative to the initial bet size. In $20-$40, a full table has an initial pot of $29 in antes and bring-in. If the $10-$20 were comparably structured, this pot would be half that size—$14.50. But it’s only $11, nearly 25 percent smaller than it would be if the games were identically structured.

Players are correctly less aggressive about trying to win that initial pot in $10-$20 than they are in $20-$40. Players bluff and semi-bluff less, keeping pots relatively smaller, and resulting in less raising and re-raising throughout the hand. In practical terms it means that the swings a winning player must absorb in any particular session or series of sessions are smaller. The games are, simply put, easier to play—though surely less profitable per hour given the lower stakes. And they tend to attract players that are very tight—too tight really.

There was one such a player in this $10-$20 game. She was too tight for her own good—“a wimp” as she put it a few times. She folded well over 90 percent of her starting hands. This alone isn’t necessarily a problem. You can play profitably if you are ultra tight and the table doesn’t notice. If you fold 90 percent of your hands, waiting for premium pairs, and then get called when you complete the bet by someone with a lower pair, you’ll show a considerable profit in the long run. And there are games like that—with beginning, oblivious, or otherwise poor players. But this wasn’t one of them.

At this $10-$20 table, everyone noticed. They commented on it. They joked about it with her. Even so, she refused to bluff or even call with less than a premium hand—no matter her rocky image.

While it’s true that she saved a lot of bets by playing so tightly, when she did finally hit one of those rare high quality starting hands and raised, nearly everyone folded, depriving her of any significant profit. Since she absolutely refused to mix up her play, she might as well have played with her cards exposed.

There were exceptions occasionally. Sometimes she’d call along if she had a flush or a straight draw, or with a pocket pair if the pot hadn’t been raised. But she didn’t play nearly enough hands to get any action when she wanted it.

The corrective action for her game was to do one of two things. Either she should have left the game—going to another game where players were either unobservant or didn’t know her style already (maybe one of the many $5-$10 games). Or she should have mixed up her play. She might have tried a few ante steals from time to time. Every once in a while she might have re-raised a raiser if she had a higher door card, to try and re-steal. She might have thrown in the rare stop-and-go move—calling a raise on third street and then raising the aggressor on fourth street, representing that she hit trips.

It was unusual for any of her hands to progress beyond third street. But when they did, she exhibited another hole in her game that is not uncommon for players at this level—timidity in the face of aggression. I’ll deal with it in the second part of this article.

Ashley Adams is the author of Winning 7-Card Stud and Winning No Limit Low Limit Hold ’em. He hosts the radio show House of Cards, broadcast Mondays at 5 – 6 p.m. in Boston, MA, on 1510 AM, and on the Internet at www.houseofcardsradio.com. Contact Ashley at asha34@aol.com.