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Profiling |
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With the warp-speed pace of internet poker play, it becomes important not just to profile your foes but to do so quickly and efficiently, so that you know how to respond to them in the moment. This is not so much about storing long-term information on an enemy (though you can do that, and it’s helpful) but about observing a player’s patterns, assigning those patterns a label, and then using the label to clarify what kind of player you’re dealing with right here and right now. Players will switch gears, of course — and when they do, you amend your label. But your first order of business is to assign a label, so that you can assign a probability of someone playing a certain way. Yes, you’re making a number of assumptions, and no, those assumptions are not backed by massive statistical support. Yet I contend that a player who has demonstrated the ability to check-raise bluff deserves a different designation — even if it’s a tentative, speculative one — from a player who has shown strong tendencies to call and fold. So I watch the patterns to crack the codes, and then sum up my sense of my foes by labeling them, and typing their labels in the text box that UB provides for our note taking pleasure. Many online players disparage this effort. They so rarely see a given foe more than once that they see no point in making book (taking notes) on him just on the off chance that they’ll play together again later. But you’re playing together now, aren’t you? So why not record salient information as it becomes available to you? To name a thing is to own a thing. Just ask Adam and Eve, to whom God gave dominion over all living things, plus naming rights. Once you’ve distilled a foe’s patterns down to a definable handle, you know, well, how to handle him. Even if your assessment is only 50% right, that’s better than blundering lunkenly into an unlabeled opponent. Especially when it’s so easy to apply the tag. What follows are some of the handles, along with associated characteristics and characteristic plays, I routinely assign to the profiles of the players I face. Take a moment to amplify my definitions. Guess, in other words, what you would expect to encounter from a player with a certain label. Note how much information about a player is implied just from his handle and not much more. Don’t be afraid to be wrong in your assessments. It’s learning to make assessments that’s important — and more than most players bother with. If to name a thing is to own a thing, then to define an opponent, and to extend and expand your definition, is to own the deed to his house. KOSHER. A kosher player is simply simple. Straightforward and honest, he plays his own hand and doesn’t think much about yours. Offering little or nothing in the way of deception, he bets, calls, raises, or folds according to the real strength of his holding. Take his actions at face value. About the trickiest play in his repertoire is the check-raise; a check-raise bluff is beyond him. TIMMY. Short for “timid Timmy,” this player is weak, passive, and unlikely to make any sudden moves for fear of startling himself. Timmies don’t play to win, they play not to lose. Therefore you find them liberally inhabiting the middle stages of tournaments, but rarely the final table. Aggressively attack uncontested flops against a Timmy. He won’t play back unless he has a real hand. SPEEDER. A speeder is a dangerous player. He plays fast in every sense of the word, and part of his motivation for playing fast is to get you to play fast, too. If he’s better able than you to analyze and act on the fly, he can make money on the margin, so he attempts to increase the pace of play not just through fast choices but through promiscuous raises and re-raises. Take your time against a speeder. Pause to consider your decisions. This will not only ensure that you’re thinking things through, it will frustrate him by breaking his rhythm. WALLY. A Wally (short for cally Wally) is a weak-loose player. Wallies call too much, fold and raise too little, and chase all sorts of draws without regard to, or indeed knowledge of, pot odds. They’ll routinely call preflop raises with inferior values but, paradoxically, only raise preflop with premium hands. Like their Kosher cousins, they’re more interested in trapping than bluffing. Get against a Wally and you can bet for value forever because he’ll never bluff-raise into you. On the other hand, you can’t bluff a Wally because his calls-with-bottom-pair will wear you out. FRISKY. A frisky player is fearless, creative, difficult to gauge and difficult to put on a hand. He’ll raise with anything or nothing, and can trap, bluff, and drag. He can play strong hands strongly or weakly; he can play weak hands weakly or strongly. Frisky players play a lot of hands and play them well, but they can be beaten through trapping because their own friskiness will often get them out ahead of their hands. FEELIE. “Feelie” describes a broad class of players who are more interested in feeling good at the table than in playing proper poker. Recognize them by the pride with which they show you their successful bluffs and good laydowns. Feelies have ego problems. They need constant external validation, and this need will make them reveal far too much about their play. Do everything in your power to reinforce their sense of smug superiority. Make them feel good enough and they’ll stick around to lose all their money to you. ANGERBOT. Angerbots are a variation of the feelie theme. They want to feel good about their play, and they get there largely by telling you how bad yours is. While it’s remotely possible that their enraged chatbox rants are all an act, it’s much more likely that they’re emotionally out of control. We should not be surprised at this, for the online community is full of players — young men especially — who haven’t yet learned to tamp their Vesuvian tempers. BOOKBOT. A bookbot tries to play correctly according to the starting hand requirements and strategies he’s absorbed from his studies. He has technical precision, but lacks “feel.” He’ll play predictably, and miss opportunities that other, more creative, players would seize. He won’t hurt himself too badly in any game — but probably won’t hurt you either. There are, of course, melds or hybrids of these handles. You can have a kosher-Timmy or a frisky-speeder or a bookbot-angerbot (who will play correctly until he loses his cool). It really doesn’t matter what definition you give to a player, and it doesn’t pay to become too obsessed with fitting players into types. After all, if you try to squish everything into a pigeonhole all you end up with is a bunch of squished pigeons. But the effort to assign handles to your foes pays dividends no matter what words you use, and even no matter how accurate you are, because it gets you into the habit of actively thinking about how your opponents think, and of correlating the patterns of their play to types or patterns you have encountered before. So the next time you play, make an effort to analyze your foes and assign some handles of your own. If nothing else, it will give you a sense of confidence, the confidence that comes from knowing you’ve got them named.
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Some Things You Can Do To Tweak Your Online Play |
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Let’s assume that you’ve got your online poker game dialed in. You’re smart enough to know how to play the game right, and disciplined enough to use what you know to best effect. You don’t play when you’re tired, desperate, drunk or downcast. You stick to the games you’re good at, and you play at buy-ins or limits appropriate to your bankroll. You keep comprehensive records, and your records tell you that if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep on keeping those Neteller funds flowing in the right direction. You’ve solved the problem, right? Not quite. Like the man said, there’s always room for improvement. (Actually I think the man said there’s always room for Jell-o, but I can’t begin to imagine what that has to do with this, so let’s let it go.) To put it another way, if you’re not slowly getting better you’re slowly getting worse, so now might be a good time for you to take a fresh look at your online play and see if there are some tweaks, or improvements, you might make. Maybe these are things you started out doing when you first started playing online, but have forgotten to pay attention to lately. For instance… THINK BEFORE YOU ACT. We know that online play is fast, and we know how furious we get when people slow us down. But apart from intentionally putting the brakes on the game, have you gotten out of the habit of thinking through all of your decisions? Whether you know what you’re going to do or not, it pays to wait at least a couple of seconds — and the same couple of seconds every time — before you spring into action. Why? Two reasons. First, haste makes waste, or if not waste then careless calls. Second, if you aren’t consistent in the time it takes you to act, you’re giving off a big fat tell. Just think about it. You’re playing against someone online, and he makes all of his decisions pretty quickly. Then all of a sudden a hand comes along and he’s taking his time. A lot of time. You don’t know what he has, but you know one thing he doesn’t have, and that’s an easy decision. because if it were an easy decision — as he has amply demonstrated by past example — he would have made it already. He’s giving you big clues about his hand. You certainly don’t want to return that self-destructive favor. Take your time — and always the same amount of time — before you act. GAME SELECTION. The warp-speed pace of play online seems to inspire us to want action now. If we have confidence in our playing ability we become, well, rather careless about our game selection. We figure that it really doesn’t matter who we’re playing against; if we’re on our game, there isn’t a slackjaw on the internet we can’t iron out. This may be true; there are a lot of good games out there. But why settle for a good game when you can snag yourself a great one? At minimum, take a moment to note the average pot size relative to the number of players. You can take a moment to look for an action game, can’t you? If you’ve become so lazy or complacent that you don’t even bother attending to table selection any more, perhaps your game needs something more than a tweak — like maybe a kick in the butt. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. You’re no doubt aware of Poker Tracker, Poker Office and other aids to your online poker play. It may be that when you first discovered these fascinating programs you used them assiduously and religiously, exploring all their provocative possibilities… for a while at least. Many players’ experience of play-assist software is that it’s a tough nut to crack, and once they scratch the surface — find a little functionality they find useful — they don’t bother digging any deeper. Go back and dig. These programs are like unfolding flowers: The more you investigate them, the more they reveal. As you deepen your understanding of those programs, you’ll find that they divulge new utility in ways that you hadn’t expected, or possibly even imagined. SAME OLD SAME OLD. I love heads-up sitngos. It’s almost all I play. I know why I dig them: because I get to be involved in action on every single hand. Every now and then, though, I persuade myself to go check out another corner of the website. I’ll go back and dabble in limit hold’em, or join a full ring game, or even (shudder) play some Omaha/8. Not only does this keep my skills sharp across a broad spectrum of poker, it also alerts me to money-making opportunities I may have overlooked. Look at it this way: Fish swim in schools; if they’re not swimming where you are, don’t you think you ought to try and track them down? ROUTINE OR RUT? Tell me if this sounds familiar: “I’ve been playing internet poker every day for 18 months, but I can quit any time I like.” Online poker is so fun, interesting, challenging and compelling that it quickly becomes a part of the fabric of our daily lives: Walk the dog; check the mail; play a sitngo. I’m not saying we overdo it (far be it from me to say we overdo it) but I would encourage you to take a break from time to time. In anything a person does, there’s something to be said for having a rest, letting the batteries recharge. Especially if your approach to the game has become calcified, you will definitely profit from some time away from the virtual table and from the fresh perspective that your return to the game will bring. TALK IT OUT. As big as the online community is, it’s oddly isolating. We have relationships with our fellow players, but these are mostly adversarial relationships; those are the guys we’re trying to take the money from. Within this splendid isolation, it’s easy to lose track of what works and what doesn’t work online. Get yourself a poker buddy, either online or in the flesh, and make it a point to talk strategy and exchange tips. There’s a wonderful expression that I love: “Nobody knows anything, but everybody knows everything.” To put it more prosaically, two heads are better than one. Put your head together with someone else’s, and plug the respective holes in your play. Well, those are some of my tweaks. I’m sure you can think of some of your own, and I would encourage you to do that now. It’s great that you’ve got a winning style of play, but there’s no reason to take your edge for granted.
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Godzilla Versus Rodan: Pocket Aces Versus a Flush Draw |
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You’re heads up in a no-limit hold’em hand against one opponent. You hold pocket aces and you’re pretty sure he’s on a flush draw. How can you manipulate the situation to maximize your return if he misses, or minimize your loss if he hits? First, let’s wind the betting back to before the flop, so we know how you got here and how much money’s in the pot. For the sake of conversation, we’ll set the blinds at $2-5, give you two black aces in middle position and have you open an unraised pot for $20 — not a bad raise with pocket aces, since you want to thin the field, ideally to just one player, and a bet of four times the big blind will drive out most of the shoe clerks. You get just the one caller, from the cutoff seat, someone you know to be a kosher player — that is, of average skills and a normal approach to the game. You can count on him to be smart enough to calculate pot odds, but not necessarily disciplined enough to follow through on what the odds dictate. Now here comes the flop: K-6-2, two-suited in hearts. There’s $47 in the pot (less rake). How much should you bet? Your preflop raise pretty much dictates that you will bet, as most players follow a RTB — raise, then bet — style of play. Nor would you want to give your foe a free card here, unless you’re the sort of cowering coward who fears that you’ll be called and beaten no matter what, in which case I suggest that no-limit hold’em is not your game; possibly whist. You likely have the best hand, of course, but this is not merely a case of betting the best hand. What do you want your bet to accomplish? It could do one of three things. It could win the pot right here. It could extract extra value. It could reveal new information. For the sake of taking a shot at doing all three jobs (the actual outcome being dependant on what my foe actually holds) I generally like a bet about 2/3 the size of the pot here. If my foe missed completely, it’s a big enough bet to drive him off. If he hit some, but not much, of the flop, it’s a small enough bet to keep him in. And if he calls without raising, he reveals something important about his hand. In the case of the two-suited board, he may be revealing that he’s on a flush draw. He probably shouldn’t call here — “draws are death in no-limit” — but again, this is a foe I can count on to be aware of the right thing to do, but not necessarily to do it. For the sake of the implied odds (the greedy bastard thinks he’s going to capture my whole stack) he’ll probably take a card off. Have I given him the right price to do so? Maybe. Let’s do the numbers. If you flop a flush draw, you’re about 2-1 against completing your hand by the river. Should the pot be offering you more than 2-1 return on your investment, you’re correct to call. If the pot’s offering less than 2-1, you should fold. This I’m sure you know, but we’re reviewing for the stoners in the back of the class. With $47 in the pot, my roughly 2/3 bet of, say $35 will put $82 in the pot. My opponent has to call $35 to win $82. Certainly that’s better than 2-1, but only if he gets to see the river for free. He can’t figure me not to bet again if the turn is a blank (for if I put him on a flush draw, not betting again would be a huge mistake, and I try not to make those). If he’ll fold the turn when he misses, then he really needs about a 4-1 ROI (return on investment) on his flop bet — which he currently doesn’t have — because he’s about 4-1 against completing his flush on the turn alone. But many players aren’t that smart. They routinely confuse the overall odds of making a hand with the odds of completing on the next card, and make their calling decisions accordingly. Sometimes you have to spell it out for them: You don’t have odds to call here, shoe clerk! You should fold. The way to do this is to slightly overbet the pot on the flop. Bet more than the size of the pot – about 1/3 more – and you’ll make it abundantly clear that it will cost your foe plenty — and plenty again on the turn — to see the river with you this hand. Is this the most profitable way to play the hand? Not if you can count on your opponent calling again on the turn. Then you should suck him in with a small bet on the flop, and bet again if the turn comes offsuit (which it will most of the time). However, it is a safe way to play the hand, to guarantee that you get at least something from your pocket aces. In games where volatility is an issue, and especially in tournaments where the fall of a third heart could spell disaster for you, I think it’s better to push your opponents off small pots than to let them into big pots — pots that could very easily not go your way. One thing you don’t want to do is price your opponent into this pot with a hoover bet, a tiny bet designed to suck him in. Suppose instead of betting $35 on the flop, you bet only $10. “He’ll have to call that,” you chortle. “More money for me.” Yes, he’ll have to call. You’re giving him better than 5-1 return on a 4-1 shot for just the turn card alone. If you give him a cheap look at his flush draw and he gets there, well, you have no one to blame but yourself. Of course, you could always check the flop, check the turn, check the river and hope your aces hold up, but that’s a timid way to play poker, and, again, if that’s the way you feel, whist is the game for you, or possibly checkers. “Go big or go home,” right? When it comes to betting the flop against a single foe when you think you have the best hand but he has the best draw, go big enough to encourage him to make the right move, by laying down, or a big mistake by calling. And remember, there are times when you’ll play this hand perfectly, your opponent will play it incorrectly, and you’ll get unlucky and lose. It happens. It’s not a disaster. However, do not for a second hold onto the toxic feeling of entitlement — I fricking shoulda won! — that often comes with pocket aces. If you do, you’ll play the next hands badly, and true disaster could ensue.
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This article has 3 sections. Chose one to jump to it: Every now and then at the poker table in a brick and mortar cardroom you’ll see someone furtively scribbling cryptic notes in his notebook. You suspect that these notes record the hands he’s played, how he’s played them, and the outcomes he encountered. Or maybe they record tendencies or tells that he’s noticed in other players. In any case, you don’t ask what he’s writing – it seems impolite to intrude somehow – and if you do ask, you hardly expect to get a frank and honest answer. He’s working on his own Enigma Code, and he’s not going to help you break it. Online, of course, if someone is taking notes, you’ll never know. It may be that your online foe is sitting in an easy chair in his underwear picking his nose between hands. But he may have six or seven data files open and running, and he may be busily recording, inspecting and interpreting all the data he can gather. This class of action is called data management or, more prosaically, making book. The key to making book is committing yourself to keeping meaningful records about the games you play in and the foes you encounter. When you enter a new game, you want to know – concretely, not anecdotally – which of your enemies you’ve faced before and what they showed you. In the realworld environment, you have to trust your memory, but online you can use much more reliable tools. Notebooks. Spreadsheets. Word processing documents. At minimum, use the note box that UB provides, slaving the information you collect to your foes’ online identities. In this way, or these ways, everything you ever learned about your enemies can be stored and restored, a mere mouse-click away. Why would you not make the effort? Because it is effort. If you’re playing online poker for fun, you may not want to be bothered to make note of the fact that Buckiewuckie likes to check-raise his flush draws or that RocketGibraltar never met a pocket pair he didn’t like. That’s fine. Fun is fine. But know this: The best, most successful online players are making extensive book on you. They have measured you and decided, at minimum, whether you’re a player they can beat. Do you know the same about them? Do you know – really know – which of your enemies can dominate and crush you? They’re out there, but if you have bothered to make book on them, you never have to get in their way. For instance, I’m humble enough to have a Black List, a list of players who have demonstrated to me that they have the best of me. I never mess with them. If I see them in a game, I find another game. Why wouldn’t I? There are so many good games out there that I don’t have to tangle with foes who have beaten me in the past. But I won’t know to stay out of their way unless I know who they are and why and how they’re better than me. Right here, right now, start keeping a black list. When you come up against a player you know to be good, note his name and write a sentence or two, or a paragraph or two, about what makes him a superior player. You can see the twin benefits of this, I’m sure. First you’ll know who’s a must to avoid. Second, by analyzing the play of superior players, you’ll learn what they’re doing right. Are they bullying the table? Putting good reads on their foes? Do they have great image? Simply by listing the attributes of players better than you, you can become better than you, too. By the same token, you want to know who the fish are. You want to know by name the players out there who are chronically weak, chronically loose, chronically willing to play victim for you. Call this list your White List, if you like, or your Fish List, or any name you prefer. But start keeping the list. Start now. Don’t forget to record what makes them such easy marks. Do they buy in short? Call too often? Yield to bluffs or surrender orphan flops? Can you put excellent reads on them or make them respect your raises? Are they afraid of you? And then turn the mirror back on yourself, for just as you can hone your strengths by recording the strengths of others, you can identify your weaknesses by spotting the things that make the fish fish. All it requires is a notebook or spreadsheet and a little hard work. You’re not afraid of hard work, are you? Information is power, this we know. Collecting information on your online foes actually gives you power in two different ways. First, of course, it gives you a line on their play, accurate data you can use to tailor your betting decisions. Second, perhaps more important, collecting information gives you something to do when you’re not in the hand. It allows you to stay mentally engaged in the game – entertained, if you will – and helps you resist the atavistic urge to call too much and play too loose. The most basic information you want to collect on your foes is whether they’re winning or losing players over time. You’ll never have a completely accurate picture of this, of course, because you can’t observe any of your enemies 100% of the time they play. But you can track their performance when they’re in there against you, or even when they’re in other games that you happen to be keeping tabs on. To do this, you’ll need to note the player’s name, how much money he had when you first joined the game, and how much he had when you, or he, left. This can be a tricky business, because players come and go so quickly and with such little notice, that someone you’re tracking may leave the game before you’re even aware of it. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to keep tabs on all your adversaries’ stack sizes, so even if you don’t have an exact dollar figure, you’ll have an approximate picture, and that will be good enough to detect trends. Suppose you’ve played against MonkeyBoy five times in a $4-10 limit hold’em game. Your book on him looks like this:
What does this data tell you about MonkeyBoy? Of course it doesn’t pay to over-interpret short-term results, but MonkeyBoy has booked one small win and four big losses in the times we’ve watched. He’s gone broke a couple of times; once disastrously. And after that disastrous bust-out, he came right back for more the next day, only to take an early quick hit and run scared. Does this mean that MonkeyBoy is a chronic loser in the game? Not necessarily. He may just be running bad, or he may be a new player who has not yet found his feet. Nevertheless, until I see evidence to the contrary (evidence I will accumulate by paying scrupulous attention to his stack) I will assume that this is a player who can be beaten. If the numbers were all reversed – if I saw a player who was consistently beating the game – I would be wary of mixing it up with him. I would consider him skilled until proven lucky, so to speak. It is, of course, impossible to collect even the most rudimentary information on a great number of foes. There simply isn’t time to track everybody’s performance, and still keep your mind on the game. Also, you’ll quickly reach a point of diminishing returns if you find yourself starting book on a lot of players whom you never battle again, or battle only infrequently. These numbers have to be accumulated over time in order to become meaningful, so save your efforts for those opponents who spend a lot of time in the games you play. As a rule of thumb, I don’t’ start book on a foe until I’ve faced him two or three times in a short space of days. Once you get into the habit of keeping book, it will become second nature to you, and it will get very easy. But it’s not easy at first – it’s hard to keep track of a lot of different foes, and it’s hard to justify the effort. I would remind you of that secondary benefit this effort pays: It keeps your own head in the game. It also forces you to focus on the play of others and not just your own activities. Above all, it contributes to your ongoing growth. If you still need a reason to commit to keeping book, consider the sport of horseracing. Many bettors bet hunches, and a few dedicated data miners handicap the races, looking for edges they can exploit. Since horse racing is a pari-mutuel betting system, where the winners are paid from a pool funded by all bettors, at the end of the day the smart handicappers are being paid directly by the lazy or hunchy punters. The same is exactly true online. The savviest players are keeping extensive and detailed book on their foes. They’re doing it now, and they’re doing it at your expense. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you yourself are not doing this, you’re simply another punter in the pool, funding those dedicated few who are willing to do the work. Commit to keeping book. It will make you a better player within yourself and a more formidable adversary to your foes. Tracking the play of your opponents to find out whether they’re winners or losers in the game is, of course, the mere tip of the data iceberg. If you really want to get obsessive about it (and I encourage you to do so) you can record their betting habits, buy-in amounts, starting requirements, degree of trickiness and a hundred other aspects of their online play. In brick and mortar games, all of this information comes to us in the form of “feel.” You know, for instance, that you’ve played before against that guy with the bad toupee in seat three. You seem to remember that he likes to slow-play aces – or was that some other guy with a bad toupee? Then there’s this woman over here… you’re believe that she never bets unless she has the nuts, but you can’t be completely sure, because the information is imperfectly stored in your mind. In online play, the information can be perfectly stored, incident by incident, observation by observation, in any form you care to store it. Some of the “advanced book” factors I like to track include: the capacity to check-raise; raising from early position with middle suited connectors; checking the nuts; bluffing; folding blinds. In the end, there’s no “best” set of data to collect, since there’s so much out there to be had. Over time, whatever information you collect will meld into a gestalt of the player you’re tracking. Above and beyond his win/loss numbers, you’ll have a sense of whether this player is tricky or straightforward, tight or loose, strong or weak. In fact, if you do nothing more than assign these either/or values to your foes, you’ll be able to draw a pretty quick conclusion as to whether the lineup of a given game is favorable to you. Again, I caution you against overdoing this data mining. Above all, you don’t want to let the effort distract you from your own perfect play. In appropriate measure, making book on your foes will harmonize with your own play, and keep you sharp, focused and centered on the game. For my part, all I really want to know is whether a given foe should be considered dangerous or gettable. If I have seen superior hand selection and appropriate trickiness and aggressiveness from a given player, I’m going to do my best to avoid him. Alternatively, if I see someone playing too loose or too soft, I’ll do everything in my power to go after him, even following him from game to game. This is obviously a luxury of online play: If you’re ever against known dangerous players, or even against unknown new foes, you’re simply not taking advantage of the game you’re playing. The mechanics of online poker allow you to handicap everyone, and then to easily select your most choice targets of opportunity. Make the most of those mechanics! There’s one other player on whom you should be keeping book – the most extensive, comprehensive and detailed book you can. Can you name that player? That’s right – you! In the B&M realm, you might be inhibited about recording which hands you played, how you played them, and what the outcome was. In the privacy of your own home, you don’t have to worry about that. You can record literally every hand you play, and then interpret the data on yourself exactly as if you were interpreting it on someone else. Or just download your hand logs and pore over them. You might discover some startling holes in your play. You consider yourself reasonably tight and aggressive – but did you really limp in with J-3s in middle position? You consider yourself to be reasonably aware of your foes’ tendencies – but did you really bet into a known flush-chaser when the flush card came on the river… and then pay him off when he raised? Needless to say, this sort of cold self-examination will do wonders for your discipline. If you’re staring at the hard facts of your leaks, the very desire not to have to stare at those facts will cause you to plug them up. Try it and see. It’s great to keep book on other players – you learn how to beat them. But it’s better to keep book on yourself – you learn how to keep you from beating you.
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When I fantasize about my poker, I try to fantasize constructively. I seek to create and explore situations that amount to puzzles. Given these circumstances, I tell myself, against these opponents, how would I play this hand? Okay, JV, you’re in middle position in a $15-30 hold ’em game. The player on your right has been drinking Tequila Braindeaths and mouthing loudly about his bad luck. He’s down to his last hundred, and seems in the mood to rack off and go home. How can you help? Well, let’s see… He has 20 betting units left, which means he can get to the river one more time in a hand that’s not raised on any street. But if you raise and he calls pre-flop, then he’s got six chips in already. Three more on the flop, and six on the turn means he’ll be all-in with five chips on the river. Given his state of mind, you can probably count on him going pot-commit on the next hand he plays for a raise. Watch out, though! There are other sharks in these waters, any one of whom would love to relieve ol’ Drunky-tilty here of his last $100. So you need to be prepared to raise the very next hand that Drunky-tilty plays. You do have the advantage of position – you get to act first after he enters the pot. Raise, then, with any hand that’s halfway playable. If someone raises behind you, figure that they think they know what you’re up to and plan on capping the bet to signal that you do, in fact, have a real hand. Bet any flop and bet any turn. If all goes according to plan, the pre-flop reraiser will fold, and Drunky-tilty will go all-in with a hand he probably wouldn’t have played in the first place if he’d had his wits about him – which he doesn’t, which is why you went after him in the first place. Remember, though, that if Drunky-tilty comes in and you have absolute garbage, you don’t have to get involved. So what if someone else gets his last hundred? That money will still be there for your taking – assuming that you haven’t crippled yourself in a reckless pursuit. There’s a difference between bold and reckless, even in a fantasy. And even in a fantasy you might not win. Maybe the reraiser will stick around. Maybe Drunky-tilty has a real hand. Well, that’s the beauty of fantasy poker – the chips are fantasy too. But the experience you gain in constructing and analyzing the situation… that’s completely real. That’s something you can use. I don’t draw much distinction between fantasy and reality. It’s my blessing or my curse to experience an invented situation almost as intensely as the real thing. Nevertheless, if I find myself in a live game which mirrors one of my fantasy constructions (which, after all, only mirror all the live games I’ve ever played in) I have the comforting sense of no surprises here. Thus I find that constructed fantasies have become a tool I can use to turn my idle poker musings into directed poker exercises. Give it a whirl. Think about poker situations that vex you, and then navigate a fantasy course through those situations where you’re not vexed, but rather able and adept. At minimum, this is modeling positive behavior. It will help you do the right thing when it’s the real thing, and I think you’ll discover that if you can be not afraid in a fantasy, it’s easier to be not afraid in reality too.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m drawn to six-handed hold’em tables like the proverbial moth to the proverbial flame. And not to beat a dead metaphor about it, it’s useful to remember what happens to moths drawn to flames. Yep, they get burned. So if you’re a six-way junkie like I am, there are a few crucial adjustments you must make to make sure you don’t end up like the moth did. First, let’s examine why we like short-handed games so much. Simple: They give us more action and less downtime. If you’re in a full ten-handed game and you pick up some gawdawful cheese like Q-3 offsuit, you know you have no choice but to fold. (At least I hope you know.) So then you have to wait, wait, wait while the hand plays out, and even at internet speeds that seems like an awful lot of waiting till you get to look at your next hand. Further to that, in a ten-handed game it’s correct to fold marginal hands like K-8 suited because the great number of foes makes it a virtual lock that there’s a better hand out there against you. How virtual a lock? The odds are 4-1 against starting with a hand containing an ace or a pair, which means that in a full ring game an average of two players out of ten will hold one of these hands. Your K-8 is beaten in two places from jump street. No wonder you have to fold. But you don’t want to fold, right? You want to get in there and mix it up. Play some hands. Win some pots. That’s why you logged on in the first place. And that’s why you play six-way. Where it’s more correct to play marginal hands. And not just play them, but play them aggressively. Where even if you do have to fold, with so few players involved, the hand will be over that much more quickly and you’ll be back in action that much sooner. Okay, at least you know why you’re here. At least you have your head on straight. Now here are some things to think about.
There’s much more we could discuss (and no doubt much more we will discuss) on the subject of six-ways and short-handed play, but for now if you want to avoid being the moth burned in the flame, here are the key things to remember:
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If you consistently fold bad cards how do you keep everybody from dropping when you get better cards? If you check all the time you don’t make money! I gather you are asking how you can get action on the hands you play when you play a very tight game, not playing very many starting hands. My answer is that you don’t need to do anything special to generate action until you get to very high limit games. People generally play their own cards when they play poker and most players don’t notice a thing about how anyone else is playing at the table. I am often very surprised when I get four-way action after not having played a pot in what seems like hours. Most players look for any excuse to play. They don’t notice that you are a tight player. Just play your good starting hands and you will get plenty of action. Don’t worry about disguising your play. After a night’s winnings what percentage of the winnings are you supposed to put in to your bankroll? Well, this is a very difficult question to answer as it completely depends on what your goals are. If you have an adequate bankroll for the limit you are playing then you can pretty much pocket any winnings you might make for the night. For example, if you are playing $3/6 and you have a bankroll of around $1,800-$3,000 than I would say have at your winnings. A bankroll within this range is totally adequate for a winning player and there would be no need to roll winnings back into you bankroll. However, if your goal is to move up in limit then you would want to start supplementing in order to build your bankroll. Obviously, the faster you build your bankroll, the more money you stash each night, the faster you will get to that higher limit. It behooves you to stash as high a percentage as you can and still afford your daily lifestyle as the reason you would want to move up, presumably, is that you feel you can make more money per hour at the higher limit. So, to take our $3/6 example, if you wanted to move to $6/12 you would need to double your bankroll. The faster you can do this the better so only pocket as much of your winnings as you need to cover your nut in daily life. If a winning player earns one big bet per hour in hold’em, common sense says s/he should have around 300 big bets for a comfortable bankroll. If this same player plays heads-up, what should his big bet bankroll be? Also, what would you say is a reasonable hourly rate? This is a very interesting question with no easy answer as it completely depends on how good you are at heads-up play. Generally you need a larger bankroll to play heads-up, as it can be much “swingy-er.” A 10-20 heads-up game generally plays much bigger than a 10-20 ring game. So I would say you’d need at least twice the bankroll to withstand the swings. You should expect to make 2 big bets per hour if you are a decent heads-up player so you get the extra earnings for the extra bankroll. However, if you are a truly excellent heads-up player you actually need a smaller bankroll. This is because of the nature of heads-up play — you get to make many, many more decisions each hour of play so your edge is much greater if you are truly skilled at this type of play. An excellent heads up player is rarely going to have a losing hour because of all the opportunities he has to make good decisions and all the opportunities his opponent has to make bad ones. Because of this, a truly great heads up player actually needs a smaller bankroll than he would need to play a ring game. But there are few truly great heads-up players, I mean people capable of earning upwards of 4 big bets per hour. So for your average Joe who is a winning heads-up player I would say look for 2 bets per hour and try to double your bankroll as the swings will be bigger.
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One of the most important skills in becoming a great professional poker player is money management. In fact, money management is, in some ways, much more important than talent. I have seen many good poker players go broke because of poor money management skills: playing too high for their bankroll, playing in the pit, or jumping into games that are too high for the game they regularly play. It is obvious why the first two are examples of poor money management skills. If you only have a bankroll of $1000 then playing $20/$40 is a terrible idea as you can go broke in one play. Taking your poker bankroll and playing pit games such as craps where skill does not count is obviously poor money management. But what do I mean by the last example. Shouldn’t you sometimes jump into a game that is higher than you generally play if the game is great? No! Let’s say you generally play between $10/$20 and $15/$30 hold’em. You walk into the poker room one day, or log onto the computer, and you see a fantastic $30/$60 game with a big $15/$30 sucker in it. What is going to happen to your bankroll if you play in this game? Let’s consider the downside. If you play in this game, it is twice as big as the highest game you generally play in. This means you’ll make twice as much, right? Wrong. The pros playing in the game are going to be much better than you; after all they consistently beat a game twice as big as you play in. Consider how bad the suckers have to be in order to outweigh the fact that you are playing with pros who frankly play on a different level than you do. What often happens is that even though you can pound on the suckers in the game, you become merely a holding station for the suckers’ money on its way to the better pros in the game. So if you want to take a shot at a big game you had better consider how much more skilled than you the pros sitting at the table are. It all comes down to simple risk versus reward. If you are a great $15/$30 player maybe you are beating the game for a full big bet an hour, $30. If you jump up to take a shot at what looks like juicy a $30/$60 game what happens to your earn vs. variance? With the significantly better pros in the game, combined with the fact that you may be playing out of your comfort level, you may now only be taking ½ a big bet an hour out of the game, or $30. That’s the same $30/hour you were taking out of the $15/$30 game with twice the risk! You are earning the same amount per hour but having to fade the variance of a $30/$60 game rather than a $15/$30. In fact the risk is probably more than double as a juicy game is generally wilder; and the wilder the game, the higher the variance. If you are only moving up when the game is really juicy then you are specifically choosing to jump up in high variance situations. So even if you did increase your earn to say ¾ of a big bet per hour, or $45, you are still having to endure significantly larger fluctuations in your bankroll, fluctuations your $15/$30 bankroll may not be able to endure. I know you are thinking that if the game is good enough maybe you could take out a full big bet an hour and double your earnings. Then you should certainly jump up, right? I still say no. For there is still the simple fact that, in the short term, luck is very powerful in poker and on any given day the best player in the game might be the biggest loser of the day if luck isn’t with him. If you want to take a shot at a game you had better make sure that game goes more than every once in a while. Otherwise, a bad day in the game, no matter how good the game, could ruin your whole month. If you jump into a big game and have bad luck it could wipe out all the hard work you have done in the smaller game in one fell swoop. That’s right, poof! Your profits for a month of hard work are gone because you jumped into a wild, albeit great, game double the size of the game you generally play. So consider the risk when you see that juicy game. It might not be as juicy for your bankroll as it looks!
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I played a heads-up match online just now against a player who called himself sour_grapes. “Cool screen name,” I thought. “It speaks to the anger in us all.” Well, it turned out that this guy was every bit as angry as his name, at least judging from the vituperation he spewed into the chat box, up to and including the line you see written above, “I hate you, I hope you die!” He thought I was catching lucky, which I was. He also thought I was playing badly, which I wasn’t. After a while, he couldn’t think of anything at all, except what a lousy SOB I was, and how I deserved to be burned at the stake for making bad calls and sucking out again and again and again. And it’s this business of not being able to think of anything that I’d like to call your attention to: When you let anger invade your play – this you know, of course – you cloud your vision. You’re no longer able to play perfect poker, or even half-decent poker, because you’re jamming your vital perception with the white noise of your own fury. Not only that, you give your opponents a big, fat club to beat you over the head with. Once I knew how angry this guy really was, I adjusted my strategy accordingly. For instance, when flopped a set I slow played it, knowing that his anger would cause him to overbet his hand, which it did. Yes, I was lucky to flop a set, but it was his own flaw – his demonstrable anger and attendant impatience – that allowed me to maximize my gain. Oh, and guess what? When he finally got the last of his chips in the middle, it was on an all-in raise with 9-3 offsuit. Not a bluff. Just wrath. And he called me a bad player? Fact is, he didn’t start out bad, but he sure became bad in the end, and his own relentless rage is the thing that took him down. Look, I know what it’s like to feel fury at the poker table. I’ve been where sour_grapes is many times. I’ll bet you have, too. We try our best to control our emotions, but we don’t always succeed. So it would be unrealistic for me to tell sour_grapes, or you or me to never feel anger; just don’t get angry. Human nature tells us that we will, at least from time to time. One thing we can do – all of us, even sour_grapes – is mask our anger. This is pathetically easy in online poker, where you can conceal all your feelings just by saying nothing at all, by leaving the chat box alone. In live play, it’s more difficult, but not impossible: You’re seething inside at the bad beat you just took, yet you find the emotional wherewithal to smile through clenched teeth and say, “Nice hand.” If you have trouble concealing your anger, it’s vital that you understand the reason why: psychic pain. When I put a beat on sour_grapes (not even that bad a beat, if you ask me), he experienced so much pain that it become more important to him to deal with that pain – by venting – than to continue to play his best poker. This is called feeling your game instead of thinking your game, and ladies and gentlemen, it is the kiss of death. It clouds your perceptions. It weakens your judgment. And it gives your enemies a clear and open avenue of attack. Don’t do it. Just don’t. Swallow that anger. If you can’t dismiss it, dismiss yourself from the game until your tranquility returns. If you can’t do that, the least you can do is not let all that negativity leak out. Don’t let so much as a hint of anger make its way into the chat box, ever. It’ll just make your opponents play more effectively against you. And it won’t even make you feel that much better in the end. As for sour_grapes, I imagine he still hates me and hopes I’ll die, but I won’t give him the satisfaction. Would you?
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If you’re a new player and you’ve watched a lot of poker on television, I’m sorry to tell you but poker on television has done you a tremendous disservice. While it’s fascinating to see a short-stacked player go all in with Q ? -6 ? and get called by someone holding A ? – 2 ?, this is not a realistic reflection of the types of no limit games, and moves, you’re likely to see when you’re just starting out. Not to put too fine a point on it, comparing the final, short-handed, table of a major league poker tournament to a low buy in full ring game, tournament or sitngo is like comparing apples to ducks. There’s just no frame of reference. So as you work on your no limit hold’em chops, it’s a good idea to forget most of what you see on TV and concentrate instead on the fundamental precepts of the game. Yes, there will come a time when you can run spectacular bluffs into unsuspecting opponents or, conversely, heroically pick off others’ bluffs and take down major pots with just jack high, but let’s be realistic: You need to learn to walk before you can fly. Here, then, are some basic guidelines for no limit hold’em to set you on the path while you’re just becoming familiar with the game. DON’T PLAY TOO LOOSE. Just because you see guys on TV calling raises with K-9 offsuit doesn’t mean you can, too. They may know enough about the table and the situation that they can play such hands profitably. You don’t… yet. Eventually you will. In the meantime, let folding be a strength of your game. In a sense, the more hands you don’t play, the better off you are. AVOID BIG CALLS. Most of the time, when you’re faced with an opponent who’s making a very big bet, especially an all-in one, err on the side of caution. Often in such situations we convince ourselves that our foes are bluffing because we want them to be bluffing. That’s filtering reality through hope or, in other words, wishful thinking. It simply doesn’t work. Think long and hard before you make big calls, and make sure you’re calling because you think you have him beat, not because you want to have him beat. BET STRONG HANDS STRONGLY. With big pocket pairs, and especially pocket aces, there’s a great temptation to slowplay those hands because they come along so rarely that we want to make the most of them. Worse, we feel like we deserve to make the most of them, and that sense of entitlement can cause us to try to milk the most money out of our opponents. Trouble is, such soft play often gives our foes correct odds to come into the pot with inferior hands. Then they suck out, and then we feel bad. Don’t worry about not getting maximum value out of your big hands. A small win is better than a big loss. To quote the sage, “Slowplay aces, go to hell.” WORK ON YOUR GAME. Growth in poker is all about climbing from plateau to plateau. The more you know about the game, the higher you can climb — but only if you keep climbing! Read, study, think, talk about the game with your poker pals and keep on learning. In today’s supercharged poker environment, it’s easy for everyone bootstrap their skills to higher levels. If you’re not doing your share of learning, you’re giving away huge edge to those who are. Remember: If you’re not slowly getting better, you’re slowly getting worse. BEWARE FATIGUE. Especially if you play a lot of poker online, it’s easy to get tired and hard to know how tired you’ve become. Next thing you know, a couple of careless decisions have turned a hard-earned profit into a freefall loss. It’s not fun and it’s not necessary. I’m not saying “quit while you’re ahead,” because often the reason you’re ahead is that you’re playing well or playing against weak opponents. I am saying “quit when you’re tired,” and be aware enough and honest enough with yourself to know when you’ve lost your edge. Knowing how to play great poker isn’t worth beans if you don’t have the capacity to do so now. HAND SELECTION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING. Post-modern hold’em theory makes arguments for playing all across the deck, for purposes of trapping, deception, variation, what-have-you. All that variety is all well and good — once you have a very firm understanding of why you’re doing what you’re doing. Until then, study your start charts and make sure that the hands you play are hands worth playing. When you’re new to the game and just finding your way, stick to tautological basics: BAD CARDS BAD GOOD CARDS GOOD Take this idea on board and you’ll play the game mostly correctly while you’re figuring out where the nuances — and your real strengths and abilities — lie.
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What follows may be the single most important piece of poker wisdom I’ve ever encountered. It originates with Tanzan, a 19 th century Japanese Buddhist monk and professor of philosophy at the Imperial University, and it comes down to us today in the form of this Zen story or koan. Tanzan and Ekido were walking together down a muddy road in the rain. Coming around a bend in the road, they arrived at a small, swift stream, where a lovely young girl in full dress kimono stood crying. “Why are you crying?” asked Tanzan. In between tears, the girl explained that she was due at a wedding in a village on the far side of the stream, but to cross the stream meant to ruin her kimono and, needless to say, her entrance. “Come on, girl,” said Tanzan. With that, he hoisted the girl on his back, waded across the stream and deposited her on the far side, high, dry and happy. She went off to the wedding, there presumably to catch the bouquet and/or get drunk. Tanzan and Ekido continued on down the road. Ekido held his tongue until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near women,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It’s dangerous and our order forbids it. Yet you carried that girl across the stream. Why did you carry that girl?” “I left the girl at the stream,” replied Tanzan. “Why do you carry her still?” This koan teaches us the vital poker strategy of letting go. When bad luck or bad beats happen, we face a critical choice: We can hold on to the bad feelings that those outcomes engender, or we can just… move… on. Tanzan tells us that we must move on. If we cling to bad feelings, we must necessarily skew our perception, degrade our decision-making, and move away from perfect play. You flop top pair, top kicker and drive hard against a solo opponent, who hits a two-outer to beat you. You commence to harangue your foe, ruining your peace, your patience and your performance. Put the girl down! After hours of dreary jackthrees, you flop a set, only to be run down by set-over-set, setting you up for an all-night pity party. Why do you carry her still? Look, everyone encounters bad outcomes, and everyone feels bad feelings. Smart, self-aware players acknowledge those feelings and carry on. Weak players, players enslaved to their emotions, never let go, and they pay and pay and pay the price for this emotional addiction. I’m going to give you some advice, and, really, I recommend that you take it: Print this page, cut out the koan of the muddy road and tape it to the bottom of your monitor, where you can see it all the time while you’re playing online. Use it as a defense against your own bad attitude, a constant reminder that Tanzan left that girl at the river… and you should do the same.
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I’m sitting in a red chip hold’em game at the venerable Horseshoe Casino in venerable downtown Las Vegas, and by venerable in the former case I mean respected and in the latter just old, and I find my mind wandering to things other than poker, such as, for example, the various meanings of the word venerable. This is, of course, no way to play Killer Poker or perfect poker or even garden-variety venerable poker, but the mind does wander when you’re in the nth hour of a poker game, where n = four or five hours more than n should equal, if you catch my drift. Among other random stimuli vying for my attention, I notice that the Horseshoe has issued a set of commemorative five-dollar chips featuring the faces of each and every winner of The Big One to date. I am given to understand that there are thirtysomething chips in the set, and this is problematic for an obsessive collector like me, because thirtysomething times five is a hundred and something dollars, and that’s a tough self-indulgent expense to justify, even for an obsessive collector like me. So I have compromised thus: I won’t go out of my way to buy the entire set — that is, I won’t go to the casino cage and lay my money down — but I will scoop up any chip from the set that comes my way in the normal course of play. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that I was distracted, dazed and confused and that my lusting after souvenir chips was doing nothing but harming my focus on, and performance in, the game. I was telling that very thing to myself; a little voice inside my head kept nattering away, saying, “Man, JV, will you stop thinking about these damn stupid collectible chips and pay attention to the game?” This voice, needless to say, I almost completely and totally ignored. Just then, though, a certain commemorative chip came my way, and I found myself staring at the hirsute visage of 2000 World Series of Poker champion Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. Have you seen those bumper stickers with the acronym, WWJD – “What Would Jesus Do?” They’re talking about that other Jesus, of course, but just then, in that poker context, I found myself wondering, “If poker’s Jesus were playing the cards I’m playing, how would he make his moves?” Okay, first of all, we know that if Chris were where I was, he wouldn’t be there, not that late, not that tired and not that mentally wayward. If, though, by some strange parallel-universe machination he found himself sitting in my seat, I imagine that he’d bring his strengths with him to the game. He would have a great grasp of the math of every situation; he’d study the other players till he knew them inside out; he would retain his unflappable tranquility no matter what the outcomes. He would be, as I see it, what he is: a peaceful warrior of poker. And so I got the bright idea to ask myself in every subsequent betting situation, “What would ‘Jesus’ do?” Would he call three bets cold with T-7 suited? I don’t think so. Would he raise under the gun with 2-3, just because he’s bored or tilty or tired of being bullied off his hands? Not hardly. Would he call on the river when he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was beaten by the bettor and other players yet to act? Not in this eternal lifetime. After awhile I really got into it. I was no longer even me playing poker. First I was me thinking about Chris. Then I was me emulating Chris. Then I was me channeling Chris. Finally, in my dangerously addled mental state, I became Chris. I was the peaceful warrior, and boy did my game get good. I was totally focused, locked into the flow and texture of the game. I had good reads on my foes, knew when I could squeeze out an extra bet and knew when to run away scared (or no, not scared; prudent. The peaceful warrior is always prudent but never scared.) I was a much better player playing Chris than I’d been being me. After about an hour of torrid success, I found myself asking myself, “What would ‘Jesus’ do now?” He’d cash out big winners and split, so I did. I relate this tale of hallucinotropic behavior because it recalls the Buddhist concept of “right action, right mind,” a basic wisdom of the so-called Noble Eight-fold Path. According to the principle of right action, right mind, if there’s something you don’t believe in or can’t commit to, but you’d like to believe in it or commit to it, simply act as if you did believe and, after taking the right action long enough, you’ll eventually acquire the right mind to go along with it. In other words, even if you know you’re no Chris Ferguson, pretend you are for a while, and some of his skills and strengths will rub right off on you. Try it and see. Choose “Jesus,” or choose any poker player whose skills or approach you admire. Do what s/he does, even if you don’t believe you can pull it off. Get deep enough into the fantasy and, I promise, you’ll find yourself playing in a new and different way with new and different strengths you can ultimately integrate into your game. For my part, I can’t wait to play “Jesus” again, or Phil Hellmuth or Annie Duke. There are all sorts of playing styles I have yet to explore, and I feel I’ve found a new and powerful way to try them on for size. In the meantime, if you know of anyone who needs thirtysomething commemorative red chips from the venerable Horseshoe Casino, please let me know. It turns out I bought the whole set.
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This is you: You’re ready to dive into Texas hold’em and you’re looking for a basic approach to the game. This is me: The guy that’s got one. By the way, if this is not you, go read something else, because the stuff here is going to be pretty basic and I don’t want you to feel like I’m assaulting your intelligence by telling you stuff you already know. But then again on the other hand, it never hurts to review what you already know and confirm it or refine it or otherwise measure it against what somebody else knows, or thinks he knows, and that, again, is me, the guy that thinks he knows. But standard disclaimer: Every hold’em situation is lovingly gauzed by the comforting words, “It depends.” I can’t tell you what to do in every hold’em situation, or even, probably, any hold’em situation because I can’t know everything you know about the game you’re in, the players you face, the image they have, the image you have, and countless other variables too variable to mention. I will tell you this, though, without fear of contradiction: If you want me to help you build your basic hold’em platform, you’re going to have to help me out. How? By thinking concretely and constructively about the game you play. By doing some exercises I suggest. By making your study of hold’em an active rather than passive pursuit. It’s just not enough just to read some geeze’s advice on the game and then go play. You have to recognize that information is a tool, and commit yourself to mastering the use of that tool. Want an example? Thought you might. In my first Killer Poker book I talk about something called “little poison,” a strategic antidote to the problem that new players (and even some crusty veterans) have about playing with the right tightness. As a rule, players who play too loose get all moist and oozy over hands like small pairs and little connectors and high-low suiteds like Kc -3c . The first thing a hold’em player needs to do, if he wants to have any success at all in the game, is learn how to throw those hands away. Little poison is a strategy for acquiring that discipline. Here’s what you do… Pretend that every card in the deck from seven (or even eight) on down is poison… toxic… a threat on your life. Not only that, pretend that if even one of your cards is little, it will poison the other card and make your whole hand unplayable. Once you take this idea on board, you’ll come to look at little cards in a whole new light. 6-7? Ack! Poison! Throw it away! 6-7 suited? Ack! Suited poison! Throw it away! Even little pairs are little poison when you can’t play them in position against a large field. And ace-little is definitely little poison if you’re in a game where everyone plays any ol’ ace, because your poisoned ace will be outkicked time and time and time again, and you will die. Little poison gives you a focus, a framing device, for throwing away bad hands. It gives you an excuse to say no, rather than the excuse we’re always looking for, an excuse to say yes. It has this added extra benefit: If you’re playing little poison and your foes are not, you’ll be playing with only the top half of the deck, while they’ll be playing with the whole deck, good cards and poison cards alike. This gives you tremendous leverage over them, hand after hand after hand. But like I said, a strategy like this is only useful to you if you commit yourself to using it. So here’s what I want you to do, and call it homework if you like: Next time you play, keep rigorous track of the hands you play. Your goal is to play the session entirely poison-free. That is, you will not voluntarily enter any pot in which your hand contains so much as a single card valued seven or under. That’s draconian, I know, but not as draconian as if I’d said “no eight or under,” which is a perfectly reasonable way to play little poison too. I know what you’re thinking: What about A-7 suited? What about little pocket pairs? Won’t I allow you any exceptions? Won’t I let you have any fun? You know what? No. In fact, not just no but hell no. This is an exercise in discipline. You might miss out on one or two profitable situations, and you might fold a couple of hands you could reasonably have played – I don’t care! If you’re going to have success at Texas hold’em, you’ve got to develop a strong and sturdy set of rules. Once you learn them, and learn to follow them, you can think about situationally setting them aside. But for now, challenge yourself to play the top half of the deck only, and let little poison be your guide. You have much more to gain from establishing discipline than from winning any single pot, no matter how big.
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Part 2: What’s all this Noise About Texas Hold’em Starting Requirements? |
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We all know that A-A is the best starting hand in Texas Hold’em, and 7-2 is the worst. (If you don’t know why 7-2 is worse than 6-2 or 5-2, spend a moment now and think it through.) But between these extremes of riches and rags lies a vast gray area of poker hands that may or may not be played. Let’s walk it down, because your decision whether or not to enter the hand is more important than anything, except that tragic decision you made last week to wear a brown belt with black shoes, what were you thinking? On this page we’ll talk about starting requirements in Texas Hold’em for pocket pairs. On other pages we’ll talk about other things. You’ll play A-A for sure, right? And K-K, too. Q-Q? Why the hell not? J-J? Mais bien sûr! It’s pocket paint, right? How often do you get that hand? Okay, then, if you’re committed to your big pocket pairs, how about pocket tens? Pocket nines? At what point do you stop being committed? And at what point does your strategy shift? Because there’s more to starting requirements than just general tightness or snugness (or even smugness). There’s purpose. You want to know what your hand can do when you enter the pot. In Texas Hold’em, different hands do different things. Some of this you know, and if you do know, forgive me for restating the obvious, but some of your fellow students may have been napping in the back of the class. BIG POCKET PAIRS, A-A through J-J. You’re probably going to play these hands no matter what, even though there are times when you should throw them away, especially pocket jacks, but I don’t expect a saint’s patience from you, so there you go. But here’s the thing about your big pocket pairs in poker: they play best against few opponents. That’s because their high card strength is their primary asset. If your pocket kings encounters a flop like 9-8-7, it’s probably still the best hand, but the more foes it faces, the higher the chance that someone is sitting on a straight draw and getting the right odds to go for it. So if you have big pocket pairs, would you please do me one little favor and raise? Raise! Drive out the ribbon clerks. This is imperative. Don’t get cute and try to trap. You’re not that cute, and the baby rabbit with his foot in the trap is most likely to be you. MEDIUM POCKET PAIRS lose a lot of potential to win without help because they’re so easily dominated by the flop. Your dogballs (8-8) look like happy warriors preflop, but when the flop comes A-K-T, you have to figure you’re beat. What, then, to do with middle pairs? Fold before the flop? Oh, I wish you would, just for the discipline you’d demonstrate. Failing that, treat your medium pocket pairs as the drawing hands they are. They’re really not going anywhere for you unless you hit a set on the flop, and that proposition, in Texas Hold’em, is 7.5-1 against. So try to sneak in late in an unraised pot with lots of callers, recognizing that your post-flop strategy is fit or fold: Either you’ll get help from the flop or you’ll get gone. Yes, there are times when you’ll raise with middle pairs in an attempt to isolate against the A-Ks and A-Js of this world. Just don’t try to force the issue by overplaying your middle pairs in early or middle position. You’re inviting too much loving attention from all the overcards (or, zounds, overpairs!) behind you. LITTLE POCKET PAIRS are a great, chip-sucking vacuum. We look at them and our eyes go glassy. We do some rudimentary math and realize that we’re better than even money against any unpaired hand. Against any single unpaired hand, yes, but not against even one more than one. (You want math? Oh, I got math. Against Ad-Kc and Qh-Jc , your frisky 4h-4c will lose 70% of the time! Sobering, ain’t it, Bunky?) Little pairs, even more than medium pairs, then, demand large, soft fields and unraised pots. Don’t even think about playing them in early position, because you won’t know if you’re going to get the soft field and unraised pot you need. Limp late into large fields or chuck ’em in the muck. Sure, sure, sure, every now and then you’ll flop a set – and confirmation bias will tell you that it happens much more often than not. But the bottom line is that little pairs are little poison, a disastrous leak in most people’s play. If you’re paying any attention at all to the notion of starting requirements, pay attention to this: Most players can’t get away from any little pair. If you can, you’ll be so far ahead of them they’ll never catch up. Recap:
I’m the first to admit that these are guidelines not rules. I don’t want you to get hamstrung by starting requirements any more than I want you to wear black shoes with a brown belt (please don’t do that again). But starting requirements – or let’s call them starting strategies – are there to keep you on the straight and narrow until you’re savvy enough and experienced enough to know when exceptions can be made. Until then, do yourself a favor and err on the side of tightness. The hand you don’t play is a hand you can’t lose.
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Part 3: More Noise About Texas Hold’em Starting Requirements |
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What’s your favorite Texas Hold’em hand? A-A obviously, but what about among unpaired hands? Do you favor Q-T — the Varkonyi? Doyle Brunson’s famous T-2? Does your taste run to suited connectors? Do you have a special fondness for the straight potential of a T-J? Whatever your sentimental choices in Texas Hold’em hands may be… stop that nonsense now! There’s no place in Texas Hold’em for sentiment, and no sensible discourse on starting requirements can go forward until sentiment is left behind. Yes, yes, yes, I know, know, know that you once called with 7d-5d and flopped a straight flush. That doesn’t make it a winning hand. That just means you got lucky once, and if you let the memory of that past luck dominate your thinking, you’re doomed. Likewise, any time you play a hand on a hunch, or you’re feeling bored, or because impatience got the best of you, you’re toast. Just toast. So here’s the way to think about starting requirements: not just whether to play a certain hand, but why you feel the need. Take your big aces, A-K, A-Q, A-J. You’ve probably heard that the deeper into position you get, the lower your starting requirements with aces can go. That’s true as far as it goes-if you’re holding A-J on the button, there’s not likely to be a better ace lurking behind you in the blinds. But just because you can play a hand doesn’t mean you should play a hand. Suppose you’re in late position with that A-J and three notoriously – I mean notoriously – tight players have entered the pot before you. Do you think that your A-J is the best hand now? Not bloody likely. Yet you might still trick yourself or talk yourself into playing. Why? Because you’re impatient or bored, or you believe “jacks are coming,” or because you once won a big pot with that very exact hand. Can you say balderdash? I think you can. Good, now that we’ve got that sentimental claptrap out of the way, we can go on to a quick and dirty guide to Texas Hold’em starting strategies for various unpaired ace hands. As always, these are guidelines, not straitjackets, but if you didn’t veer too far from this plan, you wouldn’t go too far wrong. GOOD ACES. Good aces are position dependent. An A-T is not a good ace in early position. You probably need to hit the flop twice (with two aces, two tens, or an ace and a ten) to feel confident, and you just can’t count on that. The same A-T may be considered a good ace in late position. Thus, give yourself a sliding scale. A-K is always a good ace, A-Q likes a little position, A-J likes a little more position and so on. A-T is a bad “good ace.” I wouldn’t get all that worked up about it. Don’t get all drippy about suited big aces, either, because they’re not much stronger than unsuited big aces. In general they add about 3% of value. 3%! That’s less than I tip! And yet you’ll encounter players who consider big suited aces to be magically endowed. Don’t fall into that trap. Here’s a useful rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t play an unsuited ace in a certain situation, don’t play a suited one either. MEDIOCRE ACES. I call them mediocre aces on purpose because I want you to think of these cards (A-9, A-8, A-7) with abiding disdain. They’re not good hands, and you shouldn’t treat them as such, even if everyone else at the poker table has other ideas. In fact, the more excited your foes are about aces, the less enthusiastic you should get about your middling ones. If everyone plays any ace (in a game that’s said to be below the anyace line) then there’s no way someone makes a sensible laydown with an out-of-position A-T or A-J. Your promiscuously played A-9 or A-8 will end up being dominated and crushed. Sure, you’ll hold dominance over the nitwits playing baby aces, but you’ll only be able to exploit that dominance if you know your opponents very well and can put them on worse aces than your own. And look at the bind that gets you into! If the flop comes A-big-big, you’re heading for a split pot situation, but if it comes A-little-little, you could be staring down the barrel of a flopped two-pair. Again I would repeat: The hand you don’t play is the hand you can’t lose. With your mediocre aces, you should either be staying out of trouble or raising with intent to clear the field and capture the blinds either before or after the flop. At this point, you’re playing the naked strength of your ace. You’re looking either for folds all around or for calls from hands like K-J or 7-8, followed by a ragged flop you can bet. But that’s running a bluff, not betting a strong ace. BAD ACES. Like any other hand containing a little card, bad aces are contaminated by little poison. I can see no rational reason for playing A-6, A-5, A-4, A-3 or A-2, even suited, except in unraised blinds. Especially in the aforementioned anyace games (the kind you’re likely to encounter at the low limits you now play) any little ace you play is likely to be dominated and crushed by the slightly less cheesy aces your opponents opt to play. They can’t stay out of trouble. Can you? Talking points:
You can tell by now where my orthodoxy lies: I’d much rather fold a potential winner than play a potential loser. Are you prepared to tell me I’m wrong?
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Part 4: The Last Word on Texas Hold’em Starting Requirements |
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We’ve talked about starting requirements for Texas Hold’em hands with pairs and hands with aces, one of which you’re likely to pick up about one time in five, on average. 80% of the time, then, you’ll be looking at unpaired, unaced hands. What are you gonna do with them? Let’s take a look. WHEELHOUSE HANDS. In my nomenclature, wheelhouse cards are cards between ten and ace-in most players’ wheelhouse, so to speak. A wheelhouse hand, then, is one containing two unpaired, unaced cards: K-Q, K-J, K-T, Q-J, and Q-T. Those are some pretty hands, right? Erk. Well, maybe. K-Q probably gets more players into more trouble than any other hand in the history of Texas Hold’em. It flops a top pair, good kicker, only to get crushed by top pair, ace kicker. Remember, most people will play K-Q, but virtually everyone plays A-K and A-Q, so if you get heat in this situation, it’s probably from a better hand. This whole class of hands, though, represents a slippery poker slope. If you can convince yourself that K-Q is playable, how much argument could K-J require? And if K-J is good, what could possibly be wrong with Q-J? Q-T? Before you know it, you’re considering any wheelhouse hand to be playable, even for raises. Again, in all of this I don’t put much more value on suited hands than unsuited ones. All “suited” seems to do is beguile the mind, and make us think that our hands are much, much stronger than they are. Remember my rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t play it unsuited, don’t play it suited either. Speaking of suited… MIDDLE SUITED CONNECTORS. These hands have value in one particular way: If everyone else is playing wheelhouse hands, and you play something like 9-8 suited, the hand that hits you is unlikely to hit anybody else. So I say, yeah, go ahead and play your middle suited connectors, with the following big caveats:
This last point is crucial. If you can’t get away from suited connectors (or any hand) on the flop, you shouldn’t play them in the first place. We are our own worst enemy sometimes, and never is this more evident than when we chase, chase, chase with little or no piece of the flop. Okay, other Texas Hold’em hands. LITTLE SUITED CONNECTORS. Little poison. Don’t play. UP-DOWNS. An up-down is something like K-6 or Q-5 or J-7. Don’t play ’em. UP-DOWN SUITEDS. Don’t play ’em either. GAPPED HANDS. T-8, 9-7, 8-6, etc. These forlorn ragamuffins are looking to hit the flop twice for two pair, trips or an open-ended straight draw. It’s delusional madness. Don’t play. UGGOS. An uggo is an ugly hand with absolutely nothing going for it. 8-3, T-2, 9-4. Don’t play. Not ever. I mean, seriously, get real. Here’s the deal with starting requirements: Either you have them or you don’t, and either you respect them or you don’t. There are plenty of players out there content to play any hand they hold. “Any two will do,” they believe, and God love them for their cherished beliefs. Over time, they’ll give you all their money… so long as you don’t sink to their level. Every poker hand is a horse race, you know. If every race were equal, everyone would win the same amount over time. But the races aren’t equal – not when you have the choice of racing or not racing. When you enter the pot with good cards, it’s like starting with a big head start. When you go in with bad cards, it’s like starting with a big, fat handicap. Having – and sticking to – a starting requirements strategy, ensures that you usually start with the lead. Either a big lead, as with big pocket pairs, or a small lead, as with A-big. Start with a hand like 7-6, though, and you’re back, back, back in the pack. Yeah, you might win, but you inevitably have some catching up to do, and most of the time you’ll finish exactly where you start: behind. How about skipping that part? If you’re not the favorite, scratch yourself from the race! There’ll be another one along in a minute.
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You’re sitting at your desk when the telephone rings. You answer, and it’s someone gawdawful boring and windbagly… a real and true time sink. No problem for you, though. You just pop up UltimateBet.com and jump into a poker game. This is multitasking at its most sublime: Some creep is killing your time, but you’re playing poker behind his back and he has no idea. How cool are you? Or maybe you’ve called customer service at some airline or bank or utility company and they’ve put you on perma-hold, filling your ear and your brain with tinny muzak, probably something like A Thousand Strings’ rendition of the Captain and Tenille’s Muskrat Love. A fair working definition of hell, yeah? So you distract yourself with a quick hit of UB fun. How cool are you? Or perhaps you’ve got the latest in tuner technology that lets you watch TV on your computer screen (I do, and let me tell you, it fricking rules!) The Big Game is on, and while you’re completely spellbound by The Big Game, you’re not all that interested in the commercials, being as you are not in the market for a new car or a sexual function enhancer. So you bip over to UltimateBet, and kill that commercial time with Texas hold’em poker at the limit of your choice. Seriously: How unbelievable super cool are you?! Cool enough. If you can manage it. If you can concentrate on two things at once. Where one of them might cost you money. If you don’t have to shift your concentration from the game at a critical moment because, like, your boss has asked you a question or you’ve finally gotten through to customer service. If the Big Game doesn’t come roaring back and steal your focus from your poker. If you’re sufficiently committed to playing your best that you don’t treat this diversion/distraction as a throw-away session where it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. It always matters whether you win or lose. So here are some things to keep in mind if you’re going to treat online poker like solitaire.
Folks, I want to make one thing clear: I am not advocating that you treat online poker as a diversion or a distraction, or something to keep your ADD-addled mind happy while you’re on hold on the phone or held in thrall to some yammerhead. That wouldn’t be responsible of me, and I’m a responsible guy, you can ask anyone. The fact is that online poker plays best when you give it your full and complete undivided attention. The further fact is we’re human. And if it’s our mother, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, boss, bank officer or parole officer on the other end of the phone, we will be tempted to sneak a few hands of hold’em into this otherwise dry desert of time. Okay, then. Do it if you want to, or do it if you must, but remember that a short session, especially under these conditions, is a powerful force that can only be used for good or for evil. The last thing you want is to turn a ten-minute phone call into a hundred-dollar bankroll drop. So play tight. Let the fact of not playing hands be as mentally engaging to you as the fact of playing hands. Be thoughtful. Avoid costly entanglements such as raising wars which can kill hours of profit in a single hand. And get the heck out of the game and go back to doing what you were doing before. Life is long. There’s plenty of time to play poker. After all, the phone could ring at any minute now.
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I’m heading out to Vegas and 70% of my gaming will be at the poker tables. How would you rate the top 5 Vegas poker rooms and are there any solid tourneys you’d recommend? The Bellagio is number one, then The Mirage and then The Horseshoe (although, I love The Horseshoe the most myself!). The Bellagio is for high stakes games mostly… The Mirage is for medium and the Horseshoe could have some great games with great action if you’re staying downtown! Check them out using the links below: Bellagio.com Do poker professionals really play online at UltimateBet? Absolutely! You’ll find many top professionals playing at the real money tables at UB. Should pot odds determine playing or folding blind hands? It has been getting me in trouble lately. No! Forget the pot odds! This concept of pot odds forgets to mention that you can lose a ton of money when you ‘hit’ your weak hands, especially if you aren’t a seasoned pro that can fold the hand when you hit it halfway. I have had pretty good success in tournaments by simply not getting involved much in the early rounds. Try to get ahead and then play extremely tight. Do you agree with this stratagy? Absolutely! Playing conservatively early keeps you ‘in the game’ until you can get some good situations to put your money into. Keep using this strategy, but remember that you need to make some moves later in the tournament (not too many moves, just some).
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What led you to a career as a professional gambler? How did you start? I wanted to be a professional gambler because of the freedom if affords me. Also, poker is a great challenge, and it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to succeed as a professional. What your thoughts are on bankroll management? Do you use stop-loss methods? Bankroll management is very important! You should never play in any game that is too high for your bankroll. If you are not comfortable at the limit you are playing, then it will be difficult to play your best. I rarely use stop loss limits, but am more concerned with how well I am playing. If I am losing, but am playing well, and the game is good, then, I keep playing. I try to be objective about my play. If I have lost a considerable amount, and don’t feel that I am still on top of my game, then I may quit. Conversely, when I am winning and the game is good, I won’t quit. What type of mental preparations do you go through before a big ring game or tournament? Before a major tournament I try to reflect on the way I have been playing recently. I then may make some general strategies. It is very importantly to be mentally prepared for a major tournament. Recently during a pot limit game of 7 card stud I was dealt wired up 4’s too start. I decided to play them quietly and got improved past rather quickly. I’ve also been outdrawn before with wired up kings. Is it best to start hitting the pot big early with any wired up trips or to a point did I play these correctly? Small rolled up trips should be played strong early, maybe on 3rd street, but surely on 4th or 5th. They can easily be beat, so you don’t want to trap too long or you may get broke. If you play them early, players may think you only have a big pair in the hole, and then if they make two pair early, you could bust them. Also, you get the pot built early, so if you fill up, you can win a big pot. I’d probably raise on 3rd street to represent a big pair in the hole. If you raise on 3rd, opponents won’t think you are rolled up. I’ve been playing poker for about 9 months and I believe that my skills have dramatically improved after many hours of practice on Internet tables and many articles/books later. I started playing low limit poker at casinos and would like to know when I would be ready for higher limits. How should I measure my skills? Also, I find that with the lowest limits, there are a lot of calling stations and people who just play bad. At what limits would these players be weeded out? When you play in bigger games, the competition will obviously be tougher. You should not progress up until you are winning regularly at the limit you are now playing. Then you can gradually increase the size of the games you play. But be careful, because as you noticed, the very low limit games have many weak players. It may be more difficult to win in the bigger games. You won’t get so many free draws, and you won’t get paid off on borderline hands as often. Usually, the biggest game is the toughest game, but this is not an absolute rule. I remember a few years ago, the Horsehoe had 10-20 limit Hold’em games that were much harder to beat than the 20-40. The 10-20 game had many struggling players who were trying to make a living, while the 20-40 had many people splashing chips around. The main criteria should be that you can win consistently. Only then should you step up to next level.
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Pug Pearson, who was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1982, says that you have to be able to do three things to become a successful poker player:
Pug also says that winning at poker is only two things:
Pretty simple right? So, maybe now you don’t need to read any further. Just go out and win. Well, Pug is right. But, to be really successful you must do what he says, and that requires many skills: judgment, intuition, determination, nerve, perseverance, savvy, card sense, experience, instinct, and on and on. I can tell you how to play various hands in different positions, what the odds are, and how to employ tactics, but the really great poker players have something more. They have something inside themselves. They have a fierce desire to win. The money is always a primary reason, but it’s not the only one. Maybe it’s the competition or the glory of a championship. For many, it’s the respect of their peers and the skill required to get that respect. Whatever the reason, great poker players can put it all together. There are many pitfalls in poker. It’s inevitable that you’ll have a big losing streak. Sometime in your career, it will happen. We’re not talking about running bad for a few days, we’re talking months. How you handle that losing streak may determine your future. I know many great poker players who have crumbled under the pressure of a long stretch of bad luck. MONEY MANAGEMENT ATTITUDE
If you can answer yes to any of the above questions, you are not maximizing your potential. If you have a negative attitude, then it is impossible to be focused in a poker game. The only thing a negative attitude will do, is cost you money. So, always try to play your best, have a positive attitude, quit bad games when you are losing and playing poorly, and keep playing in good games when you are winning and playing well. This will put you on your way to becoming a great poker player.
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When I first started playing poker, my big brother gave me a great piece of advice. He told me to never lose more than 30 big bets in a game, give or take. That means I shouldn’t lose more than $180 in a $3-$6 game, $600 in a $10-$20 game and so on. What a great piece of advice that was, one of the most important he ever gave me for money management, so I’m going to pass it on to you here: “Don’t ever go off for more than 30 big bets in a poker game!” When you are first starting out as a poker player it is very difficult to judge whether you are a good player or a bad one. Until you have a lot of experience and table hours under your belt there is no way for you to effectively judge your skill level. More importantly, until you have played a lot of hours it is difficult for you to judge your level of skill compared to the other players at your table. One thing the 30 bet rule does for you is limit your losses in games where you might be the sucker. Until you are able to accurately judge how you play compared to others in your game, loss limiting with the 30 bet rule effectively stops you from dumping off large sums of money in games you may not be able to beat. This is always a good strategy for bankroll health! Even if you have enough experience and table hours to judge whether you are good, better or worse than the game you have chosen, loss limiting is still a good strategy. When we are losing it is difficult to accurately judge exactly how much losing affects our play. Even great champions will often be in a game they could generally beat soundly but because they are losing. They become a dog to the game and don’t realize it. When you are losing, your table image erodes and table image is very important to how much money you can take out of a game. Other players are also more likely to play hands strong and fast against you, bluff at you and generally will be more likely to run you down which will take away your ability to bluff. All of this really eats into your earnings. Not only will your table image erode when you are losing but your skills will erode as well! As you go into the mindset of wanting to reduce your loss on losing hands you will play hands softer than called for, back off hands, and won’t raise when appropriate. And we all know that passive play is a recipe for losing play. Losing generally makes us all more passive. Yet, there are those of us who steam… we chase hands we would normally fold or play hands we would normally never get involved in and the like. Steaming is another recipe for losing. By limiting your losses to 30 big bets, you are effectively minimizing the time you spend playing with a poor table image, playing passively, or steaming at the table and maximizing the amount of time you spend playing your A-game. If you don’t go beyond 30 big bets, you won’t dump off large sums when you are playing poorly or are in a bad game and might not be able to soundly assess your circumstances. Loss limiting acts as an objective stop-gap. So always listen to big brother… keep your losses small!
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As we build our practice of poker, it’s useful to think of ourselves as serving an apprenticeship. There are a few reasons for this.
On the subject of tools, let’s look at some that should be part of your practitioner’s kit: A NOTEBOOK. I can think of nothing more vital for growth in poker than a player’s journal in which to record discoveries, painful lessons and targets of new opportunity. Much of what you discover will not be new, for others have walked the path before you. But the discoveries you make and record, even if not new, are the ones that carry the force of revelation, and the lessons you learn for yourself are the ones that stick with you most. What form should your notebook take? Whatever form you’re comfortable with. You could keep a spiral-bound cheepie in your pocket when you play, or maintain a bigger book for more extensive recollections, or write on a computer like I do. Or all of the above. Just not none of the above. You can’t really consider yourself serious about poker if you’re not taking notes, or at least note. A SCORE SHEET. What separates poker pretenders from genuine students of the game is a willingness to book all losses and wins faithfully. Absent this commitment, we tend to get fuzzy with our thinking and imagine that we’re “generally beating the game” with no real evidence to back that claim. The minute you record your first session-results, your apprenticeship has well and truly begun. Paper and pencil will serve you in this at minimum, though there’s no shortage of electronic tools out there, too. Card Player Analyst, StatKing and Poker Tracker all make it easy to record, sort and analyze the hard truth of your play. Again, it doesn’t matter which method you use so long as it’s not no method. Serious players keep score, and that’s that with that. A LIBRARY. “If I have been able to see further,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” With so much solid, sensible poker literature out there, no poker apprentice need ever go through the journey alone. And only through hubris or laziness would one ever ignore or overlook the words that have come before. What books should be in your library? Oh, man, just go off in all directions at once. Every book has something to teach you, if only to show you approaches you don’t feel are right for your play. Also remember that you can’t enter the same river twice, and the book you read as a neophyte will speak completely differently to you once you’ve had a chance to grow in the game. What other tools does a poker apprentice need? Well, suppose you tell me… THOUGHT FOR THIS PAGE: Man uses tools; were it not so, we’d still be living in trees wondering where our next banana was coming from.
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Let’s talk about your goals. Where do you want your poker game to be a week or a month or a year from now? It’s a given about goals that you can’t begin to move toward them until you state them, so I would ask you to take a moment to think about – and write down as precisely as possible – your poker goal or goals. Here are some possibilities that cross the mind.
Here’s a general goal that encompasses all these individual goals and more: to acquire, nurture and enhance my practice of poker. What does it mean to have a practice of poker? Several things. You study and think about the game a lot. You read about the game and discuss it at length with like-minded friends. Every time you play, you try to take some learning away from the game. Every time you play, you devote your full concentration to the matter at hand. In short, you take this shit seriously. You keep score. Of course you keep score. You book every win and every loss, not because you’re obsessed with numbers, and not because you have some silly requirement to win every time you play. You keep score because you know that keeping score tells both you and the world that it’s your intent to improve and grow in the game. You’re realistic and clear-eyed. You know you’re neither the world’s best player nor the world’s worst. You also know that “comparisons are odious,” and you recognize that measuring your status against any other player’s is a frivolous waste of time. You don’t let contempt or envy cloud your thinking. You hold self-indulgence at bay. Your purpose in playing is not to kill time or chase the buzz or distract yourself from other facts of life. Your purpose in playing is to strive for razor-sharp execution on every hand you play. You understand that having a practice of poker means nothing more and nothing less than closing the gap between the player you are and the player you want to be. How do you build a practice of poker? That’s easy. Just work a little on your game every day, and soon the act of working on your game will become your habit, as natural as breathing. Whatever your long-term goals, set yourself this short-term one: to be a better poker player today than yesterday. This is a goal you can always achieve, just by thinking about and working on their game, and always trying to play your best. THOUGHT FOR THIS PAGE: To fulfill your destiny you must first define your destiny.
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Your poker philosophy should be built on two principles: aggressiveness, and honesty. Aggressiveness is a given. Anyone who plays the game for any length of time quickly learns that the person who takes command and control of the poker game has the best chance of scoring a big win. But honesty? What’s up with that? It would seem like honesty and poker are mutually exclusive concepts. After all, victory in poker comes from deceiving your foes, convincing them to bet when they should fold, fold when they should raise, and in all ways respond to the false signals you send out. What is the bluff – poker’s fundamental building block – if not an elaborate and strategic lie? Maybe this will clear things up: When I talk about honesty, I’m talking about self-honesty. It’s fine to tell lies to other players at the table; you’re right that that’s part and parcel of the game. But telling lies to yourself is something that simply cannot be tolerated. Just look at all the trouble it can lead to.
Can you think of other lies that could lead to trouble for you or for players you know? I’m not asking you just to think about that. I’m asking you to really ponder the question and get involved with the answer on the deepest, most articulate level. Because here’s something else about your poker philosophy: It’s proactive. If you’re not vigorously involved in improving yourself as a player, then you’re wasting time, opportunity, money. Maybe this is how you should think about aggressiveness: It’s not enough to be aggressive as a bettor, you must also be aggressive in getting better. So I’d like you to do me a favor. Write up a little list of all the ways you could be more honest with yourself about the choices you make playing poker. You don’t have to judge yourself harshly, or hold anything against yourself, and when you’re done, if you like, you can burn the list, lest it fall into enemy hands. Do, though, tell yourself the truth, because nobody’s perfect, but everyone can be honest, and I’ll tell you with all the courage of my conviction that the more honest you are with yourself (and not just honest but honest and articulate) about why and how you play the way you play, the better your game will get. That’s not a philosophy. That’s a fact. THOUGHT FOR THIS PAGE: Deception is what you do to others; delusion is what you do to yourself.
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Let’s get one thing straight from the start. I’m no smarter than you, you’re no smarter than me. We are two together side by side walkin’ down this very interesting path of poker. If I’m a good teacher it’s only because I’ve been a good student: avid, energetic, relentless in my pursuit of higher poker knowledge. Should I succeed in infecting you with my enthusiasm for that pursuit, well, that’ll probably be more darn useful to you than anything we might together discover about raising with pocket jacks or the proper defense of blinds. So I call myself your guru with tongue planted firmly in cheek – only maybe not so, because I understand what the guru’s real job is. Not to boss but to serve. Not to instruct but to invite. Not to order but to inspire. It’s my job to establish you in higher poker consciousness and to help you stay there. Seems like a highfalutin goal for something as prosaic as poker, but I imagine it’ll pay you other benefits as well. Can you imagine what some of those benefits might be?
And what’s your job in all of this? To study. To learn. To bootstrap yourself to successively higher levels of poker achievement and deeper levels of poker understanding. To have character and fortitude. To overcome (here comes the new age part) your ego and delusion, and establish a real, open, honest and thoughtful practice of poker. I don’t have a hard job. All I have to do is transmit. You don’t have a hard job either. All you have to do is receive. Together we’ll both grow. Together we’ll walk down the road. THOUGHT FOR THIS PAGE: The practice of poker requires the right attitude of devotion every day, even when outer circumstances are chaotic. |
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