The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend

While many of us like to talk about "a friendly little game of poker," let's face it, even when we're playing with people we like, we're really playing against them, not with them. Although certainly more civilized than violent conflict, successful poker is a kind of warfare, full of strategy, tactics, traps, small battles that serve as preludes to more important conflicts, feints, aggression, focusing on weak spots, breaking the opponent's spirit and will to fight, instilling fear, and ultimately taking everything we can from our opponent. We don't have to hate our opponent: He (or she) merely stands in the way of our objective, and we can't allow that.

Although I've been fortunate enough never to have had to fight in a real war, I'm something of a student of military history, and one of the more common themes throughout the history of warfare is, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," meaning that if Country A is at war with Country B, and Country C really, really hates Country B, there's a very good chance that countries A and C are going to form some kind of alliance to defeat Country B, even if countries A and C aren't particularly fond of each other.

The very same thing can and does happen at the poker table, but I'm not talking about two players who really hate the jerk in seat No. 3 trying to collude against him. I'm talking about the "protected bet," a bet you can make that will succeed only because the first enemy at whom you fire this bet is concerned not so much with you, but with the player or players still in the hand who must act after him.

In some situations, these later-to-act players can become allies, even though they hold the traditional poker advantage of late position on you. Let me take a trip down a fond memory lane that will show you how the presence of third (or fourth) parties in a pot can help you win a hand that you never could have won in a solo confrontation.

The hand took place in a private game in Atlanta many years ago. We were playing an odd form of high-low poker, six-card stud rather than seven (one down, four up, and one down), although in this $10-$20 game, you were allowed to replace a card on the end for $20. So, it played somewhat like seven-stud high-low, but you got to see only two cards at the start, and could never have seven cards in your hand simultaneously.

Just to make things even more interesting, we played this game with a declare rather than with an 8-qualifier, so if you had four jacks and were pretty sure you were up against four kings, you could go ahead and declare for low, and if no one else went your way, you took the low end of the pot. Like most declare games, if you declared both ways and lost one way, you lost everything.

In this particular game, I'd started with a strong hand, and the action remained multiway throughout. Going into the card replacement, I had (6) A-6-3-4 (J). I hadn't been very fond of catching the jack on sixth street, but I still had a draw at a 6-low, aces up, trip sixes – all sorts of promising hands. I replaced the jack, and my 20 bucks bought me a king. There was almost exactly $1,000 in the pot, and I was sitting there looking at a king for low and a pair of sixes for high, and with three other people still in the hand, I knew neither of those hands had a chance to win.

Fortunately, in this game we also played with a bet after the declare, and out of desperation was born an unusual play. I'm quite certain I wasn't the first player to ever try it, but I will give myself credit for inventing it, because I'd never seen it or heard of it before. I took two chips under the table (as everyone does to declare), and instead of coming up with an empty palm that meant I was declaring low, or a one-chip palm that meant I was declaring high, I had two chips in my hand, which meant I was declaring both ways.

I smiled and bet $20, the sort of smile someone gives when he knows he has the goods and that you just have to pay him off because the pot is just too big to give up.

The player to my immediate left had declared high, and had a pair of aces. He smelled something fishy in my declare, but was convinced his unimproved aces couldn't win, because he was staring across the table at the player on my right, who was showing three facecards and had been betting aggressively throughout. My friend with the aces had a feeling he could beat me, but he was certain the guy on my right had two pair at least, perhaps more, so he folded.

The next player to act had just what his board represented, an 8 low, but staring into A-6-3-4 and seeing my two-way declare, it seemed pretty obvious to him that I'd made a 6-high straight, and he wasn't in a donating mood. Two down, one to go, but this player had been drawing all the way, it turned out, and couldn't have called even if he had known I'd only had sixes, because he couldn't beat sixes. He'd been hoping either that his high-card aggression would force everyone else low or that he'd connect on his draw, and he had nowhere to go.

(If you're wondering why I thought I was a better poker player than I actually was way back then, a quick look at this game will probably explain my delusion.)

It was pretty common in this game for two-way declarers to bet and then take the pot uncontested, and my move would have remained forever unknown (I sure wasn't going to fess up: I thought I'd stumbled onto something pretty good here), but a player who had been sitting out and sitting behind me had seen my initial holecard and knew I couldn't possibly have had a straight. He kept quiet during the action, but as I started dragging the pot, he announced in a tone formed with equal parts of respect and amazement, "What did you just do?"

The jig was up: As my friend was going to tell the world about this hand anyway, I went ahead and turned over my $1,000 "worthless" hand. Better still, for about two months, I collected probably another $1,000 in "I'm not gonna let you get away with that move again" calls when I really did have a low straight or a low with a flush.

Just about the time people got sick of paying me off, I tried the move again with another worthless hand, and it worked again. "You've collected too many extra bets from that one move," one folder proudly announced. "You're not going to milk me again." As no one had seen my holecards this time, I merely nodded and took the pot.

Do you see the point? In a heads-up pot, my suspicious neighbor with the aces would have called me for the 50-1 pot odds, but the fourth player's presence convinced him that he still couldn't win. Heads up, the player with the 8 low might have called me, but since I was so obviously unafraid of two pair or trips, I had to have a straight and be hoping the fourth player didn't have a bigger one.

You don't have to play declare poker, or even high-low poker, to put this principle into practice. Anytime you're left with junk at the conclusion of a threehanded pot, and you lead out, the second player has to be concerned about the presence of the third, and if the second player folds, the third player must consider that if you were confident enough to bet into both of them, you must have something, because you had to assume one of them would call.

I wouldn't recommend trying this when your opponents are getting 50-1 pot odds, but with smaller pots, it works more often than you'll probably believe, unless of course you're already a practitioner of this really fun, sneaky move.

The first player to act usually faces a disadvantage in poker, especially against multiple opponents. Every once in a while, if you size up a situation correctly, you can turn that weakness into a strength, just like so many great military tacticians have done through the ages. I don't have any delusions about having been Alexander the Great in another life, but I'll have to admit that Andy felt pretty darned great on the night of "What did you just do?"

Andrew N.S. Glazer is the weekly gambling columnist for the Detroit Free Press and the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way. He is also the online poker guide for www.poker.casino.com, and welcomes your questions and comments.