Easy to Play

It would be great if we could all play our best poker effortlessly. But most of us actually get some return on our investment of effort, and would be foolish to try to glide along without giving due consideration to difficult decisions. With more experience, fewer and fewer decisions will seem truly difficult, and it's possible that with enough experience, the need to expend cognitive effort in playing poker evaporates. I haven't reached that level yet, and from the looks of things at the low and middle limits in the cardrooms I've visited, most other players are in the same boat (although some may not give much thought to the game anyway).

Fortunately, some hands are easier to play than others. If for whatever reason you're unable to play your best but you still want to play, a reasonable approach is to restrict your play to those hands you can play more effortlessly. Although you won't be able to play with the same expectation as you would if you were firing on all cylinders, you can at least keep yourself out of the most difficult situations. Identifying the right hands to avoid might in itself be harder to do when you're not at your peak. But if you can develop a set of adjustments in advance, and draw on them at the right time, in principle you should benefit from avoiding those situations that you will be unable to handle as well as usual.

You don't have to be extremely tired or otherwise impaired to want to restrict your game to easy-to-play hands. The nature of poker is such that most of us occasionally find ourselves in situations that tax our ability to make good decisions. If you're a relative novice at the game you're playing, or if you're variance-averse for whatever reason, it's worth avoiding difficult situations until you're sure you can stay afloat. And that's useful to keep in mind when you're moving up in limits, especially if you have some reason to believe the players at the new limit are more skilled than what you're used to. Although they may take some advantage of your tighter play, in instances of genuine uncertainty, this may be better than getting deeply involved in situations you won't be able to handle well.

It might not take more than a few minutes to come up with a list of adjustments that's right for you. A lot depends on the specific games you play in, so it's hard to make too many specific recommendations. Below I list a few considerations for limit hold'em, as a sort of checklist. It's not exhaustive, but it's at least a starting point. Bear in mind that adjustments intended to reduce the amount of stressful decision-making at the table will probably also have the effect of reducing your variance – and possibly your profit. They won't lead you to optimal play in the broad sense, but they may help you approach subjectively optimal play, given your circumstances at the time.

In hold'em, nonpremium pocket pairs (nines or smaller, tens, and sometimes jacks in looser games) are among the easiest playable hands to play in loose and passive games. You can usually see the flop for a small bet against many opponents. If you make your set or hold an overpair to the flop, you can continue aggressively. If you miss, you can fold. What could be simpler? Of course, occasionally the board will throw you a four-flush, or an opponent will three-bet you on the turn with an unlikely straight. Sometimes a double-suited flop will give you an open-end straight draw. Nothing's foolproof. But for the most part, small pocket pairs will present you with fewer tough decisions than most other hands. Your toughest decision may be deciding when a preflop raise is appropriate, a subject that deserves more space than is available in this paragraph.

In tougher games, small pocket pairs are more trouble. You probably need substantially better circumstances preflop to enter the pot, because you're less likely to be paid off when you hit, and more likely to have something bad happen, like an isolation raise. Although a small pocket pair can win unimproved more often against a small field, figuring out when your pocket fours is the best hand is something better left to when you're feeling more confident.

Medium suited connectors, like 10 9, derive most of their value from the likelihood of making a straight or a flush. Although they can occasionally make second-best flushes or wrong-end straights, for the most part they present few difficult decisions when they hit the flop solidly. One difficulty in playing these hands is in deciding how to proceed when you make middle pair, possibly with a backdoor-flush draw. Although it's not a particularly strong holding against more than one or two opponents, under some circumstances you may want to see the turn for a small bet. At this point, the hand is no longer particularly easy to play, because you may have to estimate the probability that your two pair or trips will be good. So, while medium suited connectors are great hands to play on autopilot, it may be best to fold them when they make middle pair, even if you think a big pot is developing.

Of the many factors that go into how playable a hand is, position is the one that will have the greatest impact on the potential for having to make difficult decisions. And aces suited with small cards are the classic trouble hands to illustrate this point, especially in low-limit games. The pattern is common. You see the flop, hoping to catch a flush draw. You catch an ace instead, and bet out. By the time you get raised on the turn, the pot seems big enough to draw for your kicker. On the river, you feel obligated to make a crying call, and before you know it, you've invested four big bets in a hand that for all practical purposes missed. (To add insult to injury, your opponent's kicker is just the bare minimum needed to scoop the pot.) We all have some sense of what a good vs. a bad kicker is, but for some reason when we flop top pair with a suited ace, that knowledge tends to go out the window.

Although we've all played suited aces out of position now and then, it's definitely something to avoid when you're feeling subpar. Even playing them on the button can be questionable in some games. But at least then they're less likely to lead you into mistakes. You're less likely to see a surprise raise, and you'll have some idea of how many opponents you'll have preflop. When you hit the flop, there's no guarantee that you won't be check-raised, but getting to open on the button is a lot more comfortable than having to decide if you want to open under the gun. If you can occasionally pair your ace and still drop your A-2 suited to an opener, suited aces in late position against a large field shouldn't present you too many opportunities to get into trouble.

In tighter games, many players will open-raise near the button with any ace, suited or not. These hands certainly have an advantage over random cards, and they probably still have an advantage over the big blind's holding, given that everyone else has folded. But at some level, this raise is predicated on the possibility that you may continue even when you miss the flop entirely and your opponent bets. So, at least in tougher games (and it's not clear why you're trying to play effortless poker in a tough game anyway), your most straightforward strategy with these hands may be to try the steal, play aggressively on the flop, and call your opponent down if you smell trouble. It's not liable to be a winning strategy against tough players, but it's probably better than letting the blinds go, even when you're not feeling sharp.

Lastly, and perhaps most obviously, hands like K-10, Q-10, K-J, Q-J, J-10, and A-10 are sometimes playable, but take some skill and judgment to play profitably, especially against tighter opponents. The tighter the game, the more likely these hands are to be dominated against a single caller. For this reason, you could hardly be faulted for leaving them behind in tougher games. In weaker games, I would still consider calling from late position, especially with suited cards. But even then, they're still liable to lure you into trouble, and may be best left for when you're ready to bring your "A" game.

It's not hard to see the common thread here: Playing tighter, especially avoiding situations that are liable to present nasty surprises, will keep you from turning a minor lack of focus into a major loss. Nobody expects you to muck your king-high flush when it's the second nuts in a limit game. But getting committed when your Q-10 flops top pair is something that takes a bit of judgment, sometimes more than you have available. Although the suggestions described above are a bit generic, a more important point is that it can be worth thinking in advance about how to adjust your game for when you don't feel you can play your best. Most poker writers suggest avoiding poker altogether, and that isn't bad advice. But if you do find yourself playing when circumstances are less favorable, adjusting your game to avoid trouble may be the most sensible move.