Adjusting Your Thinking to Fit Your Opponents

Now that the World Series of Poker is over, I am reviewing a concept that is key to winning in tournament poker. The concept is especially important when you play tournaments with large fields that include amateur, intermediate, advanced, and professional players. In other words, the kinds of tournaments you play at the WSOP, where anybody who has won a satellite or tugged the entry fee out of his pocket can play alongside the pros.

Simply stated, this key concept is that people think at varying levels of sophistication while they are playing poker. The challenge is in figuring out where they are in their thinking and adjusting your play to better compete against them.

This idea was brought home in dramatic fashion to e-mailer Mark: "I'm frustrated and confused, Tom," he began his letter. "Now that I've been playing the $100-$300 tournaments with some success, I haven't been able to win a dime in the $20 daily tournaments at my local cardroom. What's going on?!" Mark's lament rings a familiar bell. Hopefully, I can shed some light on both the problem and the solution.

By the time you've put a few tournament miles under your belt, it dawns on you that your opponents think at different levels of tournament-strategy sophistication, depending on their experience. At the basic level of thinking, a player decides that he holds a good hand, possibly the best hand at the time. One step up the ladder, he determines what he thinks his opponent holds. Moving up one more rung, he decides what he thinks his opponent thinks he has. The highest step on the poker thought-process ladder is deciding what you believe your opponent thinks you have, determining the way that you think he expects you to play your hand (if you have what he thinks you have), and, finally, determining how you think he will play his hand if he has what you think he has.

However, thinking at the highest level sometimes can backfire on you. The reason I often have difficulty playing in low buy-in tournaments as opposed to the higher buy-in events that I usually play is that I am up against a different mindset. That is, I am thinking at level D, for example, while many of my less experienced opponents are operating at level A or B. Many of the lower-limit tournament players I have battled simply play their hands and gamble the way they see fit, rather than using the more advanced game strategy and higher level of logic that I am accustomed to defending against in major tournaments. It is easier to understand the play of a veteran high-limit tournament player who you know is thinking in more logical terms than it is to understand a less experienced tournament opponent who doesn't completely understand where he is in a hand. If he doesn't know why he did what he did, how can you figure it out and make an optimal response?

For these reasons, if you are accustomed to thinking at a higher level of play, you might benefit from adjusting your thinking to that of your opponents who are working at a different level. In other words, don't always try to outthink them. I honestly believe that one reason higher-level tournament players sometimes do not fare well against less sophisticated opponents is that they outthink themselves! They fall prey to "FPS," the fancy play syndrome that Mike Caro once described. They make fancy plays that might have a good long-term result against tough tournament foes, but fall flat against less advanced opponents.

Lots of top tournament players seem to fall in love with their tricky plays, the ones they like to use against talented, experienced opponents. But when they use these same imaginative plays against confused opponents, they get called. Instead, they probably should value-bet their good hands and continue putting pressure on their opponents when they think they have the best of it. This is not to say that you should never make a deceptive move against lesser opposition, but you definitely should not overdo it.

Of course, the positive side is that when an opponent who does not operate at a higher level of tournament thinking occasionally enters the upper stratosphere of tournament play where his opponents are world-class competitors with bracelets up to their elbows, he may become confused. The tactics he used in the low-limit tournaments, the ones with which he has been successful in defeating opponents with skills equal to his, become transparent to higher-caliber opposition, and he loses. This should be music to your ears, Mark.

In closing, a tip of the Stetson to my writing partner T.J. Cloutier, who recently won his fifth gold bracelet when he conquered a strong field in the razz tournament at the WSOP. T.J. is a master at reading his opponents, including those who think at various levels of sophistication. Hopefully, you and I will be shaking hands with T.J. in the winner's circle one day soon.