Break Down Your Enemy's Strengths and Weaknesses, as Well as Your Own

I will be blunt. At the poker table, you have few if any real friends. Many people may seem friendly or even go out of their way to be nice to you, such as showing you a big hand when you make a good laydown or congratulating you on a nice play while you're scooping up a big pot. They are often the people of whom you have to be most wary, as lots of these people are putting on a facade. They are often being nice to you as a clever ruse to try to get you to let your guard down, so that you'll start making mistakes, mostly by playing predictably against them. The nicest guy to you at the poker table may voluntarily show you five monster hands in a row just so that he can try to run a big bluff on you in the sixth pot. Honestly, this is not a bad approach in certain games. I have found it to be very lucrative to keep the general mood at the poker table as light and friendly as possible. You want to encourage a fun atmosphere, but never lose sight of your ultimate goal, which is to extract as much money as you possibly can from the other players at the table. By maintaining a friendly atmosphere, you can often turn those tricky players' facades against them and start pushing them around, while they are convinced that you must have a strong holding to be betting and raising them, given your kind rapport with them.



For each opposing player, you want to have a strategy, even if it is a simple one. Before you sit down in a poker game, you must be completely realistic with yourself and understand your own strengths and weaknesses, especially those regarding the particular type of poker you are about to play. The way to create a successful strategy against each opponent is to combine your knowledge of your own strengths and shortcomings with an analysis of your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. You want to focus on getting involved in situations that I will term skill gaps, in which you put yourself in good scenarios where you can fully use your strengths against your opponent's weaknesses without letting him flip the tables and take advantage of your weaknesses. You will be able to dominate some opponents significantly, since one of your strengths – let's say, your keen ability to properly value-bet a hand on the river – will exploit one of their greatest weaknesses, such as paying off on the end with a holding that has little chance of winning. You will often want to avoid getting involved with certain players who you think hold an advantage over you, or who seem to possess significantly more poker ability than you do, unless you start with a premium hand. Likewise, you will want to be more involved in pots against opponents who are weaker than you, especially when you have a chance to exploit a significant skill gap in their weaknesses versus your strengths.



Poker is a game of constant adaptation, and you must be willing to make drastic adjustments to keep your expection as high as possible. This may apply even more when you're away from the poker table than at it, as game selection will often be the most important factor in determining whether you win or lose (and to what degree) in any given session, and especially in the long run. The bottom line is, make sure you pick your battles thoughtfully, as every time you sit down in a serious game, you are entering a fight, and I want to see you win these fights over the long term. Don't get discouraged if you find yourself booking lots of small losses, as long as they are balanced out by big wins and you are a net winner. Even many of the most talented players lose more times than they win, but their final net results are all that really matter.



Unless you are an extremely talented player, I believe it is best to specialize in one type of poker game, at least until you think you have mastered that particular game at a high level. In determining which type of poker game you should specialize in – whether it be live or online, heads up, shorthanded, or full games, limit or no-limit, or hold'em, Omaha, stud, triple-draw, or any other poker game – keep in mind which game caters to your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses. There are many bonuses in knowing how to play lots of different types of games, but at least initially, I would rather see less-experienced players focus and devote themselves entirely to one type of poker that suits them best. Once you are a consistent winner in the game you have specialized in, feel free to move on to other types of poker. Even some of the most succsessful poker players in the world play primarily one game, and that is fine.



Personally, I find myself getting bored easily with many poker variations these days, especially in ring games. To cater to my strengths when I play online, I often play in shorthanded games or heads up, as I prefer to play a wide selection of hands and I believe that one of my greatest strengths are figuring out patterns of how people play and value-betting the river well (both of which are skills that are absolutely necessary to win in shorthanded or heads-up poker). Thus, when playing online, I play primarily high-stakes, heads-up limit hold'em and limit Omaha eight-or-better, as I believe that I am most dangerous and talented in those games. As a complete aside, I rarely play no-limit hold'em online, since it does not cater to many of my strengths and exploits one of my greatest weaknesses, which is making big laydowns in no-limit. I find that I often end up getting a lot of money in when drawing slim or dead in online no-limit games, so I have done my best to avoid them and stick to what I think I am best at and what I have won at most consistently. Live no-limit hold'em suits me much better, primarily because I play no-limit by feel, which is very difficult to do online, as it is tough to pick up tells that one is confident enough in to act with little or no other reasoning to back up a particular play. Therefore, I play live no-limit mostly in big tournaments, where I am able to get better reads on the opposition.



Now, so far in this column I have provided a lot of valuable information, but I have not provided any clues on how to apply it, which could easily lead to financial disaster for you. In an effort to provide complete information, I will rate several different types of poker games in my next column, and discuss what kinds of characteristics each game requires for mastery. Here are a few of the basics: Regardless of whether you're playing live or online, you must play much tighter in full games than in shorthanded games. You also must play tighter in aggressive games. Therefore, these types of games will likely most suit players who are inclined to play very tight and disciplined preflop, and have the patience to wait around (sometimes for many hours) without playing a big pot. Shorthanded games, especially heads-up games, require a widely different set of skills. Depending on how aggressive your opponents are, you may want to play much looser and more aggressively preflop. If your opponents are passive, these types of games will favor players who like to play more aggressively and gamble more. So, if you're more of a gambler than a rock, I recommend playing in soft, passive games as opposed to more aggressive ones. If your opponents are already playing extremely aggressively, you must adjust by playing tighter both preflop and post-flop, and if you cannot do this, I recommend that you find a different game. I find that I like to play lots of marginal hands preflop, so I favor heads-up and shorthanded games, since these games enable me to play how I want to, and cater to my strengths. I often will leave a game if it becomes full, since full games do not suit my style, as I seem to have become increasingly looser and more aggressive over my poker career.



Sorry to leave you hanging, but next time I will go into greater detail regarding what games will likely suit your style best, and what adjustments need to be made when entering each particular game.

Thomas "Thunder" Keller is a 25-year-old professional poker player and one of poker's young and rising stars. He can often be found playing at UltimateBet.com under the name thunderkeller. To learn more about him and to enlist in his new poker squadron, go to his website at http://www.thunderkeller.com/. Also, feel free to contact him at [email protected].