Context, Context, Context

My wife and I like our house. It's a little small for our needs, but not so small that we're ready to move. Still, when we're out driving, we can't help eyeing what's for sale, and occasionally we make a mental note and check the asking prices later. Driving patterns being what they are, a lot of our driving tends to be on heavily trafficked arteries. So, when a "For Sale" sign catches our eye, it tends to be for a very nice house that happens to be alongside a major artery. Do we like the house? Sure, sometimes. Do we like the location? Rarely. And when it comes to real estate, location is paramount. While it's fun to look at these houses in isolation, we don't make offers on any of them, and not just because they're out of our price range. As much as we'd like to live in a majestic mansion, we'd also like to be able to walk our dog and occasionally hear a movie over the traffic noise.



When making a decision, whether it's in real estate or in poker, you can't just pick out one factor and examine it in isolation. You need the entire context. It's easiest to make a mistake when the one factor is especially salient. If a house is especially attractive, you may momentarily forget where it's situated. Or (getting to poker), if a starting hand in hold'em has some unusually positive attributes, like Q-J (which, after all, is very colorful), you might momentarily forget that it's not really worth playing for a big raise.



Context is a little tricky; it's not always obvious what's important and what isn't. You might have negative feelings about a house because you don't like the realtor who's showing it, or because the interior is decorated in flamingo pink, or because it was raining the day you saw it. Those may or may not be good reasons to avoid a house. Similarly, you may like your Q-J because you've been looking for a good time to take on that bully who's been terrorizing the table, or because you haven't had anything remotely playable for a long time, so, relatively speaking, it seems pretty strong. Do these factors make your Q-J more playable? Perhaps indirectly they do; if that bully raises with anything, your Q-J is about a 58-42 favorite (if you can get him heads up). If you haven't had a hand for a long time, it might be worth playing a marginal hand, even if your expected value is slightly negative, just to avoid developing a ridiculously tight table image. But you usually need a reason that's at least slightly better than boredom.



We all know the kind of momentary joy that comes with a hold'em starting hand like Q-J after hours of folding hands more like 9-2. The joy comes from seeing a hand that's at least potentially playable, which on a bad day feels like a rarity. But the complete context for your preflop action includes more than your cards. Q-J is a decent hand after five flat-callers. It's a pretty poor hand after two informative raises. While Q-J makes for an easy example, few hold'em hands are universally playable. If you got the same 100 starting hands every time you played poker, you might average playing 20 of them, but due to other factors, end up actually playing anywhere from two to 40.



It's easy to get frustrated about the need to have conspiring factors come together to make a hand playable. Potentially playable hands come along rarely enough that it's frustrating to have to fold them. But there's a nice flip side to this. If you fold some otherwise playable hands when the situation is unfavorable, you can play some otherwise foldable hands when the situation is favorable. For every time you remember that Q-J is junk after a raise, you can consider playing 10-8 suited from late position with lots of company and no raise.



But what if (I can hear you objecting) the other players at your table make sure that just about every situation is unfavorable? Well, there are a few things to consider. First, there are tables that are tight and aggressive and skilled enough that you really will find it hard to find a good spot for your chips. These tables are few and far between, at least in small and medium-sized games, and perhaps are not the best investment of your time. On the other hand, if your opponents are showering the pot with chips indiscriminately, you may need to rethink what kinds of situations you consider favorable. Q-J is a big underdog against most informative raisers, but against a completely indiscriminate raiser, it's a 58-42 favorite.



Thinking about the big picture also helps when mildly aversive things happen, like having the table fold around to your big blind when you hold A-A, or not getting any action on your nut flush. You'd like to make more with your best hand of the session – and in fact you will. Your best hand isn't just the hand with which you have the best cards, it's the hand with which you find yourself in the best position to make money. It might be A-A, it might be a nut flush, or it could be an 8-4 in your big blind that ends up making an improbable winner in a big family pot.



Giving context its proper weight is one of the cognitive functions that depends on an intact prefrontal cortex (aka the PFC, basically the front-most quarter of the brain). It's the area of the brain that's slowest to develop (it could be argued that it's not working fully at least until your late teens) and most sensitive to aging. Luckily, it's not all that important for routine tasks, so if you've played a lot of poker before your PFC starts to go south, and the games don't change dramatically, you still should be competitive without it. People who don't have full use of their PFCs tend to be stimulus-bound; they see something and react to it, regardless of whether or not it's a good idea in context. They probably don't make great poker players. It's OK to have impulses when you play poker, but making the best decisions requires a slightly broader view.

Daniel Kimberg is the author of Serious Poker and maintains a web site for serious poker players at www.seriouspoker.com. You can contact him at [email protected].