It Depends

Poker players love to use the phrase "it depends." What do you do with A-K in no-limit hold'em when someone has raised in front of you? It depends. What do you do with 7-6 suited in the big blind if there has been a raise and a call? It depends. What's your favorite poker game and why? It depends. And on and on. In my opinion, "it depends" is many poker players' way of trying to sound knowledgeable about the game without revealing any knowledge about the game. When a player asks me a question about a hand, my answer is never simply, "It depends." I'll explain why.

First of all, "it depends" is not a useful answer. If it depends, what does it depend on? To me, "it depends" is a pseudo-clever answer that avoids offering any real insight into what the questioner asks. If, as an analyst, you need more information to form an opinion about the correct play, ask for the information you need. Don't just say, "It depends."

Of course, "it depends" is often a correct answer, but it's usually one that we can easily improve on. Many people hear "it depends" and assume that it's a reference to in-the-moment factors such as the body language of our opponents, who the particular opponents are, and what our intuition tells us about our opponent's hand. While our best play may depend on those things, a lot of times we don't pick up anything special about our opponents' body language. A lot of times, especially in tournaments, we don't know very much about our opponents. And a lot of times we have no intuition whatsoever about what our opponents might hold. If we do have information on any of these factors, it should really be mentioned right off the bat, when the hand is initially brought up for discussion. This makes it tougher for the analyst to fall back on that trusty "it depends" answer. It's great to get a read on your opponents, but it's not always easy. Unless you're T.J. Cloutier, or another master at reading the opposition, it's extremely important to be able to analyze a poker situation when you don't have any tells to work with.

OK then, what other things might a poker analysis depend on? Well, it might depend on stack size, position, table image, or, after the flop, the number of likely draws on board. These are all pieces of information that should be readily available. If someone asks you what to do with A-K when someone raises in front of him, ask him how many chips he has, how many chips his opponent has, and from what position the raise came. If he can't answer all of those questions, he has to start paying attention to all of that good stuff before he even begins to work on other aspects of his game. Those details are just as important as what cards he had - perhaps more so.

"But, Matt," you might ask, "aren't there situations in which I know all of the other pertinent information, and the best play is not clear-cut? And 'it depends' might be a legitimate answer?" Absolutely, but it's still probably not helpful. Let's look more closely at an example.

Let's say you have everyone's favorite no-limit hold'em hand, A-K. You make a small raise from early position and are called by the player two seats to your left. The big blind also calls. There is $10,000 in the pot, and everyone has $15,000 in his stack.

The flop is 8-6-3, with no two-flush. The big blind checks. What should you do?

Ordinarily, this would be a pretty close decision between checking and betting, and I might lean toward checking. You've been called in two places, flopped nothing, and have an awkward stack size. Any bet at the pot will make it tough for you to fold your hand, and yet, a player with a medium pocket pair is likely to call your bet with that flop. When a player in middle position calls a raise from an early-position player, he usually has a hand, and a rag flop usually doesn't scare him off.

Still, it's a close decision, and when decisions are close, it's always a good idea to poke around for more information. This is when, instead of saying "it depends," I might ask the person who played this hand, "How has the guy who called you been playing?" And I might get an answer like: "Oh, I didn't have a read on him because he'd been calling every hand, so he could've had anything." And then I would say: "Guess what? You did have a read on him."

Reads are not about putting people on a specific hand; they're about putting people on a range of hands. If we can put the caller on almost any two cards in this scenario, there is actually a strong possibility that our A-K still has him beat. In addition, the second opponent in the hand is the big blind, and could've called our small raise with just about anything. Suddenly, moving all in looks like the smart choice. There was no secret tell we picked up on, and we didn't have a moment of ESP at the table. We just had to recognize that one of our opponents was playing too loosely, and then make a strategy adjustment. We knew the right play depended on who our opponents were, but most importantly, we figured out how and why our strategy was affected.

I think we're all starting to see that, indeed, the correct play in a given poker situation depends on many factors, but knowing what those factors are is far more important than knowing simply that there are other factors. Yes, it depends, but "it depends," all by itself, is not a useful piece of advice.

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at www.CardPlayer.com.