The term "Doubting Thomas," a person who does not believe something until shown unquestionable evidence, comes from the biblical story of St. Thomas, the apostle. According to the gospel of John, Jesus returned after his crucifixion and visited his disciples, all of whom were present except Thomas. When the others tell Thomas that they had seen Jesus, he doesn't believe them, and says, "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe."
Jesus then makes a believer out of him when he returns eight days later and says, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing."
To be a Doubting Thomas is to be a skeptic who is figuratively from Missouri, the "Show Me" state. In poker, I use this term in describing a player who, when facing a big bet, does not ever think the bettor really has the big hand the bet portrays. We already have the poker term "calling station," which means someone who calls and calls and calls. The calling station usually calls out of ignorance and curiosity. A Doubting Thomas is a special type of caller. He does not call all of the time; he is just someone who is extremely suspicious of big bets. Confronting him with a big bet is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. He is liable to put his head down and rush ahead blindly.
Like most false philosophies, there is a grain of truth in this way of thinking. It is not unusual for a no-limit hold'em player who's running a bluff to make a big wager, trying to intimidate his opponent. Even the top players can make a misread, thinking a big bet to be a bluff. In the Dec. 12 issue of Card Player, Daniel Negreanu discussed a hand in which his opponent bet $10,000 on the flop into an $8,000 pot. Daniel thought for a while and then reraised all in, running into top set. The Doubting Thomas differs from Daniel - and you and me - in that he never thinks a big bet means a big hand. The truth of the matter is, a big bet is normally either a monster or a bluff (or a big draw), as opposed to an ordinary hand. If you automatically assume that your opponent making a big bet has a big hand, you will get run over in a no-limit game. If you automatically assume that your opponent is bluffing, you will be making a lot of bad calls. No-limit hold'em is not a simple game that you can play by rote rules.
Who is likely to be a Doubting Thomas? In cash games, he is liable to be someone who has a lot of money and does a lot of bluffing himself. Businessmen and bookies are a couple of typical occupations, but the obvious way to recognize this type of player is by simple observation.
The way to exploit the discovery of a Doubting Thomas is also obvious. On your strong hands, bet big. You will get called more often, and also make more money when called.
It is a good idea to set up your game plan against this juicy target ahead of time. Do not bet larger amounts than usual against only the target or only when you have a monster. Bet bigger than usual on occasion against the other players, and when running a bluff. You can pull in your horns afterward if you get called on a bluff, but run with the throttle open until then. If you have a playing style like mine, whereby you enter very few pots (making you look very tight), it is possible that you will have accumulated a nice-size stack before you even get to work your ploy against the Doubting Thomas.
Now that I have explained how to exploit the weakness of a certain type of player by making big bets, I would like to pursue this thought further. The most frequent weakness I encounter with new no-limit hold'em players who start taking lessons from me is an addiction to playing "reverse poker" in regard to their bet size. They bet big on weak hands to avoid getting called, and small on strong hands, looking for action. The transparency of this backward strategy makes them easy to read, but it is far from the only problem with this destructive poker habit.
The purpose of betting is to make money and protect your hand. No one has ever demonstrated to me that betting smaller amounts makes you more money. What I can easily demonstrate to you is that betting smaller amounts on good hands will get them cracked more often, because the caller is getting attractive pot odds. And when a good hand gets cracked, it is usually expensive. In poker, we keep score by how we stand at the end of a session. You can easily do this by looking in your wallet or pocketbook. How many pots you win or lose is a statistic, not a way of determining how you did. Getting one big hand cracked may well cost you a lot more than all of those small bets that you accumulated by pecking away at the other players with offers that were hard to refuse.
Reverse poker also will make your bluffs with large amounts of money easier to read. Your opponent might see that you bet only small amounts on your good hands, and wonder, "Why so large this time?"
Backward betting leads to getting a lot more hands cracked. The signature of the weak poker player is allowing opponents to draw cheaply, then paying them off after they hit. It should not be surprising that doing everything backward will lead to the inverse of your poker goal of making money. You should learn to take advantage of the no-limit hold'em privilege of selecting your bet size by offering the would-be caller worse odds than needed to make the call correct. Keep in mind that the decision of whether or not to call in no-limit hold'em usually includes implied odds (the money that can be made after hitting), and not just pot odds. If you want to offer bargain prices, go back to limit poker, where you really belong.
Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Hold'em Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.
