It was Monday night at Bellagio, and
Monday Night Football was on the tube. Most of the players were watching football, and their poker games were an afterthought.
I find that when players are not paying attention to the game, they are on auto-pilot, making their decisions based on rote strategy. They are much easier to read because they don't make creative plays and don't apply the full arsenal of their abilities.
Distracted players often give up what I call a "distracted tell"; when they miss or hold a nothing hand, they obviously lose interest in the pot and go back to watching the game, or whatever. This presents more profitable opportunities to bluff. Conversely, when they maintain interest, you know that you must adjust your play to the fact that you are much more likely to face competition. By paying or not paying attention, your opponents have disclosed information about their hands.
The football game ended and the players focused on poker. Situational decisions changed and the game got much tougher.
I often play against an impressive young man, a former U.S. Army Ranger who served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has a Purple Heart. He's only 23, but he is building a wealth of experience that may grow into wisdom. I asked him recently about what he observes at the table, beyond the cards.
"I look for jewelry," he said, "rings on women, watches on men. Who is watching TV is important - and who is paying attention. Who wants to win and who is gambling? Are they married? Married men don't tend to dust it off as fast. Are they playing the style that's in a book I read? This can be huge, because now I know exactly how they play. Who's winning? Who's stuck? Who's drinking? Most importantly, what has changed since the last hand?"
The young Ranger gets it!
Poker is fluid. There are few constants in the situations that confront you. Games change. Moods change. Players change. Action levels vary. Players come and players go. You need to be constantly aware of and adjusting to those changes.
I often have seen players move to Las Vegas with an effective style of play, and win significant money with that style. Then, as local players figure out their style of play, and find weaknesses within it and utilize successful strategies against it, they find they are no longer beating the game. Often, they have no clue why they are no longer winning, and complain about their bad luck until they go broke. What they fail to realize is that their opponents have successfully adjusted to their style of play and they need to adjust their play to the changes their opponents have made.
Within given games, things change. As a player, you need to be aware of the changes and, more importantly, the strategies that you must utilize to adapt to those changes.
Take for example Internet poker players who use notes. I find that limiting my notes to styles makes them more accurate, and keeps my mind from going into "note auto-pilot" mode, making plays based solely on my notes and not current observations at the table. Many Internet players get trapped into a note dependency that leads to a rote-strategy style not unlike those watching
Monday Night Football. They see plays, make notes on a player, and play him like he is always in the same mode. On the Internet, you don't even know if you are facing the same person, let alone someone in the same frame of mind he was in when you made the notes. For this reason, as an Internet player, you must constantly maintain awareness of changes that your opponents make.
Consider as another example loose players who have been winning and have colored up smaller denominations for black chips. They tend to lock those chips up; in most cases, they may as well be put in their pockets, because you're not getting any of them. That's why it's almost always correct to break bills and chips for players, and not correct to color them up to larger denominations. Likewise, I have written before that "racked and ready to go" is a state of mind. Players who have just racked chips in anticpation of leaving have locked them up, and are likely to enter pots only with very big hands.
It has been my observation that most poor to average players change their strategies based on emotions, not reason. Good players base their plays on reason. With application of induction and deduction, you can often get a decent feel for play. Once you have assessed a player's knowledge level, you should be able to determine his range of hands/plays in the current situation.
The emotions of players can be trickier. Some people wear their emotions on their sleeves, while others bottle them up inside. When determining the best play to make, considering your opponent's emotions will make your decisions much more accurate. Is your opponent on tilt? Did he just get even and tighten his game up? Did he just win a pot and loosen up because he thinks he's running good? Is he playing scared?
Experience is often defined by what happens to you, but some people learn from their experiences and others make the same mistakes over and over. Wisdom, drawn from experience, comes from accurately analyzing events. And wisdom, not experience, is what makes great poker players. By observing at the table - watching for the moment-by-moment changes in the game and what is going on - you may perhaps eventually gain wisdom for the game. And, you certainly will gain at least some edge - like the young Ranger.
Most things in life are what you make of them. Your poker game is no exception! Take the time to focus on your opponents, analyze the situations you see, and create wisdom from your experiences. After every hand, think through what happened. What did your opponents think? What emotions did they feel? How did their thinking/emotions affect their play? Learn to read opponents with accuracy and they will be easy targets at the table!
Roy Cooke has played winning professional poker since 1972, and has been a Card Player columnist since 1992. He serves as a freelance consultant to the I-poker industry and has a successful Las Vegas real estate brokerage. He has written six poker books, available from www.conjelco.com/cooke. His website is www.roycooke.com. Roy's collaborator John Bond is a freelance writer in South Florida.
