Breathing In

When you sit down to play in any poker cash game, your first order of business is to figure out how to beat that particular game. This is a sum of activities, including: finding out what a standard raise is; discerning who the frisky players are; rating the skill of your opponents; measuring how tight or loose they play; gauging the state of your own focus and concentration; estimating how much deception or bully behavior you can get away with; and so on. How I go about this business is to take my time and, per Michael Herr's classic book of Vietnam, breathe in to the game.

The key to success in breathing in is to look for any excuse you can find not to get involved. This may strike you as counterintuitive. After all, did you not come to this place to play poker? And if you're a net-plus player, will you not make more money playing hands than not playing hands? Yes, yes, true and true; however, you'll make money playing poker only if you're prepared to play your best, and I submit that you can't possibly play your best until you're armed with sufficient information about your foes … and about yourself.

Check me if I'm wrong: Have you never gone to a club or cardroom firm in the belief that you're on your game, only to discover that you're suddenly and explosively playing loose, weak, tilty, or scared? I have; if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that you have, too. Maybe the traffic got to you. Maybe you're carrying some resentment for someone or something in your personal or professional life, and it manifests itself in impatient play. Maybe it's "just one of those days," when no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to play the A-game poker you know you're capable of. The fact is, you won't know how you feel about being in a game until you're in the game - until you're present at the table, and presently aware of what you have in store for you that day.

Plus, there's this: Why dig yourself into an early deep hole? While you may be able to dig yourself out again, wouldn't it be better not to dig the hole in the first place? Yes, yes, I know: Life is one long poker game and the results of individual sessions shouldn't matter. Nor would they matter if we had perfect discipline and perfect awareness. But for those who fall short of perfection (all of us, yeah?), losing irks us. If we lose early and get irked, we run the risk of playing irked for the rest of the session, which is likely not to be profitable and will certainly not be fun.

How do we dig ourselves into early deep holes? Through reckless adventures. We get involved in dicey situations against unknown foes. (Why unknown? Because we haven't breathed in. We haven't invested time and patience waiting to get to know them.) We overplay hands and make big, ignorance-based mistakes. The next thing we know, we're stuck and bleeding, and our session has taken a turn for the worse, much worse.

Let's say it's the third hand of my playing day, and I pick up pocket jacks, that notorious hand of which it is said (well, it's said by me), "There are three ways to play pocket jacks: all wrong." There's a big raise and two calls before the action gets to me. Remember, it's only my third hand of the session. I have functionally no information about how these people play. Even if the lineup includes players I regularly face, I can't count on them playing today as they commonly do. Maybe they're sick, or stuck, or stoned. At this point, I just don't know. Still, pocket jacks is pocket jacks, so of course I'm going to get involved. In the name of caution, though, I just call, hoping to flop a set and win a monster pot early. Wouldn't that get my session off to a harmonious start?

And here comes the flop: A J 10. Good times - I flopped a set, right? But I don't know if the preflop raiser raises only with pocket aces, and I don't know if the preflop callers are loose enough to call with K-Q, and I don't know who's likely to chase with a draw. I just don't know that much. So when it's checked to me, I bet for information … and the information I get is an all-in reraise. Why? Because among the other things I don't know is that the preflop raiser loves to check-raise post-flop. Or is it a check-raise bluff? Ha! I don't know!

Now I'm stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. Should I fold like an origami crane, get my session off to a losing start, and establish myself as an easily bullied Timid Timmy? Or, should I call for my whole stack and risk burying myself really deep here on hand number three? Yikes! I hate both of my choices. I wish I'd folded those jacks to begin with, and waited until I was better informed before getting involved. But who folds pocket jacks in a cash game in this day and age?

Someone who respects what he doesn't know, that's who. Someone committed to breathing in, to staying out of dicey situations until he learns enough about his foes (and himself) to make those situations less dicey, or even not dicey at all. Suppose that it's an hour later when you pick up those jacks - and by now you have discovered that the bettor and the callers get involved in raised pots with weak hands. Then, when the action goes raise, call, call, you can reraise big and win the pot right there or, at worst, go to the flop with a hand you can now confidently figure to be the best. They say that information is power; in poker, it's cash, just cash.

So the next time you take yourself out to play cards, take the time you need to play the game right. Plan on playing ultra-tight at first, and recognize the many benefits of this. First - foremost - it'll keep you from stumbling blindly into reckless adventures. Second, it'll focus your attention on the task at hand, which at this point is not playing your cards, but instead determining how others play theirs. Third, it'll show you who your prime targets are: who's weak; who's loose; who can be bluffed. Fourth, a bonus, it'll create the false impression that you're a preternaturally tight player, which false image you can use to deceive your foes when you finally do come out swinging.

Let me tell you something I know about me: If my session gets off on the wrong foot, it's likely to suck for a long, costly time. If this is a problem that you don't have, I stand in awe of your tranquility. But if it's a problem that you sometimes have, or a problem that you might have and don't know it or won't admit it, try breathing in one time, just for drill, and see if it doesn't get your session off to a thoughtful, patient start.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and in the blogosphere at somnifer.typepad.com.