Groping the Elephant

There is an old Indian proverb about what happens when several blind men are confronted with an elephant. Each of them is given a part of the elephant to feel, and inasmuch as they are all given very different anatomical regions, they each decide on completely different ideas as to what the animal is. So, for example, the blind man handling the elephant's trunk decides they are facing a snake. Some things are never really made clear in this cute little allegory. Firstly, why are they all standing around fondling an elephant in the first place? But critically, what happens to the poor chap at the rear of this beast?

Poker can be a bit like groping the elephant; tackling a problem, thinking about an issue or situation, you grasp and prod blindly at the bit you can get your hands on, but unless you can step back and see the whole beast, you do not fully understand quite what you have your hands on.

Just the other day, a situation on a well-known poker forum struck this point home to me. The protagonist described a situation in, of all things, shorthanded pot-limit Omaha eight-or-better, at the reasonably juicy $5-$10 level, against loose, aggressive players. Now, the precise details of the actual hand need not concern us; however, suffice to say, he was facing a difficult situation on the turn. Because he had started the hand with only 50 big blinds, and had played his hand aggressively, he was facing a bet on the turn that would set him all in, drawing to a multitude of hands that were not the nuts, with only a small pair as his sole "made" hand component.

As is often the case when a thorny problem is posted on an Internet forum, no one really responded. Ask who is the best player, or engage in some kind of juvenile posturing, and hundreds of posts will ensue. But no one wants to grasp the thorny poker nettle of a "real" question. Eventually, some replies drip-dropped in, and one in particular caught my eye. In it, the respondent stated that this was a marginal situation -- which it was -- and that it was unlikely that there were any hands he was actually beating -- which it also was -- and that even though he was nearly getting the right price -- going all in was less than the pot, so he was getting 2.5-to-1 -- he should "pass and wait for a better spot" against this loose player.
This is madness of the "blind man finding a snake" variety.

It's clear that this well-intentioned respondent was focusing on only one part of the elephant, which is that this was a very marginal spot and that against a loose-aggressive opponent, there will certainly be better spots than calling as an underdog when getting about the right price to do so.

I suspect that there are other parts of the elephant to explore.

One of our intrepid, wise blind men would question whether waiting for the right spot is ever a particularly sensible strategy in a cash game. Now, certainly, but rarely, this situation can occur in a tournament. But if you are adequately bankrolled for the cash game you are playing, there is never a need to wait for a better spot, as you can simply pull up more money if you lose and keep on trying. There are sometimes meta-game factors that will affect this. For example, if you know a poor player will leave when he doubles up, you should ensure that he does not double up cheaply. But, by and large, waiting for a better spot is something you do before you get to the last bet, for example, by playing fewer marginal hands in the first place, not at the point when the pot is very large and you are reduced to one decision.

Another of our blind men would question the whole meta game. Is playing very aggressive pot-limit Omaha eight-or-better against loose-aggressive players in a shorthanded game a good strategy? Is playing the game at all very shorthanded a good policy? And how does playing short-stacked impact on all of these things? This part of the elephant is richly textured and certainly rewards a good fondle. These questions are down to the individual. However, to my mind, they all boil down to the loosely defined term of "edge," meaning how much better you think you are than your opponents and how easily you can continually apply this advantage.

Unless your opponents are terrible to the point of insanity -- and there are a surprising number of these, it seems -- it is hard to imagine a player having a massive sustainable edge in such a game. This is because the villain will repeatedly escape with half of the pot with pretty shoddy offerings, and his aggression will continually put you in difficult spots, as well. Whereas such a foe will be cannon fodder in a ring game of the same ilk, and much more liable to be selectively picked off in shorthanded pot-limit Omaha, he can be surprisingly more dangerous in the eight-or-better version of the game.

The most straightforward aspect of the elephant for our sightless guides to analyse is probably the most unpopular one: the mathematics. These kinds of "only one bet remaining" situations are pretty easy to analyse. You can put in a range of hands for your opponent and calculate what your winning chances are and compare this to your money odds. In this case, it is a pretty clear-cut, if marginal, call. You are not expecting to win, but you are simply getting too big a price to pass. This is why the previous piece of the elephant was so important. If you didn't want to get into such situations in the first place, choose a different elephant.

What happens if we pull all of our blind men together and look at the elephant as a whole? The key component of such a view is simply this: When you get to the point of a decision, you make the best decision you can. Best in poker terms is easily measured by looking at the chances of you winning versus the amounts you risk and the rewards you hope to reap; that is, expected value. Now, there are often other elements of the poker elephant to analyse, such as: Why are we even here? How should we handle a particular foe? These elements should not be discounted. However, when we face the problem full-on, clearly, with all the pieces of the puzzle incorporated, we accept what nature, and the cards, have provided us -- in this case, a rather unpleasant elephant -- and act accordingly.

David has played poker all over the UK for the better part of a decade. Originally a tournament player, now focused on cash play and almost entirely on the Internet for the last three years, he makes a healthy second income playing a wide range of games. David is also an Omaha instructor for CardRunners.com, a leading source of online poker instructional videos.