Winners are Selectively Aggressive

When I was a teenager, I read a book by John Scarne that helped me to become a winning player. I’m not sure of the exact title, but I memorized three sentences, and I encourage you to memorize them:

“When you have nothing, get out …”

“When you are beat, get out …”

“When you have the best hand, make your opponents pay.”

Of course, you always must consider pot odds and expected value [EV]. If you’re beat, but the pot odds make calling a +EV play, you should call. But the basic principle is correct: Wait until you have a good hand, and then attack with it.

In the games I played as a teenager, almost everybody passively called too often, and rarely raised. They played good hands almost the same way that they played bad ones. Today, many losers play the same way.

Selective aggression is poker’s strategic cornerstone. Most players are not selectively aggressive. They don’t have enough discipline and decisiveness to apply the four forms of selective aggression:

1. Wait for the right cards, then play them aggressively.
2. Attack when you have good position.
3. Select games that you can beat.
4. Attack weaker players.

These forms are interrelated. If you select the wrong game or attack the wrong players, the better players will still beat you. I’ll discuss each one separately, but try to combine all four.

Wait for the Right Cards, Then Play Them Aggressively

If you always call with weak or second-best hands, but don’t attack hard enough with winning ones, you will slowly lose.

A few players are promiscuously aggressive. They attack too often with hands that are weak or beat. They occasionally win big, but usually lose heavily.

Being selective reduces your losses with losing hands because you fold them quickly. Betting and raising aggressively protects you against drawouts and increases the profits of your winning hands.

It takes discipline to be selectively aggressive. You came to play, not to sit, but you have to throw away hand after hand. Then, when the right opportunity comes along, you must suppress your fears and merciful instincts, and attack ferociously.
A tight-aggressive style is not at all natural. As I said in The Psychology of Poker (Page 20):

“Tightness and related qualities such as caution and control are not normally combined with aggressiveness. In fact, you will hardly ever see that combination outside of highly specialized occupations such as fighter pilots and police officers.

“To become a tight-aggressive player takes the right personality, lots of study, and extreme discipline.”

Attack When You Have Good Position

The later you act, the stronger you are. Position enables you to act more aggressively on every street. For example, on the button, you can:

• Raise preflop with small pairs and suited connectors behind several limpers. If you hit the flop, your hand is well-concealed, and you may get lots of action. If the flop misses you but looks scary, you may bluff successfully. You also may take a free turn card, because so many people “check to the raiser.”

• Raise on the flop with a draw, then take a free card on the turn.

• Semibluff on the turn with a marginal hand, then bluff or check the river.
Since you are stronger, you should be much more aggressive in late position than in earlier positions.

Select Games That You Can Beat

Game selection is the most important form of selective aggression. If you select the right games, you will win. If you select the wrong ones, you will lose.

Most people I know — including professionals and authors — don’t believe it. They may nod their head and say, “I agree,” but they don’t really mean it. If they did, they would work more on game selection, but virtually every poker book or discussion devotes many more pages or much more time to how to play hands than to how to select games. Since selecting the right games will have much greater impact on your results than anything else you can do, you should obviously learn which kinds of games are best for you.

If winners can’t find a game that they can beat, they don’t play. They apply an old adage: “It is no good to be the 10th-best player in the world if the top nine are in your game.”

The same principle applies to choosing stakes. As the stakes get higher, the games get tougher. Winners realistically compare themselves to the competition and select the stakes that give them the most profitable edge. If a smaller game looks more profitable than their usual game, they change games.

Winners also look for games that favor their style of play. They keep records that teach them that, for example, they win more in shorthanded games than full games, or that they do poorly against very aggressive opponents. Then, they play in the right kind of games. Most players don’t know which games favor them. They just take any open seat.

A few losers actually look for tough games. They consider poker a macho contest, like the battle between Edward G. Robinson and Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid. They played not primarily for money, but for bragging rights, trying to prove who was better.
It is fun to watch such confrontations, but they rarely happen, at least not between winners. If there are enough weak players, the winners will avoid each other. It is not “professional courtesy.” Winners just value money more than machismo.

Top players play against each other in tournaments, but they are essentially dividing the “dead money,” the thousands or millions of dollars of weaker players’ buy-ins. Without dead money, many pros would avoid tournaments, because it is not profitable to play against each other.

The weak players’ dead money also drives the biggest games. The experts push chips back and forth, waiting for a rich fish. Barry Greenstein’s “cash-game play supports a lifestyle that costs more than $1 million per year.” He said, “You want to play with bad rich players because that is the best way to make the most money. I notice that a lot of younger players want to prove how good they are, and because of that, they do not select good games. … To me, poker is not about proving I can beat everyone. It is about paying the bills.” (“Capture the Flag,” Card Player, May 21, 2008).

Ask yourself: “Do I want to prove something or win money?” If you want to win money, you must be selectively aggressive about everything, especially selecting games and attacking weaker players. My next column will discuss how it’s less challenging but much more profitable to attack weak players.

Dr. Schoonmaker (alan[email protected]) coaches only on psychology issues, such as controlling impulses, coping with losing streaks, going on tilt, and planning your self-development. You can buy his books, Your Worst Poker Enemy and Your Best Poker Friend, at CardPlayer.com.