Adjusting to Your Image

One thing that you must continuously consider as you play is your image — meaning, how you appear to your opponents. I am not talking about deportment or how pleasant or nasty you are, but how you seem to be playing. Most of your opponents have fairly short time horizons, and what you have done recently dominates their thinking.

As I discuss in my book, Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, there are two types of table images: manufactured and evolved. A manufactured image is one that you go out of your way to create, whether it’s by how you dress, how you talk, or how you act. For example, dying your hair purple may indicate to your opponents that you are a wild and loose player, while the exact opposite may be true.

Evolved image is the result of what happens at the table. If you sit down and happen to get dealt five or six premium hands in a row, you will raise with every one of them. If it turns out that you never get to show one, your opponents will be left with the impression that you are a loose, wild player, in spite of the fact that the worst hand you raised with may have been pocket queens.

Why is this important? Because you may think of yourself as a certain type of player, not realizing that at this moment, your opponents are thinking something else. For example, you view yourself as loose-aggressive, but in this game, you have been dealt a series of terrible hands for two or three orbits, and have not played any. Now you see an A-10, and open-raise in your loose-aggressive style. An opponent three-bets you. You may think he is three-betting you with a wide range of holdings because you are loose-aggressive. In reality, your current evolved image is quite tight, so he thinks he is raising a tight player. Thus, his range may be a lot smaller, and his hand a lot better than you give him credit for.

A recent example: It’s World Series of Poker time in Las Vegas, and many of the side games are quite good. I decided to play a $60-$120 game in which none of the participants were familiar to me. As in all games with strangers, I play overly tight for the first few orbits until I get a feel for the playing styles, strengths, and weakness of my new opponents.

Accordingly, I folded for an orbit, and observed that the table was fairly tight. The loosest players were in the 9 and 4 seats, but that looseness was only relative. I was in the 8 seat. During the second orbit, I was dealt red kings in middle position. After a limper on my right, I raised. Seat 1, on the button, three-bet, and the small blind called, as did the limper. Uncharacteristically, and being overly tight, I called. The flop was A-7-3 with a two-flush in black.

All three of us checked to the button, who bet. The small blind called, and the next player folded. Here, I made what is likely an error, but it is in line with my early-table philosophy of reducing variance in marginal situations. I folded, which could have been right, but in an aggressive, higher-limit game, I should have tried to get better confirmation that I was beat before giving up. I easily could have been folding the best hand in a large pot.

That was weak, but the worst part was yet to come. As I flicked my cards toward the muck, they perversely decided to turn themselves over. There I sat with two lovely red kings lying faceup in front of me. Talk about evolving an image! Everyone now knew that I held the second-best hand in hold’em, did not four-bet preflop in a multiway pot, and then meekly folded at the first sign of possible trouble. The two kings were screaming “weak-tight.”

What now? I had created an image, for better or for worse. What did it mean, and how could I exploit it (if at all)? In a savvy game like this, everyone was now anxious to take advantage of my weakness by running over me, expecting me to fold at the first sign of aggression. What I needed to do was look meek, and simply stand my ground. If I made any aggressive move with a good hand, they would run away. This also meant that if I got the chance, I could probably get away with a fairly brazen bluff.

As it turned out, I got a chance to test one of these ideas on the next hand. I got black tens and raised. Everyone folded to seat 4, who had limped and now called. On the 7-high flop, he check-raised me, then bet the turn and the river when small cards came. At the showdown, he announced, “Eight high.” Indeed, he had predictably attempted to power me off a hand, thereby giving me some chips that he might never have given me if my kings had gone in facedown.

Another opportunity came on the next orbit. I held the A 10 on the button. A good player in the hijack seat open-raised and I three-bet. The big blind, who had won the hand when I had folded earlier, made it four bets. The good player and I called. The flop came with an ace and two rags, and I just called the big blind’s bet; the initial raiser folded. He also bet the turn and the river, and I called along. He tabled his pocket nines, so I won another pot that was probably bigger than it would have been if I had not accidentally exposed my kings. As was the case with the pocket tens, if I had dared to raise at any point, I am sure that it would have ended the hand.

Shortly thereafter, I left the game for a better one, with a nice profit.

Conclusion: I am not advocating folding big hands faceup. I am merely pointing out that you must always be aware of your current image, however it evolves, and understand what your better opponents are thinking about you, and how they are reacting to those thoughts. Had my image evolved, for example, by my showing an outrageous bluff instead of a weak laydown, I could have made more money by raising with my good hands, as my opponents may not have believed me, and paid me off.

Sometimes, your image is so poor that the best possible thing to do is change games and start over with a new audience. Generally, however, it is sufficient to know what your opponents perceive your image to be, and to do your best to find ways to exploit it.

By the way, I never found out if my pocket kings would have been good. The button bet three times, and the small blind folded on the river. This was the same guy who bet three times with the nines, so we’ll never know.

Barry Tanenbaum is the author of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, and collaborator on Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies, both available at www.CardPlayer.com. Barry offers private lessons tailored to the individual student. Please see his website, www.barrytanenbaum.com, or write to him at [email protected].