The Wrong Things to Think About

You are entering the middle stages of a tournament. You are pleased that you have been playing steady poker and have worked your starting stack of 5,000 up to 6,800.

With 100-200 blinds, you are in the big blind with 8-8. A tough, aggressive player who has been raising more than his share makes it 700 to go. He has paid a bit for his aggression, and has 4,500 in his stack before the raise. You put him on two overcards and make the call after everyone else folds.

You like the rainbow flop of 9-6-2. You decide to check and wait for your opponent to make a normal continuation-bet of 1,200 or so into the 1,600 pot, then make a move. However, after you check, he moves all in for 3,800.

He has been aggressive, but he has not been reckless, and here he is suddenly making a move for all of his chips. Your first thought is that you have him covered, and that you initially put him on two overcards. You can stick with that read and make the call.

Then you realize that you would be calling off 3,800 of your remaining 6,100. That is a lot of chips, and if you lost, you would move from a comfortable position to a short 2,300.

You think it would be nice to win and eliminate a pesky opponent. And, it would feel great to pick off a move and have a big chip stack, even though it is relatively early in the event. But is it a move?

You are not one of those psychic players whose initial read is always dead-on. He could easily have an overpair, which would be totally consistent with his play, instead of the two big cards that you think (hope) he has.

Even if your pair is good, you still don’t have a lock. If your pair is no good, you will be drawing thin, indeed. After some thought, including perhaps a brief attempt to gain a tell by asking something, you decide that you don’t want to risk most of your chips with a pair of eights at this stage of the event. There have to be better chances coming up.

But before you muck your hand, you start thinking again. You just took a long time to decide to fold. To everyone at the table, it is clear that you have at least a decent hand, and when you fold, it will be equally clear that you were chased off it by the aggressive opponent. You decide that if you fold now, people will be encouraged to take shots at you later on, because you are folding a good hand.

This image problem disturbs you. If you call, even if you lose, other opponents may be afraid to make a move on you, thus making life easier. And, you were close to calling anyway.

You call, your opponent rolls over A-9 offsuit for a pair of nines, and you ship him most of your stack.

Do you see what happened here? You thought for a while about what to do, and reached a conclusion. Then, because you thought, you rethought and reached a different conclusion.

Thinking at the poker table is good. Thinking about the best play is excellent. But thinking about the consequences of making the right play, and then making the wrong play for these secondary reasons, is expensive. Once you decide on the right play, make it. Live with the consequences, image issues, and other related issues later. Two-thirds of your stack is a lot to pay for a better image.

In addition, whatever image or other thing you were thinking about, it can just as easily work to your benefit. For example, in the hand above, maybe someone will make a move on you when you really have a good hand, and will just hand you chips. You never know.

A limit hold’em example: Let’s look at a limit hold’em cash-game example of this same principle. You have been in a $20-$40 game for 20 minutes. Nothing much has happened, and you have not really been involved in a hand.

Now, you pick up black pocket queens in middle position and open-raise. The button and the big blind call. The flop is 8 7 4. The big blind checks, you bet, and both players call. The turn is the 6. That’s not great, but you bet after the big blind checks. The button folds, and the big blind check-raises.

You happen to have played against this opponent many times. He does not bluff. He has you beat, almost certainly with a straight. If he has a straight, you are drawing dead. Even if he has two pair, you (a) have to improve, and (b) have to guess whether he improved, as well.

The pot is offering you 8-1 on his raise, but you would have to put in another bet to see his hand.

You can call and fold on the river if nothing good happens, call twice regardless and hope that this is the time he has finally bluffed, or just quietly fold. You think about this some, and decide that in this case, with this opponent, you are better off folding.

But wait. This is the first hand that you have played at this table. In general, you hate to look weak at the outset of a session by meekly folding what is clearly a good hand to what may be, from everyone else’s perspective, a bluff. After all, he could have 9-8 or the A 6 (although you know that this opponent would check and call with these hands).

You decide that looking like a wimp so early in a session can ruin your image. You elect to call twice, essentially giving the big blind an $80 gift so that you can look tough.

Here again, you thought about what to do and made a reasonable decision, and then changed it because you worried about image rather than the best play for this hand.

Conclusion: These sorts of scenarios happen every day. Players decide to make plays because of what they will look like, or what their opponents will think of them, rather than what is the best play for the hand in front of them.

There is no question that table image is important. You always must be aware of what your image is, and how players are responding to it. But creating that image should be the result of what happens at the table, not an attempt by you to massage that image by making incorrect plays.

Once you decide on the right play, make it. Later, you can determine how other players will react, and play accordingly. Never make a losing play for image purposes.

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].