‘Easy’ Things to Do to Win at Poker — Part III

In my last column, I continued the discussion of things you should do at the table to help you make better decisions. I used the following list:

Pay more attention
Select the best games
Learn how your opponents play
Study betting patterns
Analyze every situation
Plan in advance
Play focused on the game
Count the pot
Compute the odds
Figure out how the play might go
Estimate what your opponents think you hold and how you should respond
Then, make a decision

In that column, I discussed selecting the best games. Let’s continue with the next bullet point.

Learn how your opponents play: I like to view poker as a series of one-on-one confrontations. Each player is different and needs to be treated differently. You should attack weak players, but often play passively against overly aggressive ones. You should avoid tough players, but stretch to engage vulnerable ones. You should call frequent bluffers on the river, but fold to rock-solid non-bluffers.

In actual game situations, of course, multiple players get involved in your pots, complicating the decisions. Your challenge is to integrate the characteristics of each involved player and make an overall decision on each street, selecting an action that you believe will work best.

Before you can do this, you need to know, as best you can, how your opponents play. Many opponents play pretty much the same way most of the time. Others change when their personal fortunes change, playing differently when they fall behind, when they get ahead, or when they win or lose a pot.

I played with one nice lady who played a very conservative game pretty much every day, unless she lost a rack. She would play that buy-in to the bitter end, preferring to go all in perhaps several times rather than buy another rack. If she lost all of her chips and bought another rack, she immediately morphed into a raving lunatic, raising with any two cards in an attempt to get “her” chips back.

The toughest opponents vary their play, not by assessing their current fortunes, but by adjusting to their current opponents, just as I recommended earlier. You will have a greater challenge in getting a read on them, because you will see them make a play like three-betting a preflop raise with J-10, and will assume that they three-bet loosely. But if they are doing it because they have great control over the preflop raiser or know something about how he plays, that may be the only time all session that they even consider three-betting with such a hand.

So, how do you decide what is going on? You watch every player, every play, and make imperfect, frequently wrong, hypotheses. Then you refine them or create new and different ones as you learn more. Just as you did when you were a kid, you learn by making mistakes. The more you play against the same people, the better your understanding of them becomes, and the better your decisions will be. The more predictable that people are in their play, the faster you can master their tendencies and respond correctly to them. This is why I advocate not posting or making marginal plays in a new game until you have observed it for a while.

You have multiple tools at your disposal to decide how opponents play. Unfortunately for casual players, all of them involve paying attention. I will discuss observing their actual play a bit later, but first let’s take a look at some other methods.

Listen to them: Recently, a player three-bet preflop and later showed down K-J. The player on my right and I were not involved in the hand. Appalled, “Righty” turned to me and said, “Wow, look at that. He three-bet with K-J. That means this must be a good game, right?” I grunted something noncommittal, but made an immediate mental note that this player’s three-bets would show significantly better cards. Since I would have made the same three-bet, I also noted to myself that the three-bettor was someone to watch out for.

In a loose $1-$2 no-limit hold’em game, a young lady led out on the turn. Another player called her down, and after losing, he explained that he thought she might be on a flush draw. Highly offended, the young lady loudly asserted that she never would bet a flush draw — never, never, never. I certainly believed her, and was grateful for the information.

Ask them: Many players love to discuss why they play the way that they do. Most even tell the truth, but remember this rule: “Listener beware.”
Here is an example: On a dangerous board, I checked the river, player A bet, player B called, and I overcalled. I was fairly sure that I had player A beat, but I didn’t know much about player B. Sure enough, player A showed a hand that I could beat, but player B turned over the absolute nuts. Player A now asked player B why he didn’t raise. He replied that he wanted to get a call from me (thanks!). Player A now told him that was silly, because since player A had bet, player B could have been certain that player A would call, guaranteeing the same amount of money. I joked that my money is worth more, but I took note of the fact that player A was a terrible candidate for a bluff-raise on the river.

Watch them: Players provide a ton of information whether they hold cards or not, and the best time to learn how they play is when you are not in a hand, as your mind is clear to observe and draw inferences.

Many players act enough that you will be able to guess their hands fairly well, even if you do not see them, and every added bit of precious information contributes to the picture of how they play.

A player caps the betting preflop, and again on the Q-9-5 flop. A king comes on the turn, and there is a bet and a raise to him. He agonizes for 20 seconds, squirms around, looks at everyone (including the dealer), shows the hand to the player on his left, and folds. Even the people in the sportsbook know that he had aces and folded them. This is a player with confidence in his judgment who can get away from hands, but he needs people to know how good at it he is. You don’t know if this observation will be of any help, but if you file it away, it may help you get him off a hand later in the session (or some other time).

Of course, seeing opponents’ hands helps, and you will spend much of your time focused on betting patterns. That will be the subject of my next column.

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].