A.P.E.

In many of the no-limit hold’em games we typically play, the real name of the game is taking our opponents for their whole stack. Tiny pots come and go … they don’t matter so much. But, get yourself consistently on the right side of big confrontations and you can rack up some serious coin. Fortunately, in many of the no-limit hold’em games we typically play, our foes will give us a host of tasty targets to shoot at. The practice of picking off these targets — knowing that they’re there, and knowing how to set them up and take them down — is what separates the wheat from the chaff, and the chaff from their coin. As usual, I’ve found a way to present this strategic approach in acronym form: A.P.E. — Awareness, Planning, and Execution. Let’s break it down.

Awareness: By now, it should be your second nature to watch what’s going on around you at the poker table, and to be highly sensitive to such fundamental matters as which players are strong, which are weak, who bets without the best hand, who gives off reliable tells, and so on. If you find that you still lack a riveted understanding of who’s doing what at the table, the problem lies within … within your own awareness.

Heightening awareness is not really a matter of concentrating harder, though concentration doesn’t hurt. Rather, it’s a matter of being open and receptive to what’s happening at the poker table. You can abet this effort through such useful activities as putting players on a range of hands whether you’re currently in the pot or not, and then seeing how the hands they show down compare to the range you’ve estimated. Or, you can ghost your foes; that is, imagine how you’d play their hands if you were them and measure their approach against your own. These activities should be your standard operating procedure when you’re not in a hand, for they’ll lead you to a moment of clear understanding — understanding, for example, that the player in seat No. 1 will make early-position raises with bad aces, and then get hooked on the hand.

Planning: Once you’ve acquired key information, like the fact that the player in seat No. 1 bets bad aces, you enter the planning phase of your activity. You ask yourself, What conditions am I looking for? What specific circumstances will allow me to take this guy for his whole stack? You already know what he needs: a bad ace in early position. What, then, do you need? Yep, a good ace in a better position. You also need to know what you intend to do with that good ace when you get it.

Most of the time, you’d probably be in there raising with your best aces, but in this situation, you’re hoping not to have to do so. You’re looking for the specific harmonic convergence of your foe with a weak ace, you with a strong ace, and no one else in the pot. This last part is hard to contrive, especially without reraising, but the circumstances will arise from time to time, and you want to be ready when they do.

Why not, you may wonder, go ahead and reraise with your good ace here? Is it not the best hand, and won’t it serve to shut out the rest of the field? Yes, and yes, but it also may scare off your prey before he’s had a chance to trap himself fully with his bad ace. Stick to the path of your planning, even at the risk of having the plan go awry through the unwanted involvement of others. (You’re still in there with an undisclosed good ace, so you’re not in terrible shape.) You flat-call his raise with your good ace and hope that you get him heads up. If everything breaks your way, you’re ready to take a flop against a single foe with all of this going for you: cards, position, awareness, and planning. Now comes …

Execution: Here comes the flop. Ideally, it’s something like A-4-4, the sort of flop that will embolden your foe’s bad ace while also reducing the risk that he hit his kicker. If you have your foe measured correctly, it won’t surprise you when he bets out. But you’re ready. Thanks to your awareness, you’re armed with information about effective stack sizes, how gluey he gets to his aces, how much he respects your play or your image, and so on. All of these factors taken together will tell you how to execute your plan. Will you flat-call now and raise on the turn? Should you make a modest raise here and hope that he raises back? Go all in and tempt him to commit his stack? Your specific actions will depend on the specific circumstances. Just make sure that they don’t depend on fear.

Fear, you see, will cause a lot of players who feel they have the best hand to overbet here, possibly just going ahead and shoving, in order to drive their foe off his hand and take what the pot has to offer now. I am not of that mind. I’m out to win his whole stack, and I’m willing to accept a little risk (that he’ll hit his kicker on the turn) in the name of grabbing that stack — especially if my awareness gives me confidence in my read.

Of course, if your foe is truly glued to his bad ace, you can go ahead and put his feet to the fire right now. Part of the A.P.E. strategy, after all, is to contrive a confrontation against just such a foe who will make just such a mistake. So, you may be able to make a huge raise here and be confident of getting the call that you want.

In all events, the key to execution is, well, executing. There’s no point in planning for a situation like this if you fail to follow through. In other words … pull the trigger! There will be times when you’ll back off because some sixth sense (actually, your simple awareness) alerts you that your foe is stronger than he seems. That’s OK — as long as your decision is informed by a clear perception of the situation and is not colored by fear of negative outcomes.

I can’t think of a single poker situation in which your performance wouldn’t be served by awareness, planning, and execution. I think you’ll find that devoting thought and energy to finding exploitable opportunities, and then exploiting them, will greatly enrich your game, your table image, and your bankroll. So, the next time that you go to play poker, arrive with a plan in hand. Study your foes intensely, devise your attack, and then … have at it! In other words, go A.P.E. The stack that you win will become your own.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the poker novel Under the Gun. He resides in cyberspace at radarenterprizes.com. Photo: Gerard Brewer.