Practice

Practice is considered to be an absolutely essential activity in all sports. Players continually practice in order to improve or even just to maintain their skills at a certain level. Golfers practice driving and putting. Basketball players practice foul shots or long jumpers. Many participants in non-sports endeavors or professions benefit from practice. Even the most accomplished musicians still do scales every day. Poker players never practice. When I say that we never practice, I am distinguishing between practicing and performing or playing. Not only don’t we practice, we don’t even know how to practice.

I think the best way to practice poker is to look at a specific situation, play, or decision. Then, create a sample set of hands in which a particular play or decision must be made or at least considered. Good sources for sample hands come from examining your hand records, watching the superstars playing online, or reading books and Card Player to see when and why a certain play was used. What kinds of plays should you practice? Everything! Take the topic of raises, for example. When should you make a first raise, when should you reraise, and when should you call a raise? What about folding to a raise, slow-playing, and check-raising? To get you started on this topic, let’s look at some simple situations, in a quiz format.

You are at the final table of a tournament. The blinds are 500-1,000. There are no antes. You are on the button and have a slightly below-average stack of about 15,000. The blinds, to your left, have about 20,000.

Everyone folds to you. With which of the following three hands would you raise? If you decide to raise, how much should you make it?
1. A 2
2. 2 2
3. J 10

A short stack goes all in for 4,000 from middle position. With the same three hands, you can now fold, call, or raise. If you decide to raise, how much should you make it?
4. A 2
5. 2 2
6. J 10

A reasonable player, with 20,000, raises to 3,000 from under the gun. With the same three hands, you can now fold, call, or raise. If you decide to raise, how much should you make it?
7. A 2
8. 2 2
9. J 10

An aggressive player, with 20,000, raises to 3,000 from the cutoff. With the same three hands, you can now fold, call, or raise. If you decide to raise, how much should you make it?
10. A 2
11. 2 2
12. J 10

I hope that you have taken the time to decide what you would do in these 12 situations. Before I give you my answers, I want to emphasize one of the most important concepts in poker theory. David Sklansky deserves credit for being the first author to articulate this point clearly. It takes a better hand to call a raise than it does to make a first raise. It is important in all forms of poker, but it is absolutely crucial in no-limit hold’em. Most disasters occur when someone goes to war with a hand that is dominated. Here is a simplistic illustration of this concept: Both you and an opponent raise with only the top five pairs — A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J, and 10-10. If you have jacks, you will happily make the first raise. If he raises first, however, you are a big underdog 75 percent of the time. Whenever he has A-A, K-K, or Q-Q, you will win less than 20 percent of the hands if you continue to the river. Only against 10-10 will you do well. (If the stacks are deep, you certainly can call with jacks, but you are treating them like a small pair. Your plan for the flop is to raise with sets and big draws or fold.)

Answers
1-3: It is correct to make the first raise with all three hands. All hands are above average, and you have a chance to win the pot without contention. It should be a normal raise — say, to 3,000 or 3,500. If one of the blinds reraises, you have enough chips left to make folding a reasonable option.

4-6: This situation presents serious problems. If the raiser wasn’t all in and possibly desperate with his short stack, it would be clear to fold. Here, you are risking 4,000 to win 5,500 (his 4,000 plus the blinds). Unfortunately, you still have the blinds behind you. They might call, lowering your chance of winning, or even raise, forcing you to abandon your 4,000 or gamble with a possibly dominated hand. My feeling is that calling is clearly wrong. If your gut feeling is that the raiser is weak, move all in to freeze out the blinds. If you feel he has a reasonable or better hand, you should fold.

7-9: This is a situation in which folding is clear. All of these hands could be dominated. You don’t have a deep stack, so you want to avoid getting involved with these drawing hands. Hands like a pair of deuces are usually break-even or big dogs. The same is true for A-2 suited. J-10 suited matches up well against lower suited connectors, but is a dog to every other hand, and there is no reason to think that a competent opponent in early position has decided to bluff or semibluff.

10-12: This is another situation in which the decision is close. Your opponent’s range probably includes all of his real hands, some semibluffs (like 8-7 suited), and perhaps even a few complete bluffs. Calling is your worst option. This allows him to see free cards when you have him crushed preflop. It also lets the blinds in cheaply with some speculative hands. Raising has several advantages. It doesn’t allow the blinds to come in cheaply. It will force the raiser to fold many of his worst hands, including some that might have you beat, like A-3 offsuit versus your A-2. The big disadvantage is that you will end up playing a large pot with the worst hand whenever either the raiser or one of the blinds has a big hand. You might base your decision on your table image at the time. If they think you are tight, the raiser is more likely to be stealing and less likely to call a reraise. If they think you are a wild and crazy guy, your best choice is to fold.

Try to build up your own file with a lot of these situations. Study them when you’re away from the table. Discuss them with players you respect. This practice away from the table will help you improve your skills in making correct decisions, learning what to focus on, and avoiding costly mistakes that can occur in the heat of battle.

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of its pros. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.