Don’t Inspire Your Opponents

In an ideal world, all of our opponents would fear us. Then, we could open up every weapon in our poker arsenal, enabling us to win far more than our fair share of pots.
But realistically, very few of us have a style that strikes fear into all of our opponents while still being profitable. If you are the massive chip leader at a final table, that might be one of the few fortunate times that everyone fears you. But unless your name is Phil Ivey, you aren’t going to scare your opponents just by staring at them.

But if we can’t get our opponents to fear us, we can at least make sure that they don’t start getting brave against us. There are always opponents who make me think to myself, “When they’re in the blinds, I’m going to look to raise.” It’s not just because they are tight, but because they are tight-passive. They are either going to fold to me or not punish me for getting out of line. Their style inspires me to get aggressive. They inspire anti-fear. That’s instant death in the poker world, and something that you must avoid at all costs.

You may assume that you have nothing to worry about because you don’t play in a tight-passive manner. That may be true generally, but on a hand-to-hand basis, you still have to be careful about creating the wrong image. Let me give you an example of what I mean, taken from an actual hand.

The game was $1-$2 blinds no-limit hold’em with deep stacks. The under-the-gun (UTG) player made it $6. It was folded to an aggressive player in middle position, who made it $18 to go. Kyle found K-K on the button and flat-called. Everyone else folded, including the original UTG raiser, so they saw the flop heads up. It came A-9-4. The aggressive reraiser bet $20, and Kyle called. The turn paired the 4, and the reraiser bet $50 this time. Kyle thought for a while, and then let it go.

Afterward, Kyle explained his logic to me throughout the hand. He flat-called preflop to disguise his strength and to see if the UTG player was going to four-bet. Once the UTG player folded, he was going to play his hand as if it was the best. But when the ace flopped and his opponent bet, he didn’t want to get too deeply involved. He flat-called, hoping that if his opponent had Q-Q or J-J, he would be scared into slowing down. Once his opponent bet big on the turn, he figured there was a good chance that his opponent had either A-A or A-K, and he didn’t want to invest any more money on pocket kings with the ace on the board.

It’s entirely possible that Kyle was beat, and that his way of playing the hand saved him from a greater loss. However, he left plenty of reason to believe that he could have just as easily laid down the best hand. Kyle never took an aggressive action. So, his opponent was never given any reason to fear him. I firmly believe, as do many other players, that you should remain aggressive until you are given a good reason not to. His opponent probably possessed that same mentality, and was going to continue to fire regardless of what he had, simply because Kyle did not deter him in any significant way.

In short, even though Kyle is not normally a tight-passive player, his image in this hand was exactly that. He intended to get aggressive at some point, but never found a time to do so, and his opponent therefore was never given a reason to worry. If anything, Kyle helped to create a larger pot that his opponent had extra incentive to pursue.

Sometimes you can start out slow-playing a hand to disguise its strength, only to talk yourself out of calling when your opponent puts you to the test. You have to think about how your opponent views your play. If you act weak, he’s going to act strong, whether he has you beat or not; it’s as simple as that. It’s possible that your slow-play was so well-disguised that you inspired him to make a play on you. Don’t forget that that’s what you were hoping would happen in the first place! If your hand isn’t strong enough to keep him honest, you probably chose a poor hand to slow-play.

The player who won the pot probably never gave his actions a second thought, and I’m sure that he had no idea that Kyle had a hand as strong as K-K. And why should he? The only show of strength that Kyle made was to call a preflop reraise, and even that was not so much a show of strength as it was a signal that he had something he wanted to play.

When you have a good but not unbeatable hand, it often pays to give your opponent an idea of just how good your hand is. That way, if he plays back at you, representing even greater strength than yours, it is more likely to be legitimate. For example, Kyle said that one reason he flat-called preflop was to see if the UTG player would four-bet. What he didn’t really consider was that one reason the UTG player might have four-bet was that Kyle showed weakness by not four-betting himself! He would have been better off four-betting and taking control of the hand right away. Then, if someone came over the top of him at any point, he could get away from his kings with greater confidence.

Given that Kyle flat-called preflop, he would have been better off raising on the flop, despite the presence of the ace. That way, he could know with greater certainty whether his opponent had a lower pocket pair or the ace. And if Kyle had the best hand, the raise would probably win him the pot right there. Kyle had hoped that his call on the flop would slow his opponent down, but against an aggressive opponent, you need to do better than that. There’s no reason to rely on hope when a raise will let you know exactly where you stand.

In the end, when it’s a close decision between making the passive and the aggressive play, one main reason to choose the aggressive path is that you want your opponents to perceive you as such. When you stop and look at hands like this one from your opponents’ perspective, and see how your play looks through their eyes, it really teaches you the value of aggression. It also makes me wonder how often I’ve made an opponent lay down a hand far bigger than I thought he had. I always thought that it was my “bold” play that earned me the pot, when in reality it was probably my opponent’s passivity that inspired me to make that play. Don’t inspire others to do the same.

Matt Lessinger is the author of The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker, available everywhere. You can find other articles of his at www.CardPlayer.com.