Tactical Wheels

My three competitive passions in life have been poker, karate, and fencing. While they are three very different pursuits, they undeniably have something in common:

When two people of comparable abilities face one another, the one who stays one step ahead of his opponent will prevail.

To that end, fencing has something called the Tactical Wheel. The most basic one is illustrated in Diagram One.

It is a useful tool for showing beginning fencers the progression of techniques that often takes place in a bout. That progression is as follows:

1. The simplest fencing action you can take is a direct attack. If it lands, you score the touch (point).

2. If your opponent anticipates your attack, he should counter it by parrying (blocking) your attack and then executing his own attack.

3. However, if you sense that your opponent is ready to parry your attack, the best thing for you to do is feint to one side, and then, when he tries to parry you, change direction and attack to the other side.

4. If your opponent thinks you are going to feint to one side and attack to the other, his best action is to counterattack right into you. While you are busy changing directions with your attack, his touch will land before you can finish your maneuver.

5. Finally, if you think that your opponent has made up his mind to counterattack, you should go back to making a direct attack, which will land before his counterattack.

As you can see, we end up right back where we started. The tactical wheel that I’ve illustrated is the most basic one, but there are extremely intricate ones, as well, with up to 10 or 12 steps. However, they all have one thing in common: They begin and end with a direct attack, which is the cornerstone of fencing. The best description I’ve ever heard for a tactical wheel is that it is like a game of rock/paper/scissors that never ends. Sooner or later, you come back to square one and start all over again.

In essence, poker is also a game of tactical wheels. Again, I’ve illustrated the simplest one, which you can see in Diagram Two.

It starts with the most basic premise of poker:

1. If you have a strong hand, you should bet. That’s one of the first things that any poker player learns.

2. However, if your opponent knows that you’re going to bet only when you have a strong hand, he will generally fold to your bets except when he has a very strong hand.

3. Since your opponent is folding almost every time that you bet, you correctly start bluffing more often.

4. Your opponent catches on that you’re bluffing more, so he makes the proper adjustment and starts calling more often.

5. And now that your opponent is calling more often, you simply go back to betting only your good hands; now, you can expect to get paid off more often.

And just like that, we’re right back where we started.

The concept of the tactical wheel has all sorts of long-term practical poker applications. Certain “accepted” strategies in today’s poker world may not really be superior to what was done as recently as five years ago. Perhaps all that has happened is that we have reached a different point in a particular wheel.

As an example, let’s look at preflop raise-sizing in no-limit hold’em tournaments. For a long time, it was pretty standard for the initial preflop raise to be three to four times the big blind. Of course, not everyone followed that pattern, but it was by far the most common raising range.

Now, especially online, the majority of players raise less than that, usually in the range of two to two-and-a-half times the big blind. The main arguments in favor of raising smaller are that it generally accomplishes the same thing as a larger raise, but costs less when you get reraised and fold, and it helps control the post-flop pot size.

Those are valid points. But does that mean it is clearly the superior strategy, or simply that opponents have not properly adjusted to it yet? What if more players start cold-calling raises in position with speculative hands because their implied odds have gotten better? What if subsequent opponents then make more frequent squeeze plays because they know that speculative hands are more frequently calling smaller raises? What if you are now getting played back at far more frequently than before? In short, what if these raises don’t accomplish the same thing as raises of three to four times the big blind? Then, the natural progression would be to start raising larger again, and in pure tactical-wheel fashion, we’d be right back where we started.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily going to happen. For one thing, that particular wheel is more complicated than I’ve made it out to be, especially when you throw in things like four-bet bluffing. But in general, it would be foolish to think that the commonly accepted strategies in 2010 will be the same in 2015. History tells us that won’t be the case; at some point in the future, we will return to the top of the wheel.

That’s the long-term viewpoint. Tactical wheels exist in the short term, too, such as the simple bet-fold-bluff-call wheel we started with. You know how tiresome it is to ask a strategic question and then be told, “It depends.” Of course, the person saying that is correct, but then you want to know what it depends upon. In most cases, I think two simple questions can provide your answer:

1. How involved is the wheel that you and your opponent have created against each other?

2. At what point in that wheel are you currently situated?
When you figure that out, you’ll stay one step ahead of your opponent. And when you do that, you’ll end up with the money. ♠

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.