How to Begin a Session — Part III

In Part II of this series, I continued my discussion of things that you should do when you start a session. We looked at the following list:

1. Don’t play right away.
2. Look for negative inferences.
3. Assess each player’s current state of mind.
4. Determine your table position.
5. Take fewer chances.
6. At no-limit, buy in for the minimum.
7. If possible, establish a positive image.
8. Decide which players to exploit and which to avoid.

That column covered point No. 2 — look for negative inferences. (That column and all of my columns are available at www.CardPlayer.com.) We now will continue by looking at point No. 3: state of mind. Specifically, your objective is to assess the state of mind of each player.

I used to work with computers. One of the nice things about my job was that computers are deterministic devices: Given the same input, they produce the same output every time. People do not. You might know a player who generally plays cautiously. However, today, he has been very annoyed by a guy at the table, and has decided to reraise him every hand. Or, he had a fight with his wife and is planning to play all night, and he does not care about playing carefully. The point here is that every time you sit down, you should attempt to make a new assessment of how everyone is playing, and why.
So, how do you do this? It isn’t easy, but you should try anyway. Here are some possible methods:

Passive methods are to observe, or listen to:
Body posture
Betting style
Folding style
Stack size or condition
Time of day
Table talk
Active methods:
Ask the player
Ask someone else
Passive Methods

Body posture: This one is fairly easy, and it’s often quite reliable. Players who are leaning forward, looking eager, and staring at the action want to play. They oftentimes will get involved in hands with less than classical values because they are ready for action. Players who are leaning back, reading, eating, and casually glancing at their hands before discarding them are willing to wait for good hands. Be more cautious if they decide to get involved, especially aggressively.
Betting style: Not many players use the same betting motion throughout a session. Sometimes, they bet defiantly, flinging their chips into the pot. Other times, they bet more normally or even meekly. I cannot tell you whether the defiant gestures are based on pretense or frustration, but you should note the action and try to discern a pattern.

Folding style: Interestingly, you can observe the same process during folding. Frustrated players often fold angrily, as if to say, “Here is another hand I can’t win any money with. When will this streak of lousy hands end?” Eventually, they may be willing to play a substandard hand that simply looks better than the trash they have been seeing. After all, A-9 may look pretty good to them after a string of J-2 and 8-3 hands, and clearly, they want to get involved with something.

Stack size or condition: You can’t always tell by stack size whether a player is ahead or behind, but sometimes you can. Certainly, if someone is sitting behind a tiny stack, he is not happy about it. If a person has a tiny stack and a bunch of bills, those bills likely constitute a rebuy (and maybe not the first). While someone else may hold lots of chips and still be stuck, at least he has made a partial comeback and is not as anxious about it as he once may have been. While stack size may not be a pure indicator, let’s at least say that size matters.

Time of day: The other night, when I arrived at my regular game, I noticed a couple of people I rarely see, mostly because they are daytime players who generally leave long before I show up. The mere fact that they were still playing was an almost certain signal that they were stuck, no matter how many chips they each had. They were good players, but perhaps they were willing to overplay their cards just a bit to get even or ahead, and go home. It may seem silly to some that folks continue to play if they are behind and leave if they are ahead, but it happens, and you should be able to read the situation.

Table talk: “Another deuce! I haven’t seen a good hand in four dealers.” “Oh, I see that your kings held up. I have lost the last five times that I held them.” “You’re complaining because this guy called preflop with J-7? How about that 4-2 you beat me with when you called two bets cold?” Just by sitting quietly and listening, you can learn a lot about how someone is feeling about his hands and chances.

Of course, it sometimes helps to do a bit of gentle prodding to get the information flowing. This brings us to active methods.

Active methods

Ask the player: Do you want to know how someone is doing? Ask him. “When did you get here?” “How are you doing?” “How is the game?” “Why did you make that play?” Not only is it a friendly thing to do, it also may help you figure out what is happening at the table. The answer to a question you asked may tell you something about the state of mind of the person you asked, or provide some useful information about someone else.

Ask someone else: Sometimes, you get into a game and sit next to someone you trust, but wonder about a stranger in the game. Ask! “Who is that guy in the five seat? Have you seen him before?” Frequently, this will get you some very useful info that you otherwise may have worked hours to get — or may not have gotten at all. For example, an answer like, “I saw him try a check-raise bluff on the river a while ago,” or, “He hasn’t played a hand in 45 minutes,” can potentially win you a pot or save you several bets. Of course, you should reciprocate: Help out the person providing the answer at some future time. Obviously, ask only people with good judgment. Generally, their information is available only if you ask. So, ask.

In my next column, we will continue this series with a look at how to incorporate some of the information that you gathered here to formulate a game plan based on your table position. ♠

Barry Tanenbaum is the author of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, and collaborator on Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies. Barry offers private lessons tailored to the individual student. Please see his website, www.barrytanenbaum.com, or write to him at [email protected].