A Polarizing Concept

If you were lucky enough to catch ESPN2’s recent broadcast of poker the way that it was meant to be shown — live, with exposed holecards, and with expert commentary — you were treated to five hours of extremely strong play, and a higher quality of analysis than has ever before appeared on television. I hope that ESPN2’s format for covering the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) becomes the norm for televising poker in the years to come. It’s so much fun not knowing when the final bust-out will take place!

Among the many poker concepts illuminated by ESPN2 analyst Daniel Negreanu (tournament poker’s all-time winningest player, incidentally) over the course of the broadcast was that of “polarization.” I’ll try to repeat Daniel’s explanation here, if you missed it. I’ll also go into a little more detail about when and why the concept is useful.

To understand polarization, we first need to understand a simpler concept: the idea that our opponent holds not a single hand, but a range of hands. This idea is probably familiar to you, but just in case it’s not, I’ll provide a quick overview. Our opponent actually holds just one hand at a time, it’s true, but since poker is a game of incomplete information, we don’t always know what that hand is, nor are we supposed to. We are supposed to make reads and use our poker skills to narrow down the possible hands that our opponent might have, but in the end, there is almost always more than one plausible holding for our opponent. We call that list of plausible holdings our opponent’s range of hands.

Usually, a player’s range contains many hands of varying strengths. When a player has raised preflop from late position, for example, his range is generally pretty wide, and can include hands like two aces (the nuts), two sixes (a medium-strength hand), or 10-7 suited (speculative trash). In certain situations, however, a player’s range can be narrowed down to either very strong hands or very weak hands. In such cases, we say that the player’s range is “polarized.” Let’s look at an example from a hand played by two top pros.

In a heads-up hand at the PCA, the board read 5-3-2-2-A, and chip leader Chris Oliver checked. His opponent, Galen Hall, bet 2 million into a pot of (roughly) 2 million while holding 8-4 for a straight. Oliver thought for a while and check-raised all in. It would’ve cost Hall about another 7 million to call (Oliver had him covered easily). Considering that Oliver had checked all three streets, never showing strength until the river, it seemed like Hall had good reason to call with his straight. After all, a straight is a pretty good hand when heads up! But not so fast. Hall had made a large bet on a scary board, and his opponent still raised him all in. Would Oliver do that with just an ace? Pretty unlikely. Instead, Oliver would probably just call with that hand, hoping to catch a bluff, not wanting to risk losing a huge amount by raising. The same reasoning applies to other fairly strong holdings. If Oliver held trip deuces, or even a wheel, would he really expect Hall to call a big all-in raise with a worse hand? No. It seemed most likely that if Oliver was raising for value, he had a monster hand. When considered in this light, Hall’s straight is really not much better than a naked ace; it wins when Oliver is bluffing and loses when Oliver is raising for value. This is because Oliver’s range is polarized. (By the way, I’m not criticizing Oliver’s play here. Sometimes, the board and action are such that your river raising range simply has to be polarized.)

I don’t recommend making too many big laydowns, but if you’re sure that your opponent can never be value-betting with a worse hand than yours, that’s certainly a time to consider it. Based on a lot of factors (the two players had a long history of online battles), Hall made a read that Oliver was far more likely to be value-betting than bluffing. But the read itself is not enough. Hall also had to understand that Oliver’s range was polarized, and that he was very unlikely to be value-betting with a worse hand than Hall’s straight. Hall went with his value-bet read, and folded his wheel. When you make a big laydown on TV, you’re going to look like either an idiot or a genius to most mainstream spectators. Oliver, it turns out, had A-2 for the full house, and everyone — players and non-players alike — has credited Hall with making one of the great final-table laydowns of all time.

Hall was up against a polarized range, and he used that information to help him make a spectacular fold, but the logic can also work in reverse. I said above that if your opponent is never value-betting a hand that’s worse than yours, you can consider making a big laydown. By the same token, if your opponent is never bluffing with a hand that’s better than yours, you can consider a very light call! This may seem counterintuitive, but think of it this way: There are two parts to a read. First, is my opponent value-betting or bluffing? And second, with what hands might he take each of those actions? If Hall thought that Oliver could’ve been value-betting with just aces up, Hall would’ve had to call with his straight even with a strong read that Oliver was value-betting. Similarly, if you know that your opponent would never bluff with a pair, you can consider calling him on the river with a good ace-high hand, because if he’s bluffing, you win.

I hope that this column has given you some new insight into the concept of polarization. Maybe it will even help you find a big fold, or a hero call, in your next tournament. ♠

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player. He is also a featured coach for cardrunners.com.