Developing Your Poker Style

At all games, we tend to admire those brave players who take big risks and triumph. In poker, particularly, I am sure a lot of young up and coming players pick out some poker superstar and seek to emulate that person’s game: bet, raise, relentless aggression. Unfortunately, the star seems to hit whatever he needs to win, while the emulator has a lot of hard luck stories to tell. Should you try to imitate a champion’s play, or just go your own way?

I think the first thing you should look at is the type of game you are in. Most of your champion-watching is probably a televised broadcast of the final table at a major tournament. In this setting, one faces quality opponents with a high ante structure.
Quality opponents know how to fold, among other talents. It is no surprise that in such a setting we will see a lot of aggressive poker. If that is the setting you will be playing in, there are plenty of strong players to watch, and you are likely to conclude that very aggressive play is the best way to go.

However, I suspect that most readers of this column are typical Card Player customers who are either playing either in cash games, or tournaments with a fairly low entry fee.
In either of these environments, you will find a lot of players who call quite often.
Particularly in a cash game, where the losers that session can reload instead of leaving, aggressive play may well mean you are not playing in the optimal manner.

There is another problem with aggressive play that emulates some poker superstar. The aggressive player is going to find himself in a lot of tight spots, many more so than the tighter player. This means he is often going to be faced with the tough decision of whether to cut bait or keep fishing. To be a successful player in the aggressive style, you need to make good decisions in tough situations, reading opponents accurately for both what they have and what they will do with it. This style can be quite effective, but not when performed by a poker player of only modest ability or experience.

The brand of poker I teach is one that can be used successfully by the majority of players I work with. It is a style designed for cash games and the early stages of a tournament (when the blinds are low compared to the amount of chips in front of most of the players). In such an environment, assuming you are less than a poker superstar, the best way to play is to wait for good hands in position. I don’t care how loose a game you talk; playing the way I advocate is going to give you a tight image. Let me explain that a tight image is not all bad.

People who do not know your game well and observe you playing few hands usually assume that you do little or no bluffing. Generally speaking, many tight players fit that mold, solid citizens who are cautious about putting their chips into the pot whenever they do not have a premium hand. But I do not play poker that way and I do not teach my poker clients to play poker that way. It is one thing to avoid entering combat when you are inadequately armed, and quite another to not fight when in a combat situation.

It is ironic that I, a player who is a big advocate of tightness early on with a deep stack, should be even more aggressive than most other players in the post-flop betting rounds. I bet a lot of flops, although often wth smaller, probing bets. If an opponent has the initiative, I just call with hands that might be considered strong enough to raise, but are not strong enough for me to back with my entire stack.

Turn betting is a different ballgame entirely. This is the key point in the hand where probing ends if there was a flopped draw that hasn’t come in. In order to play properly on the river here, it is necessary to bet a sizable amount of money to make an accurate determination of what your opponent holds. If the amount in the pot after the flop is now half or more of your remaining stack, you make the crucial decision of whether to commit all your money or not. If there is a lesser amount in proportion to your stack, you bet somewhere between three-quarters of the pot size and the full amount of the pot. Only in this way do you find out whether your opponent has a draw or a made hand. Few players are going to smooth call a big blast holding only an eight-out straight-draw or nine-out flush-draw.

Playing committal poker on the turn will enable you to win a lot of pots before the river card would have put a bad beat on you. Playing committal poker on the turn will also prevent you from losing a big pot that you would have won at the showdown, but lose to a successful river bluff. Playing committal poker on the turn will help avoid paying off to an aggressive opponent with a lesser hand who sees weakness on the turn and is able to take the pot away from you with a successful raise. Be bold on the turn when a draw present on the flop did not get there.

You cannot play as decisively on the turn when there was no obvious draw on the flop. The reason is apparent; there is a lot of slowplaying going on when the players are confident that you have only two to five outs to outdraw their hand. (These are the usual numbers for improvement when there is a made hand versus made hand confrontation on the flop.)

Naturally, some of the time when I make a big turn-bet I am going to be on a draw or a bluff. There are many occasions where the flop does not help a sound player, or yields only a draw. Sound play is by no means insurance against finding yourself in a tight spot where you will either need to run a risk or have to give up. And even an aggressive player needs to know when to give up. It is not necessary to win every battle to win a war.

Needless to say, I seldom play a marginal hand preflop with the rather transparent intent of trying to avoid a tight player image! I do it so an opponent will conclude I do not have a certain hand because I “don’t play those kind of cards.”

I can buy a lot of pots that a loose gambling player would have been unable to win. Since my post-flop play is so aggressive, the fact that my preflop play is going to give me an overly simplistic label of “tight player” does not bother me at all. ♠

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered (autographed to you) from Bob by e-mail: [email protected]. Free U.S. shipping to Card Player readers. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons at a reasonable rate. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert’s Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.