Respect the Odd Play

When betting sports, the worst teams often have the best value. That’s partly because casual bettors underestimate bad teams, regarding them as worthless when in fact they pull upsets a reasonable percentage of the time. Bad teams make good bets simply because people don’t understand their value. It turns out this idea translates almost perfectly into a poker concept.

To explain, I must first talk a little more about betting underdogs. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to the poker.) I’m no sports betting expert, but any gambler worth his salt knows that it’s rarely a good idea to back a favorite. There are, of course exceptions, but the value generally lies in betting on horrible teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Buffalo Bills, or the New York Jets (sadly, that last one is the team I root for). Any sportsbook wants to get decent chunks of money coming in on both sides of a wager to limit their risk. For this reason, good teams are often favored by more than they should be — because the public loves favorites. The Packers and the Texans are great, but not as great as the average fan thinks.

Underdogs of more than 10 points have covered 51.5 percent of their games (despite only winning 13.7 percent of them) since 2002. This isn’t enough to beat the juice, but you’ll do a lot better backing the big dogs than the big favorites! Professional sports bettors know these numbers, and so they often bet on crappy teams — while casual fans think professional sports bettors have no idea what they’re doing.

As you may have guessed, this is where poker analogue comes in. How often do you hear a poker player say, “What was that guy thinking on that hand? He must be a total moron!” I hear versions of this reasoning all the time. It’s true that sometimes people make plays in poker that are just bad, and have no rationale to justify them. But just as smart sports bettors often make plays that look foolish to the uninformed, so too do strong poker players make plays that look ridiculous to lesser players who don’t understand them.

I was mocked for years for consistently opening for a minimum raise in no-limit hold,em. Now, of course, everyone does it. I also used to get chastised for making certain all-in calls and resteals with short and medium stacks, all of which would now be considered routine plays. It’s tempting to think that in 2012 everyone knows how to play poker, and that good players don’t make repeated mistakes anymore, but I doubt it’s true. Four-betting and five-betting preflop with weak hands were, until very recently, considered suicidal plays. Now they’re part of every good player’s arsenal. So what’s the next great play that no one’s making, and how can you be the first one to find it?

The good news is, you don’t have to be first. I didn’t come up with small opening raises, or calling all-in getting 2-to-1 or better, but I applied the concepts before the vast majority of strong players had caught on. That’s where an edge comes from — by finding ways to play hands that fall outside of the established orthodoxy.

It sounds simple, but it’s deceptively difficult to think about weird plays with an open mind. After all, it’s much easier to fall into the trap of saying “that guy is an idiot” than to actually give him credit for knowing what he’s doing. I too have been guilty of this, but I try to stay self-aware and catch myself quickly upon making this error. An alarm bell goes off every time I hear myself say that another player doesn’t know what he’s doing. In order to improve in poker, you need a better explanation for your opponent’s actions than “he’s just crazy,” or, “he’s an idiot.”

You owe it to yourself to try to figure out what your opponent is thinking, especially if that opponent has had a prolonged period of success. If he made a tight fold, did he just have a read, or does he have a fundamentally different understanding of hand values than you do? If he put in a lot of money with a garbage hand against you, was he just being a bully, or was your range of hands overly weighted toward bluffs? Working through these kinds of questions will go so much further toward improving your play than simply saying, “my opponent was a fool.”

Good sports bettors know that if they presented their bets to the general public, those sports bettors would get derided for their lack of knowledge. Professional handicappers are crying all the way to the payout window. So too are a lot of the very best poker players. There’s nothing wrong with an honest disagreement over how to play a hand, but it’s imperative, if you want to disagree with someone else’s play, that you first take the time to understand what they were thinking. Doing so will improve your own thought process, and that in turn will improve your results. ♠

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, and a three-time WSOP bracelet winner. He is also a featured coach for cardrunners.com.