Worsify!

Sometimes your opponents just aren’t bad enough.

Sometimes you look around the table and see a bunch of good, solid players making good, solid plays. Your first recourse of course is to change games, but sometimes circumstances conspire to cut off that line of retreat. It could be that this is — literally — the only game in town. So what do you do then?

Your second option is simply to play better yourself, but it may be that you’re already playing well, and it further may be that significantly improving your own play won’t significantly enhance your chances of beating this particular field. So we come to the third alternative: Make your foes play worse!

As astute readers of my prose will have long ago noticed, I don’t hesitate to make up words when the words I need have not yet been coined. Thus, today, I give you worsify, a new verb meaning make your foes play worse! Here are some simple strategies you can use to spread worsification in your world.

1. WORSIFY YOURSELF. This may seem counter-intuitive to you, or it may seem an obvious course in advertising. Either way, the first time you raise with 9-8 suited and catch lucky enough to show down that hand as a winner, you alert the rest of the table that someone here is playing monkey poker. Then it’s merely a case of “monkey see, monkey do,” as others at the table descend to your level. You may be concerned that turning your own play reckless will have a negative impact on your stack, but consider the math of the situation: If your (temporarily) bad play causes two or three others to play badly too, you’re getting a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 return on your worsify investment.

2. BLOW SMOKE. God no, I’m not talking about blowing cigarette smoke in your foes’ faces. That would be just rude, and likely illegal where you now play cards. Nor am I talking about the sort of smoke that’s now legal in Washington and Colorado (although as to that — woo hoo!) No, the kind of smoke I speak of blowing is the steady stream of friendly distraction which, while friendly as hell, is distracting as hell as well. Ask about sports scores. Compliment people on their looks. Tell jokes. Do what you can to make thoughtful players think about something other than their play. Again, there’s a simple math to the situation: The more brainpower they spend in contemplation of the one about the farmer’s daughter and the traveling penguin, the less brainpower they have to spend on correct analysis of your check-raise bluff.

3. FUSS. Get up and stand behind your chair. Interact with the football game as if you had a big bet down. Complain about the food or the service or the weather or whatever. Do anything you can (within the limits of ethical poker, of course) (and no that’s not an oxymoron) to create a sense of dis-ease around the table. Players who feel tense or uncomfortable simply cannot play their best. Make them feel tense!
You will recognize, of course, the fine line between distracting behavior and obnoxious behavior. And before I open the floodgates of angry response, know that I am not advocating obnoxious behavior. I agree that all players have a responsibility to the “good of the game.” Still… that’s your money they’re trying to win! And one school of thought contends that anything short of outright cheating is fair game in a poker game — so long as it doesn’t get you jumped in the parking lot later.

Also, please remember that these are tactics designed to worsify good opponents. You would never want to do anything to create anxiety or tension among bad players. If they’re bad to begin with, they don’t need worsifying… they need nurturing! I’m constantly astounded at how many players overlook this simple truth. Truth! When you berate a bad player for bad play, you either tough him up or scare him off. Nothing can be accomplished with this, save scratching the itch of your own irritability. In this you’re worsifying your chances, not your foes.

4. HAVE FUN. This is kind of the opposite of fussing. If you manifest your merry mood, good players may wonder what’s wrong with them — why aren’t you scared and sullen in their company? Having fun will, at least, keep you in a temperate state of mind until either your efforts or the game’s own momentum causes the others to worsify and your prospects in the game to improve. Oh heck, let’s make it simple: Having fun is never a bad idea.

5. DIVERSIFY. Be unpredictable, for it is a strength of strong players’ play that they can predict predictable behavior. If you fold all blinds or raise all buttons, you’re just asking to be played into, and the outcome will not be favorable for you.

6. BE FRISKY. Go a little nuts. Talk nonsense. (Seem to) be off in your own little cartoon universe. In other words, act out. Call attention to yourself and make other players think about you. It really doesn’t matter what they think (again, short of thinking about taking you out in the parking lot later). If they’re thinking about you just a little — even fearing for your mental health — then that’s just a little that they’re not thinking about them.

A tough game is a tough place to be. Against really good competition, the best you can hope for is to hold your own. Which is not the point, of course — you want to hold theirs! So your first move in worsifying your foes is not to worsify them at all, but rather to go find a game that’s worse already. But if you can’t do that, then do everything in your power to degrade the quality of your opponents’ play. The more you worsify them, the more you betterfy your odds. ♠

John Vorhaus is author of the Killer Poker series and co-author of Decide to Play Great Poker, plus many mystery novels including World Series of Murder, available exclusively on Kindle. He tweets for no apparent reason @TrueFactBarFact and secretly controls the world from johnvorhaus.com.