Consensus Reality

In the recreational poker games that many of us play there is a common set of norms that shape the fabric of the game. These norms aren’t really in place for the sake of creating or leveraging anyone’s strategic advantage; rather, they’re there to help everyone have a good time. I call these norms the “consensus reality of recreational poker.” Let’s take a look at this consensus reality and see what we can do to profit from others’ desire just to have a good time.

The most common form of consensus reality is the general agreement among players that everyone will get to see cheap flops. Somebody limps from early position, then the next guy limps, then the next, and the next thing you know, the limpfest — or limpede — is on. The groupthink of this is simple: If everyone gets to see a cheap flop, then everyone gets the rush of (possibly) flopping a monster. Now, of course, you know and I know that it makes no sense just to call along and let a lot of other people see the flop. We’d much rather raise to narrow the field or even win without a fight. Yet we see this sort of one call, all call behavior every day at the lower levels of cardroom poker. Why? Because most players aren’t there to win money. They’re there to have fun, and in their minds, more flops equals more fun. So by consensus, there’s a lot of limping and not much raising. By consensus, the game is made timid.

What can you do to exploit this situation? Raise, duh. But be prepared to be everybody’s enemy. If you’re the guy who’s in there raising a lot of pots, you’re denying other people their fun. They won’t thank you for that. They’ll think you’re being a bully. Which, duh, you are. But around here we have something called “the Law of Conservation of Fun.” Basically it means that if you’re having more fun, someone else is having less. By raising a lot, you not only steal pots, you steal fun. In a game that had previously been a consensus-driven limpfest, this can be very unsettling.

So of course you should do it.

In games where limping is less common and raising more common, consensus reality will determine what’s the standard size of an “okay raise.” In some games, it’s understood that if you raise three times the size of the big blind, you’re doing so to narrow the field, but not so much that no one will call. A min-raise, on the other hand, is designed to be treated like a limp. Every now and then, however, someone will make a “grandstand overbet” and, again, deeply cheese everyone off. Such huge raises make players play bloated pots — pots outside their comfort level. Again, by math, less comfort equals less fun.

Say you’re in late position with pocket queens. There are four callers before the action gets to you — that’s a limpfest, friend. If you raise to three times, or even five times, the big blind here, you’re unlikely to get all those limpers to fold. Yet you need most of them to fold in order to get what you want — a premium hand played in late position against two or fewer callers. So you fire off a grandstand overbet, maybe eight times the size of the big blind. It’s ridiculous. It is to be mocked. But think about it: The only hands that can call you here are slow played big pairs, which is possible, or mistakes, which is a lot more likely.

Crashing consensus reality is all about getting other players to make mistakes. They’ve come to play poker — comfortable poker within a series of established norms. When you come along and shatter those norms, either by raising quite frequently or raising quite large, you will definitely earn their contempt. That’s fine. You don’t care about their contempt because you will also earn their money. You’re going against the grain. It won’t be long before someone tries to punish you for that. Then they’re playing your game, not theirs. In a sense, you’ve already won.

Are you a consensus-reality kind of player? Do you have your habits and your norms, and your comfort levels, and your expectations for your session? I’d like to think that your expectations include playing well and winning. However, I’ll bet that your expectations also include relax and have fun. You can see that those two sets of expectations conflict. At a certain point, you’re going to have to ask yourself if you want to be a recreational player or a winning one. As a recreational player, you can limp along with everyone else, see your many flops with your ragged hands, and pursue the buzz of dragging a big pot. As a winning player, you will call less, raise more, steal blinds, make oversized bets, and in all ways set yourself against the flow of the table. You will step outside of consensus reality, and form your own.

And I want to reiterate: this will cheese people off. They’re there to have fun and they expect you to share their goals. When you fail to do so, they will think you a bully, or a jerk, or worse. None of this should concern you, of course; yet it will. We fear disapproval, we social human creatures, and when we step outside the norm, we get it — we social human creatures. So now there are two forces working against your playing proper poker. One is the desire to have fun, where fun is defined as seeing lots of outcomes. The other is the fear of disapproval, where disapproval can be earned by doing things other than what everyone else wants you to do. What force countervails? The desire to win, of course. And the formula for winning in recreational games is easy. First, raise frequently enough to shatter the limpede pattern of the game. Second, raise big enough to drive out most of your foes. These two things taken together will not win you any friends at the recreational poker table — but they will win you cash. Try it and see. The reality you improve will be your own. ♠

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.