Wobble

The worst thing you can do in poker is be weak. It kills you two ways: by yielding initiative and by leaving you open to attack.

In certain games in certain circumstances, all you have to do is bet to win. Strong players understand this intuitively. The rest of us watch and wonder how those strongies got so rich. The answer is simple: They seized the initiative, where less strong and less secure players did not.

I hear you complaining and I know your beef. You claim that every time you try to seize such initiative, you get run down by some with crap-playing holding melon farmer who doesn’t know enough to throw away his junk hand against your monster raise. Sorry about that — crap happens. But wouldn’t you rather be in a game where the melon farmers play crap? So when you’re there, play strong! This keeps the initiative where it belongs — with you.

Plus, I’ll bet they don’t draw out on you as often as you think they do. There is such a thing in this world as confirmation bias: We’re more likely to see what we expect to see, exactly because we expect to see it. Suckouts imprint themselves on our minds, to the point where we start to see monsters under the bed, and sink into timidity and weak play. Which is, of course, exactly opposite to successful strategy in poker.

Strong players test everyone by means of attack. They probe you just to see if you’re weak. They want to know what you’re made of, and they’re not afraid to risk a few chips to find out. The truth is revealed under pressure, and they want to know the truth of you. They want, in short, to see if you will wobble.

Here’s how it happens. You’ve bought into a $2-$5 blind no-limit hold ‘em game, and you’ve started out playing tight. You’re throwing away such holdings as K-x, 9-8 suited, bad aces. You don’t mind making a few folds. You want a tight image and you also want to get the measure of your foes before you plunge into the fray. But now here comes a hand where you see pocket nines, and you decide to play it strongly with a raise. Boom! The foe to your left reraises almost before your chips have left your hand. And you start to sweat. Does he have an overpair? Big tickets? What is he doing in “your” pot in the first place?

Testing you, that’s what. Pressing you. Messing with your mind. He sees that you haven’t played a hand up till now and he wants to see what you’re made of — on his terms, not yours. He’s been waiting for you to enter a pot, just so he could isolate you by reraising behind you. He achieves his goal: Everyone folds back around to you and you just call, wondering, what could he possibly have?

Anything or nothing, that’s what. His purpose here is simply to put your feet to the fire — a purpose that any two cards will serve. Now the flop comes 10-x-x. You “check to the raiser,” and that’s just an open invitation for him to bet, an invitation he accepts because he knows that almost any flop can look scary to you, especially when reinforced in your mind by the fact of his preflop reraise. Mostly he’s betting that you haven’t hit your hand, and two times out of three he’s right. Do you see the razor’s edge you stand on? If you surrender here, your foe knows that you’re weak. He knows that you’ll wobble. He knows that you’ll fold under pressure. You’ve surrendered initiative. You are, in a word, toast.

Take a look at that flop. Fit it into your foe’s hand. Remember, he’s no more likely to have a big hand than you are. So what’s he betting on? Either a piece of the flop or no piece of the flop. Those are the only possibilities. Maybe he has overcards. Maybe he has a good ten. Maybe he has a pair of threes or even less. He doesn’t care. He’s determined to push you no matter what.

But what if you push back?

I think you have to. I don’t think you can afford a whiff of wobble in the sort of game where they attack wobble just because it’s there. You’re assailed on all sides. And until you throw some muscle back at your assailants, they’re not going to let up. I wouldn’t. Would you? Of course not. It’s what you dream of. You fantasize about playing this tough, being the one to put others on the wobble. But then when you get into a situation where you can do that, do you blow it completely? How might that go down?

Suppose you drop back to a $1-$2 blind game, where you feel comfortable splashing bets around because the money is well within your comfort zone. You play strong — and it works! Next thing you know, you’re the bully in the game. You’re the one pushing others around. You’re the one with the big stack. You’re the King of Cheese!

And that’s when you’re doomed.

Because in that instant you stop playing strong poker and start playing glory poker. You’re not earning money, you’re earning admiration. So you think. But really you’re not. No one cares how well you do. No one cares how good you feel. But you don’t care that they don’t care. You’re too busy shining, basking in your own marvelous ability. Now you’re just showing off. And before you know it, you’ve blown off some chips and taken some beats, and there you are, right back on the wobble again. The heat of combat is no time to stroke the ego. But also the heat of combat is no time to feel fear. The heat of combat is the time to execute. If you can do that, without ego but also without fear, then the one who wobbles won’t be you.

Want some homework? Here it is: For your entire next session, raise every new player’s first hand no matter what cards you hold. You may or may not win with this move, but you will get to see yourself as someone who is capable of moves, capable of putting others on the wobble, and that’s the sort of player you definitely want to be. ♠

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.