Don’t Be Worried If You Don’t Understand Anyone, They Don’t Understand You Either

Many moons ago, before hole card cams and Moneymaker winning the main event, I was talking poker with my buddy on the drive home from Cripple Creek, Colorado. I was the only one talking for the first fifteen minutes, telling him about several hands where I knew exactly what they had and how I confirmed my knowledge of their holdings after getting to showdown and losing. How could he see the flop after I eleventeen bet him pre?!? Then I bombed the flop and he calls me with an underpair! I check-raised the turn, blasted the river, he only beats a bluff, and he still called!!! You know the drill. I roll my eyes and seek to escape the “I play bad beat” story when I hear it nowadays, but back then I was just like them, simply blind to the fact that not everybody plays poker like I do.

Travis finally makes me stop complaining about people not folding, and he says bro, they wouldn’t notice if an elephant walked across the table. They certainly aren’t going to notice the fancy moves you’re making, they aren’t going to think about what hand you have, and they definitely aren’t going to fold for five bucks.

It changed my poker game overnight. Back then (and still today), I constantly heard people saying that they can’t beat the smaller stakes, usually because they never fold, too many chasers, I’d rather play against somebody who I can put on a hand, or the rake is too high.

If you can’t beat the smallest game in the room, then you can’t beat poker.

There I was, knowing that I had talent, winning money in the game for four consecutive years online and in California, but bashing my head into brick walls of a mining town nearly two miles above sea level. I see these giant pink elephants twinkle-toeing across the table, but I’m the only one who sees them, so I’m losing my mind, but all I have to do is realize that not everybody can see giant pink elephants like me.

Shortly after that experience I discovered what a prop player was, that the casino employed them, and I got a job. They paid me $10/hour to show up at noon every Monday through Thursday, stay for ten hours, and make poker games start and keep going. Being a small town high in the Rockies, I saw many of the same faces, and over time I learned my opponents. It turned out some of them could see elephants, and those were the ones that I tried to bluff.

The plan worked brilliantly. Most bluffs do not have to be successful very often to be profitable, especially in limit poker. If the bet is $10 and there’s $70 out there, a bluff only has to work once of eight times to break even. My success rate was higher than that, meaning I got caught bluffing plenty while still turning a profit on those bluffs. Showing bluffs isn’t a bad thing, because to the people who can’t see elephants, they see that I bluff lots, and are further reinforced in their habit of never folding.

Those of us who play poker constantly see people do dumb things at the poker table all the time. We cannot understand why they did what they did no matter how much we analyze it. I see people who play poker constantly still do dumb things. I don’t get it, but it’s important that I see it. The ultimate goal of poker is to deeply understand your opponent and the way they think. The better you know your opponent and what their moves mean, then the better your decision making process will be against them.

The problem is that some opponents are downright impossible to understand, and even those we know best will still surprise us from time to time. It’s important thus to take baby steps towards full understanding of somebody, one piece of information at a time. The more information you have, the easier it is to put together the puzzle. The question is, what is this puzzle a picture of? One piece isn’t going to tell you much, unless it’s a really key piece. But ten pieces starts to give you an idea, and the more pieces you gather, the clearer the image becomes.

Much of the time we’re facing an opponent that we know nothing about. Stereotyping is often very beneficial at a poker table. The 78-year-old lady is going to play different than the 22-year-old dude with a hoodie, headphones, and a mound of chips. Start with these pieces and go from there. Like in real life, sticking with the stereotype after new pieces of the puzzle are revealed, ignoring contradictory new information, is madness. I’ve seen plenty of tight young kids, aggressive old ladies, and superstitious people of all walks. Learn the person, your opponent, the way they think, the way they perceive things, the way they react to certain situations, the friends they have, and then use that information to come to a clearer conclusion of where they’re at in this hand.

Don’t try to bluff the unbluffable. We all know who they are, and yet we still get ourselves into spots where we know they have a range of 13th-to-6th pair, but we don’t have a pair, so clearly the play is to get him to fold his pair of fours or whatever rubbish he has. Three streets later, the guy who never folds is stacking our chips and we’re wondering how in the world he put all that money in the pot with such a bad hand. Really, the whole goal of knowing our opponents is to discover their weaknesses and then exploit them. If the guy’s leak is that he doesn’t fold enough, and then I try to exploit that leak by getting him to fold, that means that I have the leak, not him. ♠

Bryan Devonshire has been a professional poker player for nearly a decade and has more than $2 million in tournament earnings. Follow him on Twitter @devopoker.