Head Games: What Worked Then Doesn’t Work Now and a Glimpse into the Future With Matt Iles, Scott Sitron, and Bryan Paris

Craig Tapscott: What two parts of the game worked for you consistently five years ago, but rarely do now?

Matt Iles: One thing that I did in the past was fold too much in the big blind vs. late position opens. I was always under the assumption that it was best to avoid confrontations out of position as often as possible. I never realized how wide of a range was optimal to call from the big blind vs. late position opens. Nowadays, a minimum open (two times the big blind) has become a fairly standard open size, so calling wider from the big blind becomes significantly better due to your pot odds and your implied odds. Another factor that makes peeling from the big blind in these situations more optimal is how the game as a whole has become more aggressive. Players are opening from late position with a much wider range of hands, and to counter this trend, the big blind should be defending with a much wider range because you will more often be defending with the best hand. Also, players are less likely to give up after just one continuation bet and are likely to barrel multiple streets, which allows you to catch a larger number of bluffs when you have a hand with some amount of showdown value.  

Another thing that I’ve cut down on is my three-bet percentage in position against open raises. I am more inclined to just call in these spots rather than three-bet, again because of how aggressive the game has become. A lot of players are opting to four-bet over your three-bet, as three-bets in late position have the tendency to be perceived as “light” with the overall shift of poker becoming much more aggressive. Rather than having to play a guessing game as to when a player is taking a light four-bet spot, or when they actually have a top hand, I prefer to take more flops in position rather than give them the chance to play their hand optimally preflop. It is very easy for players to play optimally preflop, whereas many struggle and make mistakes post-flop, and that’s where our edge really shines.

Scott Sitron: I used to be able to profitably play what is now considered a very exploitable style of poker. I was very unbalanced with my ranges and bet sizing based on my hand strength and equity. My flop and turn bet sizing was much higher, especially in multi-way pots than it is now. I bluffed far fewer turns and rivers as a result than I do now.

I was able to three-bet from the small blind vs. aggressive mid to late position opens with any two cards and get folds from suited hands such as Q-10, J-10, K-10, A-x, etc. a high percent of the time preflop and on the flop. Now these hands are correctly peeling (seeing the flop) in position with a much higher frequency, because they can flop a ton of equity, which makes my doing this with my non-value hands a poor decision. I still three-bet bluff from the small blind, but I do it with hands that play much better post-flop.

On the flop, players used to fold to continuation bets way too frequently. Now they will float heads-up with almost any equity, that makes firing multiple barrels a necessity when I decide to bluff, which I rarely do anymore without any equity. Years ago, players would not want to be all-in when they were not heavy favorites, whereas now it has more to do with how much equity their hand has and whether the call has positive expected value (+EV). For example, if a player is getting 2-1 odds preflop facing an all-in for, say, 30 percent of their stack and knows their K-Q is probably about 40 percent equity, they will call. But five years ago they would fold, because they didn’t want to call all in when they were behind.

Bryan Paris: The primary difference I have noticed is that five years ago, people were much less in tune with the importance of position and increased frequencies in certain positions. It felt like the game was much more based on the general, cash game-style principles everyone learned regarding hand selection instead of the modern focus on positional balance. For example, I used to be able to get away with raising any two cards blind vs. blind, as the big blind would simply fold far too often despite getting amazing odds in position. Similarly, it used to be extremely profitable to open the pot close to any two cards from button, as the blinds would not defend or three-bet often enough to make it unprofitable. Nowadays, at least online, the fighting over these late position spots has become fiercer, as people defend their blinds more rigorously and apply pressure against your obvious wide ranges.

The corollary to this is that the games have overall become much more aggressive. The exploitive approach towards poker in 2010 was to play extremely aggressive yourself to take advantage of everyone folding too much and not defending their blinds enough. The general population back then could be classified as weak/tight; they didn’t play enough hands, so one could feast simply by opening a lot of pots and continuation-betting a lot. A combination of Black Friday making the game more Euro-centric and the natural evolution of the game has changed things dramatically. The games now seem to have largely caught up to this dynamic, and now unchecked aggression is the norm rather than the exception. The challenge these days is more about feigning weakness and trapping people, or finding ways to ramp up your own aggression to go over the top of theirs. 

Craig Tapscott: Can you give a glimpse into the future of the game and share what you think will be changing involving multi-table tournament (MTT) strategy?

Matt Iles: Poker tends to go through cycles when it comes to how to approach the game aggression-wise. Way back in the day, even before I knew what poker was, it was very straight up. Players played their hands according to their strength and bluffing was not nearly as popular. The game has evolved immensely over the years and aggression became the way to attack it. The majority of the poker public had a hard time adjusting to the overwhelming aggression they were facing, therefore giving the advantage to those who attacked the game. Once everyone caught on and adopted the aggressive style, players combated it by reverting back to the tighter, snugger approach. In my opinion, the best way to attack the game is to do the opposite of whatever the majority of the players are doing. If most players are being aggressive, sit back and play tighter, and vice versa.
 
I think one of the most important things in MTT strategy is game selection. I don’t think enough players practice this very important skill. For the longest time I didn’t either. As soon as I realized this, my return on investment shot straight up and has yielded me much better results. Poker is a game of longevity and very small margins. Being able to exploit these small margins over time makes a big difference in the long run.

Scott Sitron: It’s cool that a game where each player has only two cards can be so strategic. It is amazing that people still classify hold’em as a game of luck. Hopefully this misconception disappears in the years to come. I think we will continue to see players improving their deepstack post-flop play. Their post-flop bet sizing will be ever smaller and we will see more river pot- sized bets with polarized ranges. We should see fewer players barreling their bluffs off without any equity and using their range advantages to execute multi-barrel bluffs. 

The game has become fun again to me because now there are so many thinking players that every hand is unique. Their awareness to how I play and have been playing has increased, which I can use to my advantage at times. A benefit to playing against players with a deep knowledge of the game is you can get them to make big laydowns on certain run outs where a recreational player will just call down with top pair. A tough player will play the same hand completely different versus another tough player as opposed to versus a recreational player.

In the future top players will continue to focus on their health and be willing to put in the time improving all aspects of their lives. The trend in poker now is healthy and clean living. Now instead of drinking heavily the night before and during a major event, players are eating salads and drinking protein shakes, studying hand histories while balancing on their heads. 

Bryan Paris: In the future, I expect the online game to become even more streamlined and aggressive as a younger, harder-working generation of players uses math and analysis to determine how to optimally play common spots. As people catch up to the new equilibrium, players will be rewarded for finding ways to go one level past that. For example, defending the big blind against a late position raise then check-calling all three streets on a wet board with middle pair was once considered a heroic move. Nowadays, at least online, it’s par for the course. While in 2010 the exploitive move was to three-barrel these types of spots widely to exploit your weak/tight opposition, in 2015 the exploitive move is to check-call lightly enough to take advantage of this tendency from others. Perhaps in 2016, the exploitive move will be to three-barrel a better middle pair for value.

This hyper-evolution has largely taken place online, although it has filtered out into the live game to some degree as well. Moving forward, I expect play online to become more and more evolved and aggressive, with top players perhaps moving into some unexplored territory like overbetting to stay one step ahead. However, online is only one poker ecosystem, so to speak, as the post-Black Friday fragmentation of the game has led to a proliferation of poker ecosystems, all at their own level of evolution. A major event like re-incorporating the USA player pool could reset the equilibrium to something closer to what we saw in 2010. The key is to identify the tendencies of the player base at large and fine tune your own game to stay one step ahead of those tendencies. ♠

Matt Iles is a 30-year-old poker professional from Atco, NJ. He has traveled the world to play online as well as compete in live events. Iles has more than $2.7 million in online career tournament cashes.

Scott Sitron has been playing poker tournaments since 1997. He is now a proud husband and father of two. He currently plays live at Canterbury Park and Running Aces casino in Minnesota. Sitron has more than $2.5 million in combined online and live career earnings.

Bryan “bparis” Paris resides in Amsterdam and has been a fixture at the online MTT scene since 2005. He has logged tens of thousands of online MTTs, cashing for more than $7.5 million along the way.