The How and the Why

As I mentioned in my last column, I recently went deep in a tournament at an LA casino. There were definitely some interesting hands that I played, but perhaps the most interesting hand I witnessed was one in which I wasn’t involved. It was late on day 1 and a player I know from my regular casino had recently been moved to my table with a healthy stack. Before this, I had only ever played cash games with him, but he’s a competent player, if sometimes prone to fancy play syndrome (I’m certain I know of no other such players with similar tendencies). He opened the pot from the cutoff for about 2.6 times the big blind (BB). I folded my small blind, but the big blind defended. The flop was A-10-5 and the action went check, bet three big blinds (BBs), call. The turn was another ten and the action went check-check. On a jack river, the big blind led out for a pretty small bet, 4BB or so, and the cutoff raised to 13BB. The big blind called with a ten in his hand, though I don’t remember the kicker, and the cutoff had 4 3. There were the typical murmurs around the table you hear when someone gets caught bluffing and the cutoff handled that pretty well, deflecting the criticism with self-deprication.

Not long afer, the cutoff lost a coin flip and then another hand to bust and the table started to chatter incredulously about how he could lose all of his chips in such a quick fashion. He must be bad if he lost chips in a tournament! As is my wont in these situations, I kept my mouth shut. I despise strategy discussions at the table and I’m certainly not going to get involved defending what I thought was, at worst, a play that was perhaps poorly timed, and at best, the type of play that wins you money in tournaments. I say poorly timed because I left out some of the banter the two combatants in the hand had engaged in prior to this particular pot. The big blind had already basically advertised that he was prepared to go to war with the cutoff a la Phil Hellmuth and I usually save my river bluff raises for people who aren’t already in a mode to call me down. Of course, if I showed up with the worst hand in my range and a good river card to get a fold from an ace or Q-J, I might ignore previous history and attempt a bluff raise as well.

The others at the table, however, were less impressed with the river raise. They were aghast at the thought of raising the river without the best hand. Coincidentally, these are the exact types of players who regularly ask me the following question: “I make the money a lot, but I never have chips when I do, how do I change that?”

There are many answers to that question, but I’m going to talk about two of them. First, in order to gain chips, you have to be willing to risk chips. I’ve dusted off some considerable chips stacks in my day taking small advantages here and there and to some that looks like straight gambling. People often seem surprised when someone who had a large stack busts before someone who had a short stack and profess that they would never be capable of doing such a thing when in fact, pushing many small edges is what makes it possible to get a big stack in the first place.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, is the willingness to learn from something you see that doesn’t look right. Everyone at that table besides me, perhaps including the cutoff (though we did discuss the hand a few weeks later and he felt ok about it after our discussion) dismissed his play out of hand as something ridiculous only because it was something that they weren’t willing to do in his situation. If they had, instead, thought about the reasoning behind the decision and what possible merits it might have in the correct situation, they probably would have learned a valuable play to have in their arsenal when the right situation does arise.

There has definitely been a boom in poker skill over the last few years. It’s natural because there are so few new players coming to the game. The big losers either get better at the game or stop playing because it’s not fun or they can’t afford it anymore. Those that have been successful in the past have picked up on some things that good players are doing like smaller raise sizing and more frequent three-betting. They more than likely do this because they see good players doing it regularly and not because they have thought about why it is a useful tool. I can tell, because when they see an anomalous play that has strategical or tactical merit, they almost always dismiss it out of hand because it hasn’t come up often enough in their experience to equate it with good play. Yes, games are getting tougher. But if you’re willing to look hard enough, there are still some good situations to exploit, especially against people who have integrated successful traits into their game without understanding why. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG