Learning and Lying on TV

Opportunities for learning more about poker via watching "holecard exposed" TV have been appearing in Europe ever since the British Late Night Poker show and the Poker Million, and much more recently in the United States via the World Poker Tour and ESPN's seven-part special on the 2003 World Series of Poker.

Good poker players are usually looking for any kind of edge they can find, so it isn't surprising to see players studying tapes and/or DVDs of these tournaments. Viewers believe they can pick up tells on the participants, and even if they believe it unlikely that they are ever going to battle Howard Lederer at a final table (someone I would consider an unlikely candidate for revealing tells, by the way), they believe they can learn much more about how top pros play.

While I have no doubt that careful study of each of these learning opportunities can produce the desired effects, rarely have I seen a better example of the old homily, "A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing." Players should study the televised tournaments, and those who fail to do so will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Nonetheless, those who don't study carefully may find themselves worse off than if they had never studied at all.

Today I'm going to teach you some areas where your study should be particularly careful, because if it isn't, that sound you won't hear is your chips hitting the floor when you don't drop them … because you will lose them all at the table.

Taking the most obvious and perhaps most easily overlooked problem first, if you are like most players, you have probably been struck by how much bluffing goes on at final tables. While John Duthie (winner of the inaugural Poker Million) got extra credit here for running some of the most spectacular naked bluffs anyone has seen since streaking was a college fad, we all still see a lot of bluffing and semibluffing at televised final tables.

The problem with watching all this bluffing and semibluffing and then deciding "that's how good players play" is that you're forgetting one mighty important factor. Can you guess it? Come on now, take a shot. If you don't know it, and if you can't guess it, you are already very much at risk.

It's really simple, and when you read it, you're probably going to try to save your poker ego by saying or thinking something like, "Of course, I was already taking that into account," but the reality is that if you can't say it here, you haven't been taking it into account, and you know it.

The answer? You're watching a one- or two-hour TV show (44 or 88 minutes, once you allot room for the commercials), but it's a four- to eight-hour final table! You are missing the vast majority of the hands! Those bluffs that seem to come up every other hand aren't occurring every other hand. They're happening far less frequently – but they make for much better television, so they are shown far more frequently than the "better hand bets and takes it" hands.

As a result, before you start assuming that you must bluff far more frequently than you now bluff in order to win, start factoring in the TV element. It may well be that you do indeed need to bluff more frequently in order to win: just don't draw that conclusion simply because the knowledge came "as seen on TV."

The televised-bluff factor also comes into play in the second easily overlooked learning situation: tells. I know that I and, indeed, most of poker's more serious players are busily studying televised tournaments to see whose jaw seems to work back and forth when he's bluffing, and who seems to keep a hand over his mouth when he has a good hand.

Perhaps even more important than pure tells, many players are studying betting patterns, in an effort to gain a line on how the better players play. This study will not only help you against those precise players, but will also teach you more about how great players play.

The problems here are twofold. First, you are learning how the great players play, not why. You may see that a player you respect limps in with certain hands and raises with others, but unless you get to ask him why he's doing it, you're playing monkey-see, monkey-do, and you will rarely find yourself in precisely the same poker situation. At best, studying the great players for tendencies may lead you to the right questions, such as, "Why might Jennifer Harman raise with this hand?" or "Why might Phil Ivey flat-call with that hand?"

It may turn out that Jennifer is raising for reasons you haven't considered and therefore won't duplicate, and that Phil is calling for similar unknown reasons.

Learning why Jennifer and Phil play certain hands in certain ways may help you improve your overall game and, if you play in their rarified air, may help you against them. I think you are risking quite a bit if you assume that the way they play, or the tells they appear to be accidentally disclosing, may help you specifically against them. Why? Have you thought of it yet? To borrow some words you've seen before, can you guess it? Come on now, take a shot. If you don't know it, and if you can't guess it, you are already very much at risk.

The reason is that Jennifer, Phil, and just about every other player who has sat down at a final table knowing their hands are being shown to the audience is already thinking a few levels ahead. I guarantee you that they are making moves and passing false tells along for the viewing audience, precisely because they aren't stupid and they know people will be studying them.

How can I be sure of this? Because the very first time I ever sat at a televised final table, I already had it all planned out … and if Andy Glazer has this figured out, I can guarantee you that Mike Matusow has this figured out.

No player is going to make a hugely bad play just because it will mislead a TV audience, but something that amounts to a change of pace is an entirely different matter. I just finished watching the Million Dollar Showdown at the Sands, and at one point during that event, I saw Phil Hellmuth limp in from the button with two queens. Do you think Hellmuth always limps in from the button with two queens? Of course not. Do you think it's an optimal play? If it were, he'd do it most of the time.

Instead, it's the kind of play he throws in once in a while, and I promise you that anyone who watched that tournament who thought he might ever play against Hellmuth remembered that play. It will make it that much harder to put Hellmuth on a hand the next time he limps in from late position. Does Hellmuth give up some equity by making that play? Probably a little … but the pot was small at that point, and if his chances of winning a small pot dropped, his chances of winning a big pot probably increased slightly.

On balance, Hellmuth was probably giving away a tiny amount of equity then and there – in return for a lot of equity later on in other events when he limps in from the button with smaller pairs.

If you remember that when you watch a televised poker tournament, you're just watching highlights, not every hand, and also remember that poker players are (when playing) sneaky, devious types who know full well that someone else is watching, you'll be well on your way to using those televised tournaments as the teaching tools they can be, instead of the traps they can be.

Of course, the players know that you know this, and you know that the players know that you know this, and the players know that you know that they know this, and … ain't poker a grand game?

Andrew N.S. ("Andy") Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament editor. He writes a general gambling column for The Detroit Free Press, and is widely considered the world's foremost poker tournament reporter. Later in 2004, readers will be treated to two new Glazer books, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Poker and The Best of Tournament Poker's Best.