“How can you call there,” one player said to another incredulously. “Don’t you know my reputation?” The speaker in this case is a very tight player and in a group where everyone plays together on a weekly basis and his reputation is known by all.

Why did he get called then? Did he pick a bad time to bluff, give off a tell, or just run into a monster hand? Nope. He ran into a player that knew his reputation and just didn’t care. So, the next day, he will be telling the story of the horrible call that the loose player made and his fellow tight buddies will lament his bad luck at the hands of a bad player. Admittedly, in this scenario, the loose player’s call against the tight player is a bad call in the long-run, but not nearly as bad as the tight player’s bluff.

The tight player fell into the trap of focusing on himself and projecting his thought processes onto another player. The tight player thought, “I have a reputation of only playing the nuts. I’m pretty sure the loose player doesn’t have the nuts on this board, so I should be able to get him to fold almost any hand here. I should bet.” That is a good line of thinking if he were playing against himself, but he wasn’t. He was playing against a notoriously loose player that has a reputation for playing almost any starting hand and getting to showdown with some bizarre and weak holdings.

So, our loose player’s thinking didn’t look anything like, “Hey, Mr. Squeaky Tight is betting, so he must have a great hand. I should fold middle pair here every time since the only thing I can beat from him is a bluff.” Instead, the thinking was more along the lines of, “I have a pair, and I could make a flush (runner-runner) or a straight (runner-runner). Pair, flush draw, and a straight draw – no way I can fold that. I call.”

Where our tight player went wrong was projecting his thought processes onto his opponents, and it is actually a little deeper than that. What he actually did was find a way to rationalize what he wanted to happen and then assumed the characters in the story would act in the way he played it out in his head. Have you ever known you were going to get into an argument or discussion with someone and thought it out ahead of time? Has it ever played out the way you thought it would in your mind? Of course not. People are complex and often irrational, or at least unpredictable, and after the opening foray, it is all about adapting and reacting.

In poker, we have a more controlled situation with fewer variables that is played out over and over, so we are given the chance to fairly accurately predict the actions of our opponents. But to do so, we have to get away from assuming they will think like we do or think like we want them to and get to the next level where we are actually thinking like they do.

In the scenario above, the tight player should have realized that he couldn’t bluff in this spot because he was up against a player that almost never folds once he is involved in a pot. Against this player, the right play is to value bet your good hands and get paid off, not try to get through a sliding glass door by smashing your head into it repeatedly.

The games I play in are imminently beatable, but a few talented players have come through and just can’t figure out why they never win. They understand the game better, have a grasp of starting hand values, and do a lot of things right. The ones that have come and gone have all had the same flaw of not being able to get out of their own head and into the head of their opponent.

Any time you hear a player say, “I do better against good players than I do against bad ones,” or some variation of this ludicrous statement, you know you are up against someone that is always viewing everything through their own personal filter instead of adapting to the actions and thoughts of each of their opponents.

If everyone thought the same, poker wouldn’t be much of a game. The games themselves are simple, but people are so complex that poker is a game that keeps us coming back time and again. Understand that, embrace it, and actually work to put yourself in your opponent’s head instead of trying to cram your thoughts into theirs. Not only will you become a much more successful player, but you will also get rid of a lot of the frustration that players carry around.

When a player is playing poorly, don’t try to change him so he plays how you wanted him to play in that situation. Realize what he is doing and adjust your actions to capitalize on his mistakes. Win-win. You get to cash in at the tables and a losing player gets to play and enjoy without getting criticized (at least by you) on how he plays.

Court Harrington has worked on the business side of the poker industry in roles including tournament reporting for PocketFives, radio hosting for PokerRoad Radio, coaching for the WSOP Academy, and a variety of behind-the-scenes responsibilities. He also plays in cash games and tournaments. Harrington is currently doing consulting work and exploring business opportunities outside of the poker industry. You can contact him at PokerRoadCourt@gmail.com.