I’ve been thinking about this concept quite a lot lately. At first, I thought I was being results oriented, paranoid, or simply way too nitty. I ended up having the same discussion with a number of players I respect, and after some debate, we pretty much all came to the same conclusion. As winning mid-to-high stakes tournaments players, we end up leveling ourselves too often. <READMORE>

If you’re reading this you’re likely the kind of person who seeks out information on improving your game. That means you probably read forums, books, articles, and converse about poker with other thinking players in an effort to get better. These are the best ways of getting better of course, but they tend to cause one problem. Thinking players spend so much time around other thinking players and considering thinking situations that we sometimes forget the majority of tournaments players aren’t thinking, or more precisely, don’t think anything like we do. I’ll let Shaundeeb elaborate with the following:

“Now I would hope most of you are familiar with the levels of thinking in poker, but most of you - myself included - make this crucial mistake over and over again. The problem with most Level 2 thinking done by mid-stakes tourney regulars is they too often, when figuring out an opponent's range, use a range too close to their own. This means making an error by giving the guy too much credit or too little credit. Now it's almost always going to be a big guessing game on ranges with a random player, but you should still try to give them less credit before giving them more.

I have made my living beating bad players; you could call me the Phil Hellmuth of lower stakes MTT’s. I learned quickly what to do versus those types of players and made a good profit from it. I notice that I often make the mistake of thinking a particular situation is a great spot to bluff. When considering the other person's position, I often assume he’s bluffing. However, he's not as good as me, and therefore probably doesn't realize what a 'good spot' truly is, and most likely has what he is representing.

We are trained to be the highest level thinking players out there by discussing hands within our own little cliques every day; trying to dissect every possible outcome. However, if we just studied the decisions from a different perspective, we would discover the actual spot to pounce on our opponent's mistake... although conventional wisdom tends to push us towards a different outcome/solution.

We use most of our important early decision-making skills against random opponents, and it's so hard to predict the way these players will react and what they actually have. However, as soon as you stop using your own hand range to estimate that of your opponent, you will start playing much better. Thankfully those we play against don't have the same ranges we would have, or our edge would diminish due to that. They make huge mistakes for us.

Now most of this advice is not for your biggest buyins online, but instead for those oh-so-soft satellite filled Sunday lotteries, as well as those $10-$100 freezeouts and rebuys under $100. You will run into so many different players and styles in one day that you can never know who's who and what's what half the time - but for the half you do know, be sure you make an educated decision based on your opponent, not on your own range. When I began learning Level 2 thinking, it was common for me to consider my own range, and use that to estimate my opponent's holding, but we should attempt to move past that stage and attempt a more efficient way of thinking.”

Thanks for your input Shaun. It only took me 78 hours and two seizures to turn it into understandable English. It’s a good summary of the issue at hand, so now let’s talk about application. First of all, one assumption to make is that people’s ranges are tighter than you expect until proven otherwise. This is another point where being observant or using Poker Tracker with PAHUD becomes important.

I would say in most mid-stakes tournaments (which I’d define at $20-$100 freezeouts and $10-$50 rebuys, and sometimes the $150’s), the break down in players is something like: 75% too tight/passive, 20% too loose/aggressive/spewy, 5% thinking professionals. Of course, this is course a very large generalization... and there are many variables to consider, but this is an accurate break-down in many mid-stakes tournaments.

Let’s look at specific instances where I think good/thinking players are giving too much credit to non-thinking players or random players.

1. Paying off small river value bets -- You get this all the time, you find yourself at the river with a medium strength hand that you’re fairly sure isn’t good. However, your opponent fires out a bet in the area of 30-50% pot. You look at his bet, figure your medium strength hand only needs to be good around 1 in 4 times or something, and call down. I know it’s gross but trust me, stop paying off these bets until you see someone bluff with them. Nobody bets this stupid little size as a bluff. Sure you only need to be good 1 in 4 for this to be profitable. In my experience though, it’s considerably higher... something like 1 in 8 or maybe 1 in 10, that the player doesn’t showdown a winner, so you’re getting taken to value-town.

Now if you get the kind of board where a number of draws miss or you think the villain is very bad at making thin value bets, you can perhaps call these down. However, one of the biggest leaks I see in good players is using pot-odds to justify this call. I think something to consider in the future is to look for players who make these thin value bets with good but not great hands, and then find spots where you can catch them doing it and blow them off it with a large raise. This essentially turns your showdown value into a bluff. Spots do indeed exist where this can and should be done, as long as you know your opponent has a fold button.

2. Four-bet jamming a wide range of hands pre-flop instead of a small 3-bet -- I know sometimes players turn up with truly insane hands when they min-reraise you pre-flop. Yes... I know it happens. However, if you look at the breakdown of times you get min-reraised by something random/awful, and the times it’s a huge hand, I think you’ll find that trying to come over the top of these opponents while holding a marginal hand is a really bad idea. Bad players tiny re-raise you because they aren’t aware that you’re thinking about their raise size. All they’re hoping for is that you see a tiny amount and either take a flop and fall in love, or get annoyed with such a stupid sized 3-bet and come over the top. Until proven otherwise, accept random or weak players’ pre-flop tiny and min re-raises as the massive hands they often are.

3. Calling short-stack open shoves too wide -- Very many unknown players still aren’t aware of how wide they can profitably shove on a short stack. Lots of guys will keep folding well past a 10 BB stack waiting for something semi decent. This is a leak I used to have on an enormous scale. I guess I figured it was one of those things everyone knew, or that it was simply obvious, but that’s just not the case. Even though shoving ranges have gotten much wider in the past two years, there are still so many players out there who have no idea about +cEV shoves, Poker Stove, SNG Power Tools, or anything like that. As I said in a previous entry, one of the most important things I take notes on is opponents' shoving ranges. Those kinds of notes can come in handy in a huge way late in a tournament.

4. Assuming nobody in their right might would make a massive overshove with a big hand -- This one is not as prominent as the others since there are plenty of players who go for small bets with big hands and huge shoves with drawing hands. However, there are a ton of players who, when risking a very large amount of chips, are never doing so without what they perceive as a huge hand. One good way to tell if a player is the type to do this is watch how they play a draw. If you see a player play a draw passively, then you get in a spot where he pulls a huge overshove on you, odds are he’s got what he’s representing. Especially deep in tournaments where players are anxious about blowing a large stack or a chance at a big score, you have to accept that many players will tighten up and take less chances with their whole stack.

Next I want to address an issue that comes up whenever I discuss this kind of thing with smart players. Doesn’t giving people credit for a hand all the time make you an equally exploitable nit? I don’t think so. The only players good enough to exploit your tendencies are thinking players. If you’re a regular tournament player, you need to make it your business to know who the thinking players are.

That means researching your opponents at the table when possible. Bad, non-thinking players aren’t capable of adjusting to the point where they can exploit my tendencies, or certainly not to a degree that I can’t see it coming. When I play a hand against someone I know to be a thinking player (and who knows I know they’re thinking), I throw all of these assumptions out the window and attempt to play my hand in a manner that aims for deception instead of manipulation.

Who knows though... perhaps after having this article put up I’m going to have to make large adjustments when people start abusing me with 1/3rd pot bluffs, and tiny 3-betting me all day. I doubt it though. There are just too many bad players, and we all need to accept that.

* Tony Bond 18 Dunst is a professional high-stakes tournament player and PocketFives.com Contributing Writer. His recent articles for P5's can be found by visiting the Guest Articles section.
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