Poker Articles

We’re at a table full of loose, crazy, irresistible forces.  Some play well (fighters with the skill of Bruce Lee); others not so much (Daffy Duck as Robin Hood).  We must deal with all of them to reach our end goals – final tables, big money and the glory of tournament victory.  Our Aikido Poker judogis are on, our obis tied tightly, and we’re ready to fight back in our new, controlled style.  Pre-flop, we’re limping rather than raising out-of-position, calling rather than re-raising in-position, and doing what we can to control pot size and keep our opponents off-balance.  It’s time to see the community cards.  Now what?

If you hit the flop and have a monster hand, the best thing you can do is let Bruce or Daffy keep on putting chips in the pot.  Let them think your style is weak because you don’t raise or re-raise pre-flop.  Give them the opportunity to do what they like to do, and that is bet, bet, bet.  One of the biggest mistakes we can make against someone who always continuation bets after raising pre-flop is to let them make only one bet.  If you have top two pair on a 9-7-2 flop, your opponent who raised with A-J will likely fire a second bullet on the turn if you just call on the flop.  They are trying to represent an overpair or another very strong hand.  However, they will NEVER call if you raise them on the flop.  Give them the chance to fire a second or third bullet on the turn and river, or catch up in the hand.  If they turn an Ace, the rest of their chips are going in the pot, and you’ll have them drawing as a 5:1 underdog.

Knowing how to read the texture of the board becomes critical if you miss the flop.  Understand that your opponents, especially the Daffys, find it very difficult to get away from top pair.  Don’t even think about trying to take the pot away if your 7-6 suited completely missed the A-K-J flop.  Daffy will bet out with his A-8, and you’ll let him win the pot.  It’s OK for your opponents to win some pots…it keeps Bruce and Daffy thinking they’re running the table, dictating the pace of play and on a path to the final table.  Only we know differently.

If we miss a raggedy flop, our experience should dictate this is a pot ripe for the picking.  We’re looking to take this one away.  Let’s say you call pre-flop, in position, with K-10.  The flop is 7-5-2, rainbow, and our opponent leads out.  With most Bruces and Daffys, this is a pure continuation bet, a bluff.  The natural inclination of tight players is to give up…we have K-high.  However, in Aikido Poker, our actions are designed to counter our opponents.  The game isn’t about our cards…it’s about other people.  We play back and raise with our K-high.  If they call or re-raise, then we re-evaluate where we are and (most of the time) fold.  But against an ultra-LAG player, the call or re-raise will not be coming very often.

To inflict extra confusion, and usually extract extra chips, you can also call the continuation bet on the flop with the intention of taking the pot away on the turn.  This is normally considered an advanced play; at least, that’s how a TV commentator would refer to it.  But you would be amazed at how often this work in tournaments of all buy-ins, from the micros to the Sunday Majors.  The play can work regardless of position, but it can be done with greater confidence if you’re last to act.  If you’re out-of-position, check/call the continuation bet on the flop, then bet the turn unless an A or K hits.  If you’re in position, smooth call the flop and bet the turn if he checks.  If he bets again and you can’t see how the turn helped what he might have, then raise the turn.

Playing this style, you will get picked off from time to time.  For all the maneuvering, counterstrikes and gamesmanship as part of the Aikido Poker style, sometimes your opponent wakes up with AA or a flopped set.  Keeping your bets and raises fairly small is part of the key to this style.  The “bet pot” button never comes into play.  It’s a game of smallish raises and re-raises to determine where you are, especially after the flop.  Pre-flop, a re-raise of 2x the pot doesn’t mean a whole lot…Bruce and Daffy make that call without a second thought.  Out of their comfort zone, on the flop and turn, raises just over the minimum (2.5x the original bet) send off all kinds of alarms and confusion, which is exactly what we want.

It is important to note Aikido Poker is primarily a big-stack game.  If you have a short stack, on the flop, you cannot leverage the threat of another bet to come on the turn, and another on the river.  If your opponent in the hand is short, most actions they make on the flop pot-commit themselves.  In both cases, poker turns into a pre-flop game again.  If you’ve played the game well when everyone was big-stacked, your opponents will be short more often than you, and you will still have the flexibility to do what you want, when you want, against most opponents.

The bottom line is you should never let your cards dictate whether or not you can win a pot.  If you rely on cards to win at poker, you’re not playing the complete game.  You are replacing the potential for skilled wins with dumb luck.  There are times where it pays to be tight and wait for hands.  In today’s world of online poker, those times are far less common than they were when a lot of prevailing poker literature was written.  For the rest of the time, it’s time to go to war with a new style. 

Now, lemme hear your war cry!  You got a war cry, don’t you?!  Well, lemme hear it!