Poker Articles

The Premise:

The biggest hole in people's NL Hold’em play is how they assign hands to their opponents.  Bad players assign far too much likelihood to hands they can beat, and not enough to the hands which beat them.

At a gathering this summer in Las Vegas, a group of poker players decided the Mating Call of the Donkey wasn’t a bleat or a whinny, but the phrase “I put you on Ace-King.”  We all make leaps of faith and irrational decisions to justify calling a re-raise with a low pair pre-flop.  We all think our second pair on a 9-high board has to be the best hand.  In online poker, with its preponderance of bluffers and hyper-loose “push-bots”, the logic is sufficiently correct enough to make us ignore the decision’s underlying flaw.

The flaw, of course, is most players aren’t chip-crazed psychopaths who will put it in with nothing at any given time, even in micro-limit games.  There’s a difference between loose and suicidal; one risky, the other deadly.  In live poker play, all of our senses provide reinforcement for the information we gather during the game.  The chatty middle-aged guy with wraparound shades and an iPod may be loose.  The kid wearing a beat-up sweatshirt, spouting gibberish and smelling vaguely of Taco Bell and stale weed may be suicidal.

Online, we have nothing to drive our impressions but a usually-meaningless avatar and our player notes, if any.  Good poker players do what they can to withhold judgment when faced with a lack of background knowledge.  Bad players just assume nobody ever has anything, ever.  This assumption is what I’ll call “The Hole.”  This hole is deep, wide, and can swallow your chips in any given tournament or cash game.

Avoiding the hole is a comprehensive process addressing your own play as well as the play of others.  First, we have to close the internal hole by simply being aware of any “rush to judgment” instinct.  It’s natural to think we’re ahead in a hand and are the favorite to win a nice pot: winning the pot is what we want to happen.  Fight that tendency.  Go through the exercise of determining a complete, accurate range of hands that make sense for how a hand has played.  This exercise takes honesty and patience, but is well worth the effort.  Yes, your 6-6 might be good on a 9-4-2 flop after calling a raise pre-flop.  Yes, your opponent might be continuation betting with A-K.  He also might be continuation betting with 7-7 or better.  Or a flopped set.  Take every possibility into account.  Good players don’t put their opponent on a hand; they put them on a range of possibilities.  Your read on your opponent does NOT define the range of possibilities; the read assigns the weight of likelihood to each possibility.

Admittedly, this requires a lot of practice and some mathematical aptitude.  Compounding our difficulty is the online time crunch.  We don’t have the luxury of shuffling chips and thinking things through until the floorman calls a clock.  We have 30 seconds, plus whatever time bank a site gives you.  Running through hand ranges in a utility like “pokenum” or a card calculator (like the one on PocketFives) is an excellent method of determining what your odds are for each hand in an opponent’s range.   Post hands in places like the Hand Advice forum and talk about what ranges you might expect for your opponents in a given situation.  If you’re feeling bold, simply ask your opponents “What did you put me on there?”  Select difficult decision points from your hand histories, crank through numbers, and eventually, you will develop an instinct for the right answer the next time a similar situation arises.

As you have now developed a process for making better decisions, it would be a mistake to assume others at your table have made the same effort, especially in the enormous quagmire of low-limit online tournaments.  With rare exceptions, nobody in these games is going through a range assignment.  If you re-raise pre-flop and they have a small pair, in their mind, you must have A-K or A-Q.  If you continuation bet a raggedy flop and they have bottom pair, you must have A-K or A-Q.  If you call a raise on the flop, you must have a draw.

There’s a beauty in their error: when you make your hand, they’ll pay you off with very mediocre hands.  The rest of the time, however, they’ll be right and you’ll be left on the rail, scratching your head how they called your large push on a dangerous flop with bottom pair and a bad kicker.  If you have A-K or A-Q and don’t hit your flop, be a lot more willing to check-fold if you’re out of position, or just check behind if you have position.  In the words of T.J. Cloutier, you can’t bluff a calling station.  And if they think they know what you have (A-high), and they’re right…they’ll call all day.

Regardless of the reasons why they reach their conclusions, if someone plays a hand knowing your exact hole cards, you can’t win.  You’ll find yourself in a bottomless pit of losing and frustration.  Being a winning poker player is mostly about determining possibilities and making decisions better than your opponents.  Avoiding the “I put you on Ace-King” hole is a large first step in the winning direction.