Poker Articles

I was discussing poker with a friend the other day, mostly on the subject of how to remain patient in trying circumstances.  Neither of us regularly plays more than 3-4 tables at a time, and often only one or two, so there are gaps in-between decisions.  My friend made a fairly innocuous comment, “No Limit Hold’em is pretty boring if you’re card dead,” which I didn’t think about too much during our conversation.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I hung up the phone.

After our chat, I initially dismissed “card dead” as an irrelevant state of being.  We have all been told poker is a game of position and people, not the cards in front of us.  If we win a pot without going to showdown on the river, it doesn’t matter what are hole cards are.  We win with the best bets, not the best hand.

So, who’s right?  As with most attempts to nail down an absolute answer in poker, the best I can come up with is: “It depends.”  Specifically, the dependency at the heart of the matter is one of table dynamics: how many pots are going to showdown?

At some tables, people seem drawn to play big pots as if their lives depended on it.  Every bet is an overbet.  Nobody has a “fold” button on his or her poker client.  100 BB stacks get shipped pre-flop in a KQ v. 44 coin flip.  Bets on later streets will get called with 2nd or 3rd pair, underpairs, or even Ace-high.

Tables loaded with these players are more often found at micro-stakes…but are no means limited to the smallest buy-ins.  The noon (EST) $20+2 MTT on PokerStars plays somewhat faster than Usain Bolt seven days a week, especially break-neck on Sundays.  Some tables in the 10 PM $24+2 on Full Tilt are Cinderella at the ball, needing to be done and home by midnight.  And the Sunday Majors are full of satellite qualifiers, playing deep stacks like their regular “donkaments”.

In these circumstances, your biggest advantage is getting paid the maximum when you have a hand.  Bluffing is less of a skill, and more of a spew, when your opponents will call incredibly loosely.  Their biggest thrill is making the hero call, and the best way to compete is to disappoint them in their quest.  Your focus has to be on getting value from monsters, not squeezing chips out of pots with air.

In other circumstances, you will come across spots where you can’t wait for the deck to smack you in the face.  It might be a turbo, or just bad, blind structure.  You might be at a table full of smart players who will notice how tight you are, and are unlikely to pay you off if you only play the nuts.  Or you just find a bunch of people who heard about “small ball poker”, but don’t understand it, and min-bet you to death like they’re playing Limit Hold’em.

The typical low- to mid-stakes tournament online has a wide variety of players.  Contrary to popular stereotype, there are always some solid, experienced players scattered in the field of a $4+.40 180-man or an $11 freezeout.  The percentage of runners in a low-stakes MTT who are winners, grinding out $5-20 games for a hobby or a spare-time job, has never been higher.  If you can’t pick these guys out from the masses who can’t fold once they put a chip in the pot, you’ll never find the proper spots to accumulate the chips you need to go deep.

But how?  Well, use your time wisely.  After all, if you’ve got enough gaps between decisions for boredom to creep in, you’ve got enough time to be doing other things.  Many of us choose to fill that time with a game on TV, a Web page to browse, an AIM chat to carry on.  Use this time instead to put the people in each hand on ranges.  Don’t try to guess exactly what they have; rather, think about what they might be playing.

What you’re looking for, specifically, are hands that simply don’t make any sense, either in the story they’re telling, or in their response to the story the other player is telling.  Will they 3-barrel bluff?  What do they call with when other players take the lead on all three streets?  Do they consistently get value from their hands?  If not, do they dramatically overbet or underbet?

At some tables, the exercise may be futile, as not a lot of hands will be shown down.  It’s OK.  Not all good habits help you every single time.  But knowing what’s in front of you, and around you, at the table will be beneficial in the long run.  No one can afford not to take advantage of every opportunity.