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A Delicate Balancing Act
Because balance, disguise, and deception are usually required ingredients in winning poker -unnecessary components only if your opponents are brain dead or completely unobservant about your hands and how you play them - top echelon play means disguising the quality of your hand and your intentions at least occasionally. Not all of the time, mind you; you don't even have to do it most of the time. But you've got to have a change-up in your arsenal and use it some of the time, otherwise the hitters will all sit there waiting for your fast ball and the good ones will know what to do with it when it comes.Disguising your play can take one of two basic forms: You can play a few of your very good hands as though they were somewhat weaker than they really are, or you can play a couple of weaker hands just like they're pocket kings or aces.
In of fixed limit games, you have fewer weapons at your disposal because you are limited to checking or betting if no one has acted yet, or folding, calling, or raising if an opponent has already bet. In of pot-limit and no-limit games you have an additional arrow in your quiver: how much to bet or how much to raise. Each of these options gives you an opportunity to either create or negate the right price for your opponent to continue with a draw if he has one, or to make him consider the quality of his hand compared to the hand you're representing by virtue of the size of your bet or raise.
In other words, you can turn an opponent's draw into a play with a long-term negative expected value if you decide to bet him off of his draw. You can also bet a smaller amount to encourage him to call. You choice of tactics usually depends on just how strong a hand you have.
So how do you decide whether to occasionally play a big hand like a small one, or sometimes play a weak hand as though it was much stronger? While you can't reduce poker to a formula, here are some guidelines to help with this decision:
- Is my hand a monster? If you're holding a really big hand - suppose you flopped a full house - you shouldn't mind giving your opponents a chance to improve, and the way to do this is to bet or raise a token amount while you hope they improve enough to think they have the best hand. If they do, just take as many of their chips as you can on subsequent batting rounds.
- Is a draw out there? Are there two suited cards on board and does your opponent appear to be on the come? If the answers are yes, you need to bet enough to take away his odds. Since the odds against completing a flush draw from the flop to the river are 1.86-to-1, you have to bet enough money to make the payoff from the pot as close to 1-to-1 as you can. If your opponent only has to call a dollar to win three or four dollars, he has a bet with a long term positive expectation; but if he has to call a dollar to win a buck-and-a-quarter, then you have the best of it and in the long run he'd be better off folding his hand.
- When your opponent is a timid player: If your opponent can be driven off all but his very best hands by a nice sized bet, you are better off playing your best hands for their own intrinsic value and adding to that mix by playing some of your less-than-best-hands that way too. Because your opponent's propensity is to toss hands away, you'll be building some bluffing opportunities into the disguise you are using to cloak your really good hands. If your standard raise is three or four times the big blind, then that's the way you should bet your pocket kings, pocket aces, pocket queens, and a few lesser hands too.
- When your opponent is a very aggressive player: While you can still bet most of your good hands for value, consider underplaying a few of them every so often. Underplaying encourages aggressive opponents to do the betting for you, and if you began with a big pocket pair and the flop doesn't seem especially harmful, you can let your opponent bet out and snap him off for a couple of additional bets when the time is right. But there's a drawback in going to the well too much: If you trap and checkraise your opponent too often, he'll become wary of betting into you. If your opponent's weakness is one of excess aggression with hands that don't warrant it, frequent checkraises only make a better player out of him - at least when he's up against you - and as a consequence he'll offer fewer opportunities for you to snap off his bets.
- When your opponent is an unrepentant maniac: It doesn't get this good this often, but
when you're opponent approaches of poker with an "If you bet, I raise; if you raise, I reraise" attitude, you don't have to worry about making a better player of him because he operates at the polar extreme of maniacal aggressiveness and doesn't ever want to come in from the cold. Never mind the fact that he probably doesn't care one whit about your hand. Not him. He just wants to raise and he wants to do it all the time.
Your job is to let him stay out there. Bet your good hands and hope he raises so you can commit him to three bets before he even sees the flop. While most experts all agree that you want aggressive players seated to your right so that you can isolate on their raises by reraising with your very best hands, this is a guy you want on your left. If all goes according to plan, you'll bet, he'll raise, and all the other players who have learned to discount his raises - after all, when someone raises every hand, wouldn't you begin to doubt the quality of the cards he's holding - will cold call two bets from him just like they were calling one bet from a more temperate player. Then you can make it three bets and you'll have all those other callers right where you want them, trapped in the sunshine for three bets with nowhere to go. - When your opponent is a good, solid, selective player, just like you: Your best bet against good, solid players is to add some hands and broaden out your playable repertoire and bet them for value. If your opponent is a straightforward, solid, and good player who spends time trying to discern what you are holding as well as trying to determine what you think he has, get the best value you can out of your very good hands. But you'll have to bluff some of the time or else your skillful opponents will begin to duck when you roll out the heavy artillery and keep their heads down until you cease firing. By bluffing, they'll have to consider that you might not always have the hand you're representing. If you are able to bluff correctly you will get some calls that you would never have gotten if you were one of those real rocks who hasn't bluffed since the Cubbies won the pennant. When you bluff at the correct frequency, there's just not much your opponent can do about it.
You can't win at of poker playing like a one-trick pony. If you do, most of your opponents will begin to realize what your game is all about, and only the most mindless of adversaries will cease to notice how you play and fail to make adjustments of their own.
But if you add some balance and deception to your game - it doesn't have to be too much, just a little dollop usually does it - you'll be surprised at how effective these small adjustments can be.
Article by Lou Krieger of Royal Vegas Poker
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