Ed Hill Poker - Poker Articles

The Trap

Authored by: Ed Hill

Take a game like Texas Holdem. We all start out perceiving the correct way to play the game. You will encounter many different types of Holdem and each type will have it's own particular set of skills. There are full ring games which will be either loose-aggressive, loose passive, tight aggressive, and tight passive. There will be short handed games, pot limit , no limit, and tournaments. Each one of the above mentioned will require a distinct set of skills, and one of the above will fit our own perception of the game better than the others, so that will be the one that we tend to gravitate to.

This does not mean that the ones that don't fit our particular styles are any less skillful than the one that we specialize in. It is very easy to say "I like full ring games and if the game is shorthanded I am not going to play" There is another group of people that only want to play if the game is shorthanded. There is another group that only desires pot limit or no limit. And the last group will only play if it is a tournament format. If it is your desire to be a great player, you can not afford to shy away from the other forms that do not fit your style. With enough thought you can develop strategies that will be successful in the other forms of holdem.

The minute that you quit studying the game you are doomed to failure, because some of your opponents are always thinking of ways to improve their games. You are giving up a tremendous money making opportunity if you only want to play one particular form of a game and ignore all the others. The same holds true for playing other games, if you truly understand what it takes to be a winning player, you should be able to play respectable in games like HORSE = Holdem, Omaha 8 or better, Razz, 7 stud, and Stud 8 or better. Even in the high limit HORSE games roughly 25% of the table doesn't have the faintest idea on how to play the game that is presently being dealt. Yet you will be sitting in your favorite game, even if it is not very good at the moment. You have to be flexible enough to play any game that the live ones want to play, they are the providers.

For years, all I heard is that you need to be an idiot to be a great tournament player. The people that were successful in tournaments could not beat a table full of live ones when it was a money game, rather than a tournament format. The good tournament players make a lot more money than the live action players do. In my opinion, when you start calling people idiots that have different sets of skills than what you posses, rather than trying to figure out what they are doing right and where you are going wrong, the idiot becomes very easy to find, just look in the mirror.

The major difference between live games and tournaments was that your opponents could not go into their pocket when they ran out of money. If your opponents are going to play differently because they have to exit if they go broke, shouldnâ€™t you be playing differently also? The good tournament players do well in tournaments because their opponents play too timidly. They do poorly in live games, because they got overly aggressive against the same opponents that now are not timid, causing them to bluff off their money. Good shorthanded players fall into the same trap. The value of aggression goes up in shorthanded games and tournaments. It goes down when the games are full, because you have to have a hand a higher percentage of the time, except of course when the game is tight.

Very tight players have good tournament results. Which is a contradiction to the aggressive style. They make the money a much higher percentage of the time than the aggressive players. Lasting longer will give you a better chance of catching a good run of cards, but frequently you will not be making the final table in good chip position using this style. The aggressive players will not be making the final table as often, but when they do get there they will usually have a good chip position.

Mason Malmuth wrote a column called "Action Dan" where he stated that there was a new breed of tournament player emerging. These players were experts at live games that had also started taking tournament play seriously. Current World Champion of Poker Dan Harrington "Action Dan" is a good example of this. After thinking out the correct tournament concepts and playing in a few tournaments , Dan has done what nobody in the past has been able to do. Win the $2,500 No Limit and the $10,000 No Limit at last years World Series. Win the $10,000 No Limit European Championship, followed up by the $5,000 No Limit Championship recently at the Four Queens. Dan is not one of the overly aggressive players that has been successful in the past. He is just an expert player that has put a lot of thought into how to play a tournament. He didn't fall into the trap.

The people that dominated the $10-$20 holdem game in the early 80's were all aggressive players. The reason that they did so well was because their opponents were used to playing the old structure, which was a 50 cent ante and one $5 blind. Their opponents played too tight and the aggressive players ran over them. Their opponents were incapable of adjusting to the new game, they fell into the trap. When the games became looser in the late 80's all the people that dominated the games in the early 80's went broke because they were not capable of adjusting to the new game, now they fell into the trap. It is easy to fall into the trap -this strategy has worked for me in the past, I am not going to change it, the reason that I am doing poorly is BAD LUCK.

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