Ed Hill Poker - Poker Articles

Poker is Counter-Intuitive

Authored by: Ed Hill

One of the odd things that occur in poker is how counter-intuitive the game actually is. For this reason, many intelligent people have a difficult time doing well at the poker tables.

It is common knowledge that as your position improves, you can play more hands, this is undoubtedly true. This is also not always the case. Take for example, that you are in a loose limit holdem game and hold a small pair like 22. If you are in early position you can go ahead and limp in, anticipating that you will get the multi-way pot that you desire. This is especially true if there are timid opponents behind you. If you are first in, from middle position you should definitely fold the same 22. You can not anticipate getting the same multi-way action like you could when you were in early position, and now a player behind you is more likely to raise and try to isolate you. So here is an example were you could play a hand from early position where you would fold the same hand from middle position.

When we are running good and everything is going right, there is one thing that certainly isn’t going to happen, that is blow back very much of the really nice winner that we have already booked, that would be really stupid!!! Obviously, we are not going to play any borderline hands and the minute that the rush is over, we are going to hit the door. That is what everybody does, but are they correct?

When your table image is good, you have the game primed to book a huge winner. Your opponents will fold against you at a much higher frequency than they normally would. Therefore semi-bluffing type hands go way up in value. David Sklansky in his book “Theory of Poker” defined a semi-bluff as a hand that would almost be correct to call with if you had checked and somebody else had bet, therefore it would be better to have bet the hand yourself, as long as there is at least a small chance that your opponents will fold. This gives you an additional way to win the pot, other than having to hit your hand. If your opponents are folding at a higher frequency than they normally would, shouldn’t you be loosing your standards a little to take advantage of this situation? That is certainly different than the axim of protecting your winner and having one foot out the door. You are increasing your chances of blowing back a good part of your winner and at the same time you are increasing your expectation as well. All we are looking to do in any gambling situation is to increase our expectation.

Take an expert card counter for example. He says to himself, it would really be great if I were to win $2,000 today. He finds a really rich shoe that is full of aces and tens and wins a high percentage of his bets and finds himself quickly up the $2,000 that he wanted to win. There is one problem, the shoe is still very rich. If he keeps playing he may blow back a good piece of the winner, that would really be stupid. So he quits, tomorrow he will be playing another positive situation, which in all likelihood will not be as good as the one he walked away from today. Yet this same phenomenon occurs over and over again, lock up a winner today and play a situation that is worse tomorrow. When you have a good table image in a poker game it is really ridiculous to walk away.

The same hold true when you are getting every hand beat. What most people will do is play looser than they normally would in a desperate attempt to get even. They will bluff more than they normally would because they have to win a pot somewhere. The problem is that your table image is so poor at the moment that all your opponents feel that they are going to beat you, they can’t wait to get into your pots. For a semi-bluff to be correct there has to be some possibility that all your opponents are going to fold, this is extremely unlikely when you have a bad table image. The correct strategy seems to be, play tighter and stab at fewer pots. You will say that playing in the manner, how do you expect me to get even? The answer is, you probably won’t. You will make money in the long run if you are always trying to maximize your expectation and not being overly concerned with short term results.

Almost all the top players are friends of mine. I do not know anybody that always wins. It just isn’t going to happen. If you find yourself at the poker table often, there will be many losing sessions and there isn’t anything in the world that you can do about it. There is nothing you can do when you take an inordinate amount of bad beats for an extended period of time, occurrences like this are out of our control. We should be concerned with things that we do have some control over rather than worrying about things that we have no control over. Telling your opponents how bad you are running will just alert them to a fact that they might not have recognized if you hadn’t told them. Now you can start every session with a bad table image instead of a neutral one. Nobody wants to listen to other peoples bad beat stories, they have their own. If you find a sympathetic ear, you can tell each other all the awful things that have happened, and sit around and bitch like a bunch of losers. It seems more productive to be focusing on things that you can do something about, like playing better, rather than wasting your time whining to someone that could care less.

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