07-17-06, LearnTexasHoldem:
Texas Hold'em: Perfect Play
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It is this final stage of poker that I consider the ideal. Most players won't find it hard to read a book or two and improve to the second stage. It is much harder though to be able to break into the top category. Poker is interesting in the sense that the closer you are to losing in a hand, the more likely you are going to make money. If the person only has a slightly worse hand then yours, you will most likely make much more money from them then if they had a hand they could barely call you with. You make more if you just barely beat them. That means that if you could at will play only slightly tighter then them you would make more money from them then if you play ultra tight. You are trying to walk a fine line. Books can take you so far but they can't teach you this.
I believe that every game can be beat by a certain style of play. Sometimes you'll find that no matter what you did in a session, you wouldn't profit. That is normal, you can't win all the time since the cards have to cooperate. You should not use this as a cop out though if you take a big hit. Instead you should go home and think over what mistakes you made. How did you lose your money? Even if you come to the conclusion that the cards just weren't working for you tonight, could you have minimized your loss at all? Did you lose the winning attitude and then get gun shy on the few hands you did win? Were you playing too tight for the game? Were you playing too loosely? Looking critically at each session and trying to figure out what you did wrong will help improve your game (obviously). That sounds stupid to even waste the time writing that but there is something deeper to it. Don't assume because you won big one day you were playing well and when you lose it was out of your control. Each and every session you should pick apart and figure out what could have worked to make it even better. I don't care who you are, pro or amateur, you can always figure out something that could have made the day better. It is in this thought process that you will find your way to stage three, the "situational expert". What if you don't have any questions to ask yourself about your game? Well if that is the case then you are definitely not ready to try to move up to this final stage. You should play more and the questions will arise naturally.
Now let's go over a few concrete examples. Here are a few recent sessions in order from older to newer:
Session 1: I hadn't played poker in a while but my friend convinced me to go down again. I used to play professionally for a while (with success) but then it became too stressful and I had to stop. To make a long story short I didn't treat it as a regular job and played far too much and burnt out. Moderation is key for anything. So we played a little $4/8 game for fun. I ended up losing $350! I left with a little bit of my fourth rack. I've lost far more then that proportionally and otherwise but still that stung pretty badly because it was a freaking $4/8 game and everyone there was completely oblivious to good play and strategy. I was getting hammered but there was no reason to lose that much. My problem was basically I didn't remember how to play in games that loose anymore. I was overvaluing my good cards and not getting paid off when I won a pot. Even the worst players could see how tight I was and they were avoiding me unless they had me beat. Well the poker bug bit me again and I was set on beating the wild loose low limit games that I use to play so long ago.
Session 2: My goal was to loosen up significantly. I did just that and played the day having a good time. I won a little bit, $50 or so but I was able to try some things out that I had thought about and it helped. I may have given a little too much back in loose play but that was the goal: to test the waters trying to find that medium.
Session 3: Another attempt at loosening up like the last session... This session was actually very good and I was up a few racks but then I got talking to a guy about business and the dynamics of the game changed so much during that time that when I "returned" to the game I was lost. I gave much of it back and left with a just a little win. I should have known better then not paying attention to the new players sitting in. But my goal of playing looser in these loose games was becoming a reality. I was seeing value in certain areas and not in others. New opportunities were making themselves known. But the major lesson learned today is that it is even more important to pay attention to the game if you are trying to play looser then you normally do. That's essential since you need as much information about the other peoples play as possible to make the correct decisions.
Session 4: This session I wanted to refine the play somewhat and try to give back the least I had to, while still playing as many cards as I could profitably. Well that day was awesome and I bought in for two racks at the $4/8 and left with 12 racks (a $1000 win at $4/8 kill). I can't credit everything to playing looser in this game; to win that much at such a small limit means you were getting great cards and they were holding up. I can say though that many of the pots I won were massive and part of the reason for that was that they had no idea where to put me. In other words they had no idea what I had as opposed to the first sessions above where I was playing far too tight for the game that even the poorest players could dodge my bullets. I mentioned above not to be seduced into the idea of thinking when you win you played well and when you lost you didn't. I can look at my game and see reasons why I did win so much that day. Part of my success was that I would occasionally raise hands that people at that limit wouldn't and it would cause them to miss play them later and pay me off huge. For example in the big blind I raised QTs (queen and ten suited) when there were seven other people in the pot. A person made it three bets. I floped the nut straight and another person hit a set. I got three bets on the turn and two on the river since there was no way they could have seen the QTs coming! LOL At the end of the day I felt like I had the perfect combination of good and bad cards so that my good hands were getting all the value I could ask for and my bad cards weren't costing me too much (since I could easily let them go knowing I wasn't going to win).
So what next? I don't think I have mastered this adaptiveness, or situational expert play yet. I think it will much more time before I can confidently sit down in any game and feel like I can apply the right tool to play just tight enough but I think I am breaking my shell and moving past the fundamentals. I also think that when I return to the limits that I use to play at, having once more worked up the limit latter, I will be a much stronger player. I'll be the tough unpredictable player that is hard to read and beat instead of the old me which could only show down the winning hand to pull a little pot.
Now as for perfect poker, if it exists and what it is... I do think perfect poker exists and it is being in this situational expert stage consistently. That would be optimum play. This is easier said than done since every holdem game is different, even if just the date changes. The good news though is winning money at poker doesn't require this level. You have a bigger margin then you think.
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