Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (13 page)

The way you look also affects your image. If you are a young kid, most players will assume you are loose. Because of this, you can get away with folding marginal hands because you don’t have to play them to get paid off later. If you are an older player, most players will assume you are tight, which will allow you to bluff much more than average. Think about how you look to other players and ask your friends how they expect someone that looks like you to play. This information is vital, as it will let you know what you can get away with against opponents that don’t know much about your game.

While the information in this chapter is important, you must not get carried away with making these advertisement plays. If you somehow forget what your opponents think about you, I suggest you revert to your standard game. Losing a tournament because your opponent thinks something totally different about your game than you believe he does is always a disaster. If you are just starting, just play your normal game all the time. As you grow as a poker player, you can implement the measures discussed above. You will slowly, but surely, see your win rate increase as you induce your opponents to make poor plays.

If you employ the style I recommend, which is playing a decent amount of hands aggressively and in position, you want your opponents to fold more often than not. Because of this, you want a tight image. I am confident that if I were a 60 year old man, I would have won more tournaments than I have because people would assume I was tight and surrender many more pots to me.

I expect that people generally think I have a hand but believe I get out of line from time to time, which is true. One of my greatest skills is figuring out when my opponent is going to try to make a play on me. Once I determine this, I can play my hand in a manner that lets me catch his bluffs.

If you can cultivate a tight image while still running over the table, you should do it. This isn’t really doable in the real world. However, you can do some things to make your opponents think you are tighter than you are. First, be relatively quiet at the table. If no one hears you talk, they will tend to forget you are there. Also, if you make your decisions fairly quickly, your opponents will spend more time staring at other players, which means less time staring at you. I would also suggest not wearing too much flashy clothing. Basically, you want to blend in at the table and not be the focus of everyone’s attention. I also suggest you keep your chip stack rather small. This means not having a ton of 25 and 100 chips, which are usually obtained by winning a lot of small pots, which means you are loose. Actively make change for everyone at the table and try to keep 20 or fewer of the smaller-denomination chips.

If you want to be loud, take your time at the table and have a pile of 25 chips, I suggest you play tighter than most players, as you will get played back at more than someone that blends in with the crowd.

While I will not say for certain that any image is best, you must realize how you look to everyone else and play accordingly. One of my friends is an older player who is known for playing very tight. I suggested he raise significantly more hands than he normally does. Sure enough, within a month, he won a major tournament. This is because everyone “knows” he is tight. He had such a reputation for being tight that players failed to adjust, allowing him to run over the table.

I believe the optimal image is the opposite of your playing style. If you want to be loose, you need to appear tight, and if you want to play tight, you need to appear loose, so you get paid off with your hands. With practice, you can cultivate whichever image you think is the most +EV for each table you sit at in a tournament. Having the ability to appear tight at one table and loose at another can win you a lot of chips.

Levels of Thinking

You must constantly try to determine the level at which each of your opponents is thinking. I still have problems with this. It takes a lot of experience, concentration on each hand, and deep thought. If you are a world-class player, capable of thinking at only a world-class level, you will win money from basically all types of opponents. However, if you can think like a bad player as well as a world-class player, you will make even more money from the poor players.

I recently played in a small, local $10 buy-in tournament where everyone loved to play ever hand, basically always by limping pre-flop. The structure was very fast and I ended up having ten big blinds in the small blind with K
-J
. There were a few limps in front of me so I went all in, expecting to have a great deal of fold equity, as I would in a large-buy-in tournament. Also, I assumed if I were called, I may even be ahead of some of these guys’ ranges. What actually happened was that one of the limpers said something like, “I guess I have to call with this one,” and ended up busting me with A-K. Had I have known that these players limp with A-K after people have already limped, I would have just called with K-J and seen a flop. Not understanding how these people play cost me my stack.

I got demolished one other time by thinking on a different level. Instead of thinking above my opponent, I was thinking one level below him. This hand came up three-handed at the WPT Mirage event. The effective stack size was around 50BBs. I raised J
-8
from the button to 2.5BBs and Cory Carrol, who is an excellent, aggressive player, re-raised to around 9BBs from the small blind. I had been raising a fairly wide range from the button and I knew Cory knew that, so I decided that he was capable of re-raising me with a wide range as well. If I went all-in and he called, I would have decent equity with J
-8
, and if I lost the hand, I would still have a manageable 20BB stack. Knowing all that, I decided to go all-in, expecting him to fold all but his best hands. He thought for a while and called with A-5, which shocked me, but makes sense if he knows that I think he is going to re-raise a huge amount of the time. The flop came A-5-5 and I was down to a short stack. I got humbled nicely.

You can see from these examples that you can fall prey to both over-and under-thinking your opponents. Sadly, the only way to learn how to put your opponents on a specific level is through hours of play with every type of player. Amateurs generally think about their cards and sometimes what you might have. Good players think about their cards, what you have, what their hand appears to be to you, what you think your hand appears to be to them, and so on. Against these types of players, I tend to stay out of the leveling war and play my standard, aggressive poker game, as that style of play will always be neutral or +EV. While I may cost myself a little equity by avoiding some leveling wars that I might win, I save my stack some percentage of the time, which is quite important in a tournament.

Despite the great feeling of winning a leveling war, I suggest you avoid them unless the situation dictates that you get involved. Playing this style of poker all day will tax your brain, causing you to play poorly toward the end of the day, especially if you lack playing experience in high-stress situations. Just play a solid, aggressive game.

Make Friends at the Table

Most things that happen in a normal poker game should not be taken personally. Most professionals know this, but most amateurs still feel that poker is a personal game. Luckily for us, there is a way to exploit this. Most players try to get under their opponent’s skin, making him dislike them so much that he makes poor plays. I try to do the opposite. I try to make my opponents like me, especially the ones I will play the most pots with. I do this by making small talk and being generally pleasant.

It is important to realize how people will respond to playing against their newfound friends. Some players ignore the fact that we are friendly and play like we don’t know each other, which they should. Some players, the ones I will exploit, start playing very straightforwardly against their new friends. This will allow me to run them over. If your new friend is on your right, re-raise him often and claim to have a big hand when he asks what you are doing. If he’s on your left, you can expect him only to re-raise you with a premium hand. He will also rarely try to put a play on you post-flop. If one of your new friends does re-raise you, tend to give him credit if he’s been tight against you so far.