Ed Miller is coming out with a new book and video series on
mastering basic skills in poker.
This week he came out with the first video that serves and an
introduction and lays out some basic premises about the game that I think are
great.
The question Ed likes to ask all his new students is where
they think money comes from in poker.
Invariably he gets three answers:
1.) Playing tight, 2.) Making Hands and 3.) Game Selection.
All players at low stakes play too many hands. If you are supposed to play 15% of the
hands you are dealt but play 30%, that extra 15% are all bad hands, by
definition. They aren’t sprinkled
around in the range distribution (some good, some bad); they are ALL glopped on
to the bottom. It’s dead weight
that bleeds money out of your bankroll and into stacks of your opponents. So, playing tight (or put another way,
the ability to fold) is a critical basic ingredient to winning poker but it is
not sufficient. No one has ever
won a pot in poker by folding.
Playing tight will never put money into your stack at the poker
table. Likewise, as important as game selection is, the actual
act of sitting down at a table play doesn’t put chips your stack; you need
something else.
For nearly all my opponents, that “something else” is answer
number 2, making hands. Nearly all
my opponents play too many hands with the strategy of seeing as many flops as
they can, as cheaply as they can.
They play very passively preflop hoping to hit a monster and then find
some poor chump to stack. That’s
why SO MANY of my opponents show up with suited rags and off suit
connectors. Their goal is to hit
straights and flushes and get paid off by top pair.
So, what’s wrong with this strategy? Many, many players I’ve run across have
this sense of integrity or justice about the game. They really feel like the goal in poker should be “the best
hand wins.” Any other outcome, in
their mind, is evidence of bad play (i.e. over-reliance on luck) or simple
thievery. They bet and raise with
strong hands and they check and call with medium strength hands or draws. Winning, in their mind, is simply a
matter of function of the game.
They run well and they win.
They run poorly and they lose.
The problem is that if everyone is playing the game like this (and for
the most part, they are), no one except the house is winning any money. It’s just an exercise in trading money
back and forth. I spike a set on the
flop and get paid off by two-pair.
The next time, you spike the set and I pay you off. True winning players are not trying to
make hands. They understand that
making straights and flushes are simply a matter of variance. They also understand that most of the
regular players they face are good enough to recognize board texture and avoid
paying off big hands. And, herein lays
the kernel of where money really comes from in poker.
Winning players recognize that making money in poker comes
down to applying an appropriate counterstrategy to what their opponents are
trying to accomplish. Good players
are essentially catching opponents in the act and making them pay a price for
it. If I am a winning player, I recognize
that opponents are playing too many hands. It then follows that on each street of betting my opponents
have to figure out what to do with all these extra bad hands they are
playing. They can call, fold or
bluff with them. In the example
above, the trend these days for regular players is to read the board texture
and avoid paying off big hands.
The over-tendency to fold weak hands (and they most often are weak
because they are playing too many hands to begin with) makes them vulnerable to
bluffs. As opponent’s frequency of
folding increases, so my frequency of bluffing increases. 20% of the time I may run up against
the top part of their range and I tap the table and muck my hand. But, 80% of the time I am catching my
opponents making consistent, systematic errors against me by folding too much
and I win the pot. Picking up
these pots, pots that I don’t “deserve” to win, add up during a session and
make the difference between winning players and the rest.
Winning poker isn’t about making the best hand as much as it
is recognizing opponent’s strategy and employing an effective counter
strategy.
