April Article of the Month Submissions (deadline 3/20)

[ciaran]

ITH is sponsoring an Article of the Month contest. Each month Members can submit articles to the Forum. The Forum will vote on their favorite article and the winner’s will be published on the home page and newsletter. The winner receives $100 (cash or stake). The process will work as follows:

- We will start a Sticky each month in The Poker Tutor and Articles Forum titled January Article of the Month contest, February…etc.
- Members have until the 20th of each month to submit an article in that thread.
- On the 20th, we will post a poll for Members to vote on their favorite article.
- Whichever article has the most votes by the 1st will win.
- Please focus on poker strategy. Lessons learned and hand examples are always great topics. Feel free to turn one of your posts into an article.

If you want to make a submission, please simply reply to this thread with your article.

Thanks and good luck!

[ezplayer]

"Player the Player: What Does it Mean?"

Play the player. Everyone has heard it. Most of us have probably even said it, but what does it really mean? And, more importantly, if you don't really get it, how do you figure it out? To answer this question, try the following experiment, or a least, read to the end of this article

Imagine yourself sitting down at a 6-max NL table with the lowest buy-in available. The buy-in needs to be so low that you won't care if you lose 5 or 6 of them. Pretend you decide to raise 50% of your hands (3x BB will suffice) when you can enter an unraised pot, otherwise fold. On the flop, throw out a continuation bet of 1/2 the pot every time you were the preflop raiser. What can you expect to happen?

At first, you might find that everyone folds. In fact, some of my best sessions have occurred when I've seemingly played like a total maniac. When your opponents fold too often, especially on the flop, it's extremely profitable. For the learning experience, I'd like to emphasize the raising the unraised pot point again. You'll be playing a bit wildly...no sense in throwing good money in the pot with crap when one of your opponents thinks they have a good starting hand.

Of course, the table will probably get fed up with your crazy raising so eventually they'll start to play back at you. For arguments sake, let's assume you get an average of one caller for each preflop raise as we explore the types of players you might encounter. Suppose you notice that player 1 seems to take a lot of flops against you. Then, instead of folding, he starts calling your continuation bets, re-raising you, and or betting the turn. Since you basically have crap, you're forced to fold pot after pot to player 1. So what's going on? Player 1 is now playing you, not his cards because he's identified your glaring weakness (at least your “experimental” weakness).

Now, it’s time for a strategy adjustment. Since Player 1 is both observant and willing to act on it, it stands to reason that Player 1 might actually be a decent player. Adjust your preflop raising to avoid Player 1 whenever possible...at least when you’re raising my prescribed junk hands.

After folding a bunch of times on the flop early on, suppose you notice that player 2 simply stops folding to your continuation bets. Maybe you see him call you down with bottom pair, or maybe even Ace high. You've now discovered a calling station...even though player 2 was modestly observant in that they figured out you were raising and betting with nothing, they're showing true calling station tendencies so again, it's time for a strategy adjustment: in this case, it would make sense to bet decent hands after the flop but check you're garbage when you're in the hand together. Will they notice you play differently against them post flop than you do against everyone else?

It's likely there will be some weak-tights at your table. If so, they're pretty easy to identify...they keep folding (both preflop and post flop) unless they have really strong hands. No need to change your strategy against them...just keep on running them over. If they play back at you, get out of the way. Now you've identified three player types and you have three different game plans to optimize against each one. There are many different player types, far too many to discuss here but the point is, once you identify some key stereotypical traits, you can begin to make your strategy player specific. So let’s play an imaginary hand against each of the 3 opponents we’ve categorized.

Here’s the scenario: You’ve been sitting at the imaginary table and you’ve been raising like crazy. Over the past 40 or 50 hands, you’ve made the observations categorized above. Now, you’re dealt AK off suit UTG and so you raise first in your standard 3x BB. In each hand, you’re called by your opponent who is on the button, so you’re out of position for the flop, and everyone else folds. Each time the flop is uncoordinated, all rags. So, what do you do against Player 1 (our potentially dangerous, aggressive opponent who has taken to playing back at us)? If you bet, you know he might raise you with nothing. If you check, he might bet out at you, and so on. My point is, there’s no easy answer because he’s playing you, not his cards. However, I’d like to note that if the flop was Q rag rag, a continuation bet would be much more likely to work against player 1, who could rationally put you on a Q.

Look how different the hand is against Player 2. Against Player 2, you know he’s going to call you no matter what. Against this player, checking makes sense. If you’re ahead, he’s likely to give you a free or cheap showdown. If you’re behind, he’s not likely to charge you, but even if his hand is a weak as bottom pair, you’ll be throwing chips away if you bet, because he’s going to call. And against Player 3? Bet every time. You know Player 3 is weak tight, so they’ll fold anything but a really good hand. By betting, you’re highly likely to win the pot right there.

Now you have 3 different strategies for the exact same cards. What you do is more dependent on your opponent than on your cards. As a side note, notice how a casual observer might think you were “mixing up your play” by playing the same hand 3 different ways.

As for the learning experience, I think it's good to try playing like a maniac. Personally, the first time I realized an opponent was playing back at me solely because I was playing wildly, it was an eye opening experience. I suggest the short-handed NL test because the more hands you play against the fewer opponents, the easier it is to begin to learn their tendencies. Moreover, the cause and effect of playing like a maniac is pretty easy to spot...especially if you're the maniac.

After a while, I realized that I didn't need to be in the hand myself to start gathering all this cause and effect type information. I was able to scale back my maniac play and still get reads on the table. But I found my foray into maniac LAG territory taught me more than I could have ever learned had I stayed tight-weak. Software tools like Pokertracker certainly help, and they do offer some player categorizations, but the more important NL tendencies like "what happens post flop when the pot gets big" are best spotted through observation. That's why every single hand is important. Once you observe, you can start playing the player.

[ciaran]

Bump for ezplayer's article submission that I moved to this thread.