The great thing about poker is that you (hopefully) never stop learning. Picking up new concepts and improving as a player by gathering knowledge is usually good news for your bottom line. However, too much knowledge – or rather applying this knowledge in the wrong way – can be detrimental, especially when it forces out core principles that we learned long ago.
I know for a fact that I’ve sometimes applied new concepts and techniques badly and at other times I’ve just got carried away and used them too often. When pot control became a buzzword I began checking back flops, turns and rivers in spots where a straight value bet, thin or otherwise, was clearly the best course. Likewise for quite a while I would open-raise in tournaments to 2.5x (instead of 3x), not for any conscious strategically sound reason but because I’d seen good players doing it. I also used to squeeze and re-steal far too often when I first learnt about them as concepts. Sometimes it was great and at others it wasn’t. Taking on new knowledge is important but you must know how to use it properly otherwise you may shoot yourself in the foot.
Another level
Poker players think on different levels according to their ability, and you must recognise this if you want to know what sorts of questions your opponents are asking themselves. Level one is ‘What are my cards?’ Level two is ‘What are my opponent’s cards?’ Level three is ‘What does my opponent think I’m holding?’ and so on. Knowing what level your opponent is thinking at is important, as otherwise you could fall into the trap commonly known as ‘levelling’ yourself.
See if this sounds familiar. It’s the middle of a tournament and you’ve got 18 big blinds (BB) left when you open for 2.5BB from the cutoff. It folds to the small blind who shoves all-in for 14BB. You know little about the opponent, and instead of asking yourself what you think THEY would do in this spot, you instead consider what YOU would do in this spot. So you think to yourself, well this is a good spot for someone with his stack size to come over the top of a late-position raise and he ‘knows’ that I shouldn’t open light with my stack size, so I’d be shoving with such-and-such range. My cards play well against that range, so I call. Essentially you level yourself into giving too little or too much credit based on how you play, not how your opponent plays. Of course they might be a good thinking player going through a similar thought process, but they could also be a relative newcomer who’s just playing their cards without taking any other factors into account.
Below is a selection of common ways in which players tend to level themselves. Watch out for them next time you feel yourself making baseless assumptions about an opponent’s play…
- Assuming that anyone who is raising into a big blind who is disconnected/sitting out is automatically stealing. Therefore you can three-bet them light, can’t you? Well often they’ve got a hand as they’re multi-tabling and don’t even realise the big blind is sitting out.
- Assuming that no one limps under the gun with Aces or Kings any more, as everyone sniffed that out years ago. Subsequently raising their limp and calling their shove too wide is not good.
- Assuming that all check mini-raises post-flop are ‘donks’ trying to gain information as cheaply as possible and that they in no way hold the nuts ever. Make notes on this play.
- Assuming that anyone who makes a massive over-shove preflop has exactly A-K or A-Q because they’d never ever do that with Aces or Kings – would they?!
- Assuming that no one would ever chase their straight/flush on multiple streets when getting far from the correct implied or direct odds, and that they’d never be so stupid as to lead out when the miracle river card hits.
- Assuming that the vast majority of donk-leads on the flop, especially min-bets, are players trying to see a cheap turn card as they’re on a draw. Sometimes it can be because they’ve flopped a huge hand and don’t know how to get value from it.
- Assuming that if the action on the flop and turn goes check/check and then the opponent bets pot on the river they must be ‘at it’. Often the opponent is trapping and then when the river hits they suddenly panic and think ‘how can I get value here?’
- Assuming that your opponents will see through your ‘transparent’ actions. For example, if you flat-call after a raise and a call that they’ll ‘know’ you’ve flopped a monster. While squeezing here may give you a wider range against a good thinking player, against random players you are in no way turning your hand face-up by just flat-calling.
Do any of those sound familiar? Please feel free to add your own examples in the comments section below.