Poker

I wish I could write anything useful on the subject of poker psychology, but I cannot. I have read literally thousands of pages on the subject. It is interesting for a poker addict to read about this type of player and that type of player and what their habits are and how to detect them, but from a practical standpoint it is all bosh. Poker psychology is a matter of special aptitude. You have it or you don’t. If you have it nobody needs to teach you and if you don’t have it nobody can. All I have ever been able to say on the subject is this: If you are being consistently outguessed, you aren’t going to be able to do anything about it. It is no disgrace to lack the knack, but there is no remedy.

Fortunately, it is possible to be a consistent winner in a poker game even if one or two other players surpass you in the intuition (or whatever it is) that gives one player ascendancy over another. If you have better technique (knowledge of the game and application of that knowledge) and if you are more conservative (which means playing only when it is mathematically sound to do so) you can still beat the intuitive player who tosses his chips away in curiosity or overoptimism. If the majority of the players in the game are equal or superior to you in technique and can also outguess you, that simply is no game for you to be in.

Part of what I said about psychology can be applied also to the art of bluffing, and it is an art, never think it isn’t; but bluffing does lend itself to a considerable amount of advice and standard rules, which I will discuss here.

First, and most important, you have to bluff sometimes. I know that some players are temperamentally unsuited to bluffing and find it repugnant, but it is a necessary part of the game. If you never bluff, that fact soon becomes noticed and you do not get called on your good hands. If you never get called on your good hands, you are unlikely to win.

The literature of poker takes a standard attitude toward bluffing. “Bluffing is advertising,” it shouts. “When you bluff, expect to lose; your reward is that you will then get called on your good hands.”

I have always agreed with the conclusion but I have never been able to stomach the premise.

In my opinion, every bet you make in poker should be made for one purpose only: To win the pot. I admit that bluffing is a losing game at best, because in poker the best hand usually wins the pot, but I still feel that every bluff should be so designed as to have the best possible chance to win.

My advice on bluffing policy is as follows. At the start of the game or session, do not bluff. If you are getting called on your good hands, continue not to bluff. After two or three cases in which you do not get called, begin to bluff. After two cases in which you have bluffed and have been caught, stop bluffing until again you find that you are not being called on your good hands.

Scientific bluffing requires a knowledge of position, which I will discuss next. Most of all, however, it requires a certain amount of conscious thought. It is not a matter of inspiration.

Plan your bluff in advance. Imagine a particular hand that you would like to hold and imagine the most skillful way you could play that hand. Then, assuming that you hold the hand you wish to represent, bet throughout as if you had that hand. The most frequent bluff by far is also the most futile bluff. A player draws one card to a straight or flush possibility, fails to fill, and stubbornly bets anyway. This is a bad bluff for a liberal player. It is a good bluff only for a conservative player who almost never draws to a straight or flush possibility, and even that player must be careful not to bluff into a hand that may comprise two fairly high pairs, because his one-card draw will usually be figured for a two-pair hand. He will get a call that is not suspicious but quite valid.

The next most frequent bluff, and almost as futile a bluff for a good player, is the one in which a player with a single pair represents three of a kind by raising before the draw and drawing two cards, after which he bets. If it is a planned bluff, he may have a two-card draw to a flush or straight rather than to a pair. Before considering this bluff, make sure that if you actually did hold three of a kind you would play them in exactly the same way. A bluff must almost always be planned from the start of the hand. If it is based on a later impulse, it will hardly fool a good player because he will find some inconsistency in the way the hand was played at the start.

This brings us to another cliche of poker, but it is a valid one: It is easier to bluff a good player than a poor player. For example, a poor player will often stay in on a low pair and draw two cards to the low pair and an ace kicker. Don’t try to bluff him by drawing two cards. He will be too suspicious of an unsound act that he is capable of doing himself.

Always most effective among bluffs is the pat-hand bluff. It is most effective if you have simply played without raising when you are close to the opener or when there is obviously a chance that several players may stay or even raise after you. For this kind of bluff, if you do get a later opportunity you must raise and, if the pot has previously been raised, you must reraise. It is logical with a pat hand to try to suck in as many players as possible, and if there is any false note—if you would not have played a genuine pat hand in exactly the same way—it is a bad bluff.

The pat-hand bluff is fortified by an occasional instance in which you stand pat with three of a kind or perhaps with aces or kings up. The odds are 9 to 1 against improving three of a kind, which usually will win without improvement anyway, and 11 to 1 against improving aces up, which also will usually win without improvement, so if you have been caught with one or two pat-hand bluffs you help to keep the opponents guessing by repeating your action when you have a fair hand that will probably win on its own. But the important thing to remember is that all these stratagems are designed to keep the opponents guessing and not to be an integral part of your effort to win.

The basic objective in poker is still and will remain the effort to win as much as possible when you have the best hand.

You will often hear it said that bluffing depends largely on the stakes in the game—that you cannot bluff successfully in a low-limit game and that you can bluff successfully in a high-limit or table stakes game. There is not a great deal to this.

Perhaps, in a wide-open low-limit game along relatively poor players, it is hard to get away with a bluff when there is perhaps $15 or $20 in the pot and all you can bet is $2. But in a good game, this does not necessarily apply. A good player doesn’t want to throw away any chips, no matter how few. The mathematical considerations that apply to staying in the pot do not apply to calling a final bet. If there are $20 in the pot and you can draw cards for $2, you are getting odds of 10 to 1 and your chance of improving is likely to be considerably better than that. But when it comes to calling a final bet, there are no odds. Either the player has what he represents or he hasn’t. If he has what he represents, any chips put in the pot are money thrown away. The difficulty in bluffing in a good game is that a good opponent is all the more likely to read your bluff and call whether the pot is big or small.

The big-bet bluff does usually win, simply because it isn’t worth while for a serious player to call it. If you bet a $50 or $100 stack to win a $10 or $12 pot, you will get away with it more often than not. The difficulty is that even if your bluffs are not detected, you are going from time to time to run into a hand that is good enough to call on its merits and not on suspicion, and in such cases you are likely to lose back more than you pick up in that succession of small pots.

Bluffing in stud poker is different from bluffing in draw poker, in one important respect. In stud .poker, your bluff must represent some particular hole card with which you would have played as you did.

A bluff in stud poker can be either a planned bluff or an unexpected bluff that develops from the end situation.

In the planned bluff, the player represents a certain hand throughout and never deviates from the course he would have followed if he had actually had that hand.

In the unplanned bluff, the player winds up with a losing hand but suddenly realizes that he would have played the same way on a different, winning hand. He then bets as though he had that winning hand. For example, A has 6 in the hole and

6-Q-8-A showing; B has king in the hole and J-10-K-5 showing. A bets and B drops. This is a semi-bluff, because A might actually have the winning hand (but if he has, he will not get a call anyway). B is justified in figuring A for an ace. If more than one ace has shown, this bluff may lose; if A has raised previously, the bluff should not be attempted. If B is a poor or a wild player who doesn’t do much thinking, the bluff will probably lose.

When you are trying to spot another player’s bluff, you have to depend on your judgment of the player more than on anything else; but one principle to keep in mind is this: You can’t always trust the man who bets or raises but you can nearly always trust the man who calls. Suppose you are C, third man to speak. A, the first man, bets; B calls. Before worrying about beating A, pause to wonder if you can beat B. He isn’t bluffing.

I will have more to say about bluffing from time to time in the future. At this point I want to repeat a statement that may not have received enough notice when I said it the first time. You are unlikely to be a winning poker player if you never bluff. You must bluff from time to time, win or lose. But whenever you bluff, try to win.

You don’t have to be a mathematician to be a good poker player. It doesn’t even help.

True, poker offers some of the most fascinating of mathematical problems and for that reason has engaged the attention of the best mathematicians. Some of their researches invade the highest levels of the higher mathematics. Their findings are published in books. You can trust these books. I have read dozens of poker books and as far as I know Oswald Jacoby’s is the only one written by a master mathematician, yet I have never seen a poker book in which the quoted odds are wrong by more than
 
some insignificant fraction or percentage. But you do have to have a knowledge of simple arithmetic, a memory for the simple odds that you read about in books, an undertsanding of what these odds mean, and a quick eye for appraising the size of the pot. It is considered neither cricket nor poker to stop and count the pot every time your turn comes and you have to make a decision.

When you have the best hand around the table, and you know or feel sure that you have the best hand, mathematics doesn’t enter into it at all. You simply shove your money into the pot. You may take some comfort from the figures, elaborately prepared by mathematicians, proving that the best hand going in is usually the best hand coming out; but what would it matter? Who ever heard of dropping the best hand?

So the only mathematical questions arise when you may not have the best hand going in. In any such case, you must improve to win. You must then ask yourself three questions: 1, What are the odds against my improving? 2, What are the odds offered me by the pot? 3, What is the chance that I will win if I do improve?

The first question is answered by tables of odds that you can quickly and easily commit to memory; nearly every case that may confront you is treated in the closing pages of this book.

The second question—the odds offered by the pot—is a matter of an eyecheck of the pot or knowledge of how much is already in it and how much you have to put in. The third question— your chance of winning if you do improve—is answered partly by the tables of probabilities and partly by your knowledge of the game. Here are some examples to clarify the latter:

First Example
Draw poker, seven players, blind opening. Dealer (G) antes 1, A at his left opens blind for 1, B raises blind for 2. C bets 3. D, E, F, G, A drop. B can stay for 1.
B holds 10-9-8-7-K. The odds are 39 to 8 (5 to 1) against his making a straight. The odds are only 27 to 20 (almost even) against his making a pair of sevens or better.
The pot has 7 chips in it and B can stay for 1. B is offered 7-to-l odds by the pot.
If B fills his straight he has at least a 90 percent chance of winning—that is, not once in ten times will C have or draw a hand better than a ten-high straight. On this basis only, B should
 
play; because the odds are only 5 to 1 against making the straight and the pot offers him 7 to 1.
B’s chance if he makes a pair depends entirely on what kind of player C is. In a good game B would discount entirely the chance of winning on a low pair, because C would not have bet with less than aces or at least kings. In a liberal game, C might have bet with a four-flush or bobtail straight. In this case a low pair might win; but about 15 percent of the time B might lose even if he makes his straight. Here we must assume a tight game, however, because in a liberal game all the other players would not have dropped.

Second Example
Draw poker, seven players, jacks to open, pass and back in. The ante is 7 chips, the limit 2 before the draw, 4 after the draw. Dealer is G. A, B, C, D pass. E opens for 2 and all players from F through C drop.
D holds 10-9-8-7-K. The odds are still 5 to 1 against his making a straight. The pot offers 9 chips against the 2 he must pay to call, or to 1. He cannot win by pairing because E has at least jacks. The odds against him are greater than the odds he is offered and he throws in his hand.

These are the simplest possible examples (though both of them happen frequently) and in most cases closer figuring will be necessary. The examples were purposely made simple to illustrate the basic theory of the application of mathematics to poker. Mathematics in poker can be very useful—in fact, some knowledge of the odds is essential—but nothing can be more damaging than placing slavish reliance in the mathematical probabilities.

Events always alter the a priori assumptions. For example, in a seven-hand game of draw poker it is useful to know that two aces should be the best hand, normally, before the draw; but if you hold the aces and three players have already come in before you, you must assume or at least suspect that your two aces are not the best hand; and if one of those players has raised, you can be fairly sure that they are not the best hand.

The mathematical expectancies must also be modified by a further question you must ask yourself: “Is there any point to betting?” For example, you are against one other player in a draw poker game. He draws three cards, and you draw three cards to two jacks. You make jacks up. The odds are 21/2 to 1

that he did not improve his pair, so mathematically you have a good bet. But the realities are that if he did not improve he probably will not call and your bet becomes pointless, and if he did improve and calls he can probably beat you. Therefore, mathematics or no mathematics, you do not bet. If you had made three jacks you would have bet, because mathematics tells you that the odds are 8 to 1 against his having made three of a kind and you may get a call if he made aces or kings up.

When you are deciding whether to stay or drop, and when betting is normal, mathematics is an excellent guide. When players begin raising and reraising, mathematics goes out the window.

Nevertheless every accomplished poker player should know the odds against improving on various draws and should not forget to compare those odds against the odds being offered by the pot. This may seem so fundamental that it is hardly worth mentioning, but not one poker player in a hundred bothers to do it and the vast majority of all losses suffered in poker games can be attributed to sticking around when the pot offers shorter odds than the odds against improvement.

Poker is not a sociable game but it is distinctly a social game. That is, it is a game one must play with others, and we may assume that every human being would rather be popular than unpopular and also that every group will soon reject a player who is generally disliked by the other players. Therefore if you are playing in a poker game and you want to keep on playing, it behooves you to conform to the social customs of the game and make sure that the other players do not hate you enough to kick you out.

It is notably unprofitable to be recognized as a good fellow in poker games, but it is almost as bad to be characterized as a prime sonofabitch. The object of the winning player is to steer a middle course. He wants to be known as a tough but fair opponent, as a ruthless but honest adversary. The problem is, “How to be honest and yet a winner.” My advice is as follows:

1.Sandbagging is a logical part of the game to the thinking player, but for some reason it enrages the average player. Many professional games have been forced to introduce the house rule that you cannot check and then raise. Find out what the custom of the game is and observe it. If it makes the opponents mad for you to check the best hand and then raise, don’t do it. It may slightly restrict your style, but it doesn’t really have a great effect on your winnings or losses in the long run. In fact, much money is lost by failure to bet the best hand, in the vain hope that some one will bet into you.

2.In some games any comments you make are taken with a grain of salt, in other games the gentlemanly code is adopted and you are not supposed to say that you have a bad hand when you have a good one, that you filled a flush when in fact you didn’t, etc. In such games, don’t compromise your popularity by violating the customs. You won’t lose anything by keeping your mouth shut; the bet speaks for itself anyway. A woman wrote to Dorothy Dix and said, “Dear Miss Dix: A man wants to marry me but he doesn’t know I have false teeth. Should I tell him?” Dorothy Dix answered with classic succinctness, “Keep your mouth shut.” Since the poker player would be a fool to tell the truth about his hand and may win undying unpopularity by playing the gay deceiver and the chatterbox, this is good advice for the poker player too.

3.Be just a little more conservative than the standard estab lished in the game. In all except the toughest games in the country,  the majority of players are more liberal  than  they should be. From curiosity, boredom, or sheer ignorance, they play too often, raise too often, and call too often. It is neither winning style nor good etiquette to become known as the Rock if Gibraltar in such games. If you play them just a little closer to the chest than the average conservative player in the game, but stick your neck out with a gambling play now and then, you will maintain your chances of winning and avoid being stig matized as a greedy soul who likes money better than good fellow ship. It is true that conservatism pays in poker, but don’t try to make it pay too much.

4.Conform to the pace of the game. Old-fashioned poker players like to take every step with the greatest deliberation, with close figuring before betting and excursions into psychological analysis before deciding whether or not to call. In distinction to this, the public game in a licensed club or gambling house moves with machine-gun precision and if you pause for as much as ten seconds you will be subjected to impatient prods from the other players. If you are by nature a slow thinker you may suffer a bit in the fast games, but not as much as you will suffer from violating the custom of the game.

5.Don’t be a stickler for the laws in an amateur game. The players commit the most horrible crimes known to poker. They drop out of turn. They want to look at your hand when you bet and didn’t get called. They relinquish a pot and then want to reclaim it when they find out that they had the best hand after all. Let them get away with it. I assume your principal desire is to be a winning player (that is the purpose for which this book was written) and in such a game you will be a winning player just by avoiding the more horrible of the mistakes that are made all around you. Be content with that. They will eventually kick you out of the game because you win too much, but if you don’t hurt their feelings by insisting on strict interpretation of the laws you will last quite a while longer.

6.Lose a few arguments. For example, if you have put in your ante and someone says you haven’t, why not put it in again? On this subject I would like to make one sage observation. If you argue and then give in reluctantly, you have done just as much damage to yourself as if you argued and never gave in. In fact, you have done more damage; if you decide to stand on the fact that you are right, you may win the admiration of some players. Equally you will win their admiration when you give in fast and graciously although it is obvious that you were right all the time; it is apparent that you are not picayune about small amounts. So you must either stand on your rights or yield with no murmuring or muttering, and you shouldn’t do either of them all the time.

7.The traditional problem of etiquette is saved for last: Can you quit when you are a big winner? Here again the answer depends on the game. In a public game you should have no qualms at all; in a club game you should simply take care to give ample advance notice, such as a half-hour or an hour; and in a truly social game you mustn’t. You can nurse your stack and you can refrain from doing anything that would keep the game going, but you can’t give the impression that you are in there for the money and not for the sheer fun of it. At least wait until someone else quits and then go along with him.