Poker is getting tougher and a lot of top players are turning to game theory to help get an edge or, at least, eliminate their opponents’ edge.  You can find a lot of articles about game theory in top poker magazines like CardPlayer and on top training sites like CardRunner.  It’s great advice and it works great in tough poker games but it’s not a magic bullet.  In fact, if misapplied, it can hurt your game rather than help it.

CardPlayer is Costing You Money

And they’re not the only ones. Bluff Magazine, CardRunners, LeggoPoker, DeucesCrack, all of them are costing you money.  It’s not their fault.  They’re all great sources of information but you’re misapplying the information.

Have you noticed that you tend to lose money after your watch your favorite pro give a lecture on how to apply game theory in poker?  You balance your raises and 3-bets.  You float dry flops and you three-barrel bluff.  You do everything thing your idol tells you to do and you wind up spewing money all over the felt.  The question is – why?

Hawks and Doves

Before we go deeper into poker game theory, we need to have a better idea of how game theory works and for that we’ll use a simple game called Hawks and Doves.

Richard Dawkins talked about the Hawks and Doves game in his book The Selfish Gene but the game was originally proposed by J. Maynard Smith, a 20^th century evolutionary biologist.  According to Smith, the rules of the game are as follows:

Hawks will always attack when it confronts another Hawk or Dove and will only retreat if seriously injured.

If a Hawk and Dove engage, the Hawk will attack and the Dove will fly away unharmed.

If two Hawks engage, they will fight until one is seriously injured or dead.

If two Doves engage, they will threaten each other until one tires of the contest and flies away.

A bird doesn’t know if it’s facing a Hawk or a Dove until they have a conflict.

The contestants are arbitrarily awarded 50 points for a win, 0 points for a loss, -100 points for getting seriously injured or killed and -10 points for wasting time in a long contest.

As it turns out Hawks have the advantage when there are a large number of Doves in the populations and Doves have the advantage when there are a large number of Hawks in the population.  Neither Hawks nor Doves have an advantage when exactly 5/12 of the population is Doves and 7/12 of the population is Hawks.

Hawks, Doves and Poker

So what do Hawks and Doves have to do with you spewing your chips?

When poker pros talk about line balancing and optimum bluffing frequencies, they’re talking about a game in which the strategies at the table are in equilibrium.  Here’s the theory behind it:

Let’s say 10 strong, thinking no-limit hold’em players sit down at a table and each of them has a different default strategy.  Some of these strategies will be successful and others will be unsuccessful.

Now let’s say that these players have an infinite amount of money and can never leave the table.  Being strong, thinking players; the players using an unsuccessful strategy will alter their playing style to exploit weaknesses in the superior strategies at the table.  Soon some of the previously successful players will start losing money and will have to adjust.

In time, these 10 theoretical players will reach equilibrium.  No strategy will be superior to any of the others at the table.

Now if one of these players leaves and you sit down in his place, one of two things will happen. First, you could have a superior strategy to the equilibrium and start cleaning up.  In that case, the other players will adjust their strategy and a new equilibrium will develop.  Second, you could get your ass handed to you at first until you adjust your strategy to fit the current equilibrium.  In this kind of game, the strategy suggested by your favorite pro will work just fine.

Poker Games Aren’t in Equilibrium

Poker is a lot more complicated than a game like Hawks and Doves.  There are multiple streets and multiple moves you can make on each street.  There is no single “best” poker strategy – which brings us back to why you’re losing money when you play a balanced strategy the second you sit down at a table.

Don’t Balance Your Play.  Exploit Theirs’.

Poker favors the aggressor and balancing your line for the sake of making your play unexploitable is a defensive strategy.  You should look for weaknesses in your opponents’ strategies and attack them.  Here’s an example (don’t bash the stats. They’re round numbers to make things easy):

Let’s say you sit down at a table and notice that a player continuation bets 100% of the time but gives up on the turn if he doesn’t have at least top pair.  To simplify the example we’ll say that you can only call or fold and the game ends after the turn.  The game is $1/$2 heads up no-limit hold’em.  Your opponent will always raise to $8 pre-flop and always bet the pot when he bets. Given these restrictions, you adopt the following strategy to exploit your opponent…

Call anytime the player raises pre-flop.

Call 100% of his flop bets.

If he bets the turn and you can’t beat top pair, fold.

If he bets the turn and you can beat top pair, call.

If he checks the turn, bet.

Your opponent will make top pair or better 20% of the time by the turn.  Again, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll consider the times you win the turn and the times your opponent wins the turn are equal.  Here’s how it plays out (100 games):

You call pre-flop and call flop but fold turn (18 times) – Lose $432 [($8 preflop + $16 flop) x 18 times].

You call pre-flop, call flop and lose (1 time) – lose $56 [$8 preflop + $16 flop + $32 turn]

You call pre-flop, call flop and win (1 time) – win $56 [$8 preflop + $16 flop + $32 turn]

You call pre-flop, call flop and bet turn (80 times) – win $1920 [($8 preflop + $16 flop) x 80 times]

Total: Won $1976 – lose $488 = $1488 total profit

Obviously your strategy is highly profitable – even more profitable than if you folded your poor hands and called with a balanced range of big hands, suited connectors, etc.

“But a Balanced Strategy is Unexploitable.”

True.  If you bluff with optimal frequency and balance your lines, your opponents won’t be able to read you and will make mistakes.  The trouble is that you’re not going to develop a balanced strategy after reading one article or watching one video.  Hell, a TON of pros don’t even play a balanced strategy.  It’s difficult to do.  It takes study, discipline and a total lack of emotion and…oh yeah…the perfect, unexploitable poker strategy doesn’t even exist.  At least, no one has found it yet.   You’ll make a lot more money in the long run if you can put your opponents on accurate ranges and exploit leaks in their games.

Does Game Theory Help Your Game?

I’m not saying that game theory is worthless.  Far from it.  Game theory provides a reliable framework for analyzing your lines to make sure you’re taking the most profitable line possible.  Game theory will show you where you’re missing out on money and where you’re making –EV plays (plays that lose money in the long run).  Of course, you still need to practice and learn to put your opponents on a range.

I believe that poker is too complicated to ever have a single dominating strategy.  However, you can use game theory to exploit your opponents’ weaknesses and modify your game when you encounter a strategy that dominates yours but it’s going to take more than one article  or one video to teach you how to do it.

Do you wish you could intimidate your opponents with shifty eyes like Phil Ivey?  Or have the impassive stoicism of Chris Ferguson?  Well a recent study suggests that you’re better off with the wholesome, friendly face of Jack McBrayer.

BPS Research Digest Blog reports on a 2010 study that took a look at human waging behavior.  Participants in the study had to decide whether to fold or call based on an image of their “opponent.”  Here are the images the participants saw (without the labels).

If the participant folded, he or she was guaranteed to lose 100 chips.  If the participant called and was beat, he or she would lose their entire 5000 chip stack.  Calling and winning would win 5000 chips.  There was no prior history available about the opponents so participants had to make a decision based on the face alone.  Now for the interesting part…

Untrustworthy and neutral expressions had no effect on the participants’ decision-making process but the trustworthy face gave the participants problems.

When confronted with the trustworthy face, participants took longer to decide and made less optimal decisions.  I can’t help but wonder if there’s a way these findings would apply to online poker as well.

Thanks to Rush Poker on Full Tilt we have the opportunity to play opponents in a vacuum.  There are times, many times, where the only information we have to work with is a screen name and maybe an ironman chip.  I’m curious – can screen names be neutral, untrustworthy or trustworthy?  Would you be more likely to fold to a raise from HoneyFlower21 than from IstackUR_azz?

What do you think?

Schlicht EJ, Shimojo S, Camerer CF, Battaglia P, & Nakayama K (2010). Human wagering behavior depends on opponents’ faces. PloS one, 5 (7) PMID: 20657772

No-limit Texas Hold’em games are getting tougher.  There was a time that isolating limpers and c-betting every flop was enough to make you a winner.  Not anymore.  If you’re using the same moves you used five years ago, you’re probably getting tooled and are wondering why your opponents always seem to have a hand.  I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.  They don’t always have a hand.  They’ve adjusted to your old bag of tricks.  It’s time to take what’s left of your bankroll and fight back.  Here’s how to improve what you’re doing to start making money again.

The C-Bet

The c-bet used to be a license to print money.  You raised pre-flop and bet 100% of the time when the action checked to you regardless of the flop texture.  Your opponent would fold roughly 66% of the time, money would fall from the heavens and you’d congratulate yourself on being a poker god.

But times have changed and these days most aggro-donks realize that there’s a good chance that you don’t have much on that J36 flop either.  The result?  They check/raise your ass and take away the pot.  At least, they used to.

What You Can Do About It

You’re lighting money on fire if you lay down your hand every time an aggressive opponent check/raises your c-bet.  You need to fight back but you have to be smart about it.  Fighting back every time your opponent check/raises you is suicide.  Eventually he’ll wake up with a hand and clean you out.  So here’s how you regain your edge.

Re-raise your opponent with a wide range of hands.  Take our J36 flop for example.  It’s a hard flop to hit and your opponent’s raise says he did it.  If he’s a good player, there’s a good chance he didn’t but you’ll have to re-raise him to find out.  I would re-raise with AJ+, 66+, 33 and any flush draw.  Your opponent will have to lay down anything except a strong Jack or a set.  You don’t have to make it a big raise.  About 2 – 2.5 times your opponent’s bet should do it on a dry flop. Is it a high variance play?  Yes.  But it has its advantages.

Occasionally you’ll have to lay down to a shove.  It sucks but it also shows your opponents that you’ll 3-bet post-flop without the nuts.  That means you can play your big hands fast and get paid.

Isolating Limpers

Isolating limpers is still profitable.  Limpers tend to be shitty players and shitty players don’t play well when they’re out of position post-flop.  If you don’t know how to isolate limpers, it’s easy.  You identify a bad player and wait for them to limp (call the big blind) pre-flop.  You raise their limp with all kinds of weird hands like suited single-gappers, suited double-gappers or complete trash.  Your opponent calls ( ‘cause that’s what shitty players do) and then check/folds the flop when you c-bet.

The problem starts when a tough player in late position notices that you’re bogarting the fish, decides to put a stop to it and starts to 3-bet you.

What You Can Do About It

The first thing you should do is nothing.  Just because someone 3-bets you once or twice doesn’t mean that he’s making a move.  Your opponent may have picked up a legitimate hand.  Just fold and wait for another opportunity.  If you keep getting 3-bet, however, you’ll need to shut down your opponent.  There are a couple ways to do this.

First, open up your 4-betting range.  Four-betting works great if your opponent can fold but it sucks if he likes to call and play his position (unless you can 4-bet shove).  Hands like 88+, AJs+, AQ+ is a good range.

Your other option is to flat call and check/raise a lot of flops.  This option is my favorite because people tend to be less aggressive when the flop is down and I can call/check-raise a wider range of hands.   It also gives me the option to fold if the flop looks ugly.  The call/check-raise also makes your opponent less likely to want to mix things up with you post-flop which means you can get away with 4-betting light later in the session.

Stealing the Blinds

Once upon a time we could raise from the hijack, cut-off and button when the action folded to us and pick up the sweet, juicy blind money without a fight.  The blinds would have to play out of position against a raiser so they’d fold the majority of their hands.  Not anymore.

These days the blinds will re-steal with a wide range of hands.  Suited connectors, pocket pairs and any two broadway cards are fair game.  Some players re-steal even wider.

What You Can Do About It

Most people adjust by not stealing as frequently.  I think that’s the wrong way to adjust.  Stealing is still profitable, you just have to be willing to play a little poker and make the re-stealing player’s life miserable.

Pick your spots when facing an aggressive re-stealer.  Fold your trash and defend with your premium and speculative hands.

You can 4-bet premium hands.  Hands like TT+, AJ+ and even QJs+ can be 4-bet against an aggressive re-stealer.  For most speculative hands I like to call and force my opponent to play the hand out of position.

Aggressive re-stealers will c-bet a wide range of flops.  You can make their life difficult by raising the ones that give you decent equity and floating the ones that don’t improve your hand but are unlikely to hit your opponent’s range.  After a couple clashes, you opponent will figure that it’s easier to just let you have the blind.

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Poker is a dynamic game.  Exploits only work for so long before someone comes up with a counter-exploit.  You have to keep your game fluid and watch for shifts in the way your opponents play.  Does it make the game higher variance?  Yes.  As players get better the edges get smaller which makes the swings bigger.  But the alternative is to keep playing your old game and get crushed by newer strategies.  The choice is yours.

When I’m not working on my websites or at the virtual poker tables, I manage a restaurant.  Valentine’s Day weekend was hell.  We did three times our normal volume even though we didn’t have the resources to do it.  There were problems. A lot of them.

My job is to make sure the guests never know anything’s wrong and that takes a lot of split second decisions.  The right decisions result in a smooth night and happy diners.  The wrong decisions result in hour wait times, pissed off people and freaked out servers.  We pulled through the weekend flawlessly.  Unfortunately I won’t be able to play poker for a day or so because of decision fatigue.

Decision Fatigue and Poker

Poker is a decision war.  Players that make good decisions make money.  But making decisions drains your mental resources and you start to get tired.  The more tired you become, the more likely you are to make bad decisions.

Most of you have experienced this phenomenon.  You’re playing like a god and all of the sudden you find yourself making what-the-hell moves.  You raise or call and think to yourself, “What the hell – why not? Let’s just see what happens.”  Once you start making decisions without solid reasons, you have decision fatigue.

Signs of Decision Fatigue

When decision fatigue sets in, your mind feels like a car engine running without oil.  Small things begin to irritate you and you get frustrated easily.

You’ll notice that you’re making decisions faster.  Subconsciously you want the choice/action over with so you make a snap choice without giving it any thought.  At this point you’re not reasoning through hands anymore.

Finally, your attention will begin to drift.  You’ll remember something that you wanted to search and fire up Google.  You’ll turn on the TV or pull up Hulu.  You’ll do anything except focus on the game.  It’s your brain’s way of telling you that it doesn’t want to play poker anymore.

You should stop playing any time you notice decision fatigue starting to set in.

How to Avoid Decision Fatigue

There’s no way to avoid decision fatigue.  It’s going to happen sooner or later, but the more you practice, the longer it’ll take before fatigue sets in.

Certain choices will become automatic in poker.  Today you might think that you have a decision to make with AJo under the gun in a full ring game.  After a while you’ll realize it’s a snap-fold.  One less decision to make.

There are a lot of standard lines in poker.  These lines will become automatic for you in certain hands.  You’ll use them against the fish and save your mental energy for when you need to get tricky against the regulars.

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Becoming aware of your mental state will make you more money.  Start watching out for warning signs of decision fatigue and stop playing when you notice them.

Remember that you don’t have to get creative on every hand.  Use the best line for the best situation.  Don’t waste your mental energy on non-thinking players and you’ll have plenty in reserve when you face the regulars.

It’s hard to find time to play poker.  We have jobs, families, friends and other responsibilities that keep us away from the poker table.  We deal with it the best we can by setting aside a little time every week to get our poker fix.  The question is, “Are you using this time effectively?”

The problem with setting aside a block of time like 10 hours a week is that you’re likely to spend all that time playing.  There’s nothing wrong with playing for 10 hours a week, but it won’t improve your game.  You have to spend some time reviewing your play and learning new strategies if you want to improve.  Here’s how poker players should manage their time:

Unitize Your Time

All time is not equal.  An hour spent playing poker, for example, is worth more to your development than an hour spent at the bar.  So the first thing we have to do is turn your time into units that reflect the value of any given activity.

Here’s an example:

Playing Poker = 10 units

Reading or watching videos about poker = 3 units

Reviewing Play = 6 units

Now instead of saying that I want to invest 10 hours a week on poker, I can say that I want to invest 90 units.  This system forces me to evaluate the usefulness of any activity.

Time units won’t be the same for all players.  A new poker player should value learning poker more than playing poker and intermediate players should value reviewing their play more than playing.  Let me explain.

The New Poker Play

A new poker player knows the rules of the game but may not understand vital concepts like position, pot odds or the Gap Principle.  This type of player should spend more of his time reading poker books and watching poker videos than playing the game.  Here’s how  new players should unitize their time:

Playing Poker = 3 units

Reading or Watching Videos about Poker = 10 units

Reviewing Play = 6 units

The vast majority of new players’ time should be spent learning the game and reviewing their play so they can focus on winning strategies and principles.  To accomplish this goal, new players should make learning and reviewing more valuable than playing.

Intermediate Poker Player

An intermediate poker player knows basic concepts as well as more advanced ones.  Intermediate players know when to bluff and when to let a hand go.  They’re well versed on the math of the game and just need a little fine tuning to take their game to the next level.  Here’s how an intermediate poker player would unitize his time:

Playing Poker = 6 units

Reading or Watching Videos about Poker = 3 units

Reviewing Play = 10 units

Intermediate players already know a lot about the game so they don’t have to spend as much time learning.  An intermediate player’s time is better spent reviewing his play to see where he’s making mistakes and how he could have extracted more value or controlled his losses.

Expert Poker Player

Expert players are masters of the game.  These players can put their opponents on accurate hand ranges and know how to exploit weaknesses in their opponents.  These players often get some or all of their income from the game.  Here’s how an expert player would unitize his time:

Playing Poker = 10 units

Reading or Watching Videos about Poker = 3 units

Reviewing Play = 6 units

Expert players don’t need to spend a lot of time learning the game, but they should still spend some time watching videos and reading to keep up with the way the game is changing.

When expert players review their game, it should be to make sure they had accurate reads on their opponents and were exploiting them fully.

Of course, the majority of an expert’s time should be spent playing poker since that’s how they make their money.

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Unitizing your time isn’t time management, it’s time maximization.  You should spend your time where it does the most good and the best way to do that is by assigning different tasks different values according to worth.  Give it a try and let me know if it improves your game.