Actively thinking

It really is very important to think. This may seem obvious, but if you’ve ever watched someone try to parallel park, assemble a chest of drawers from a flat pack or run our economy, it’s clear that sometimes people just don’t think. It’s so ridiculously important to think when you play poker. I’ve written a few times about playing on auto-pilot, when you’re not exactly playing horribly but you’re making decisions without thinking. Every player does this sometimes, but when we’re supposedly playing our ‘A-game’ it’s different.

The more aware the average opponent becomes the more important active thinking becomes. The difference now between decent competent players and top players is the ability of the latter group to adjust constantly to every opponent and situation. There are many factors in this but it all starts with actively thinking about the hand you’re in.

I played a hand this summer in Vegas which illustrated this idea perfectly ­ and for once it wasn’t me on auto-pilot. I was sitting in a mid-stakes cash game and as is typical it was playing like a low-stakes game online: lots of predictable hand ranges and pretty weak postflop play. Then a young maniac type sat down and changed the whole table.

<h3>Rush poker</h3>

Quickly this guy won a few pots and changed his playing frequency from two-thirds of hands to almost every hand ­ except the ones where he was busy stacking chips from an earlier coup. At first I wasn’t sure how good he was, but then after a couple of showdowns it was obvious he wasn’t thinking too much and was just firing away. The problem was I was sitting two seats to his right, so it was tough for me to do much without a hand. Then I caught a break and the player to his immediate left quit the game. The words ‘Dealer, I’ll take that seat’ were out of my mouth before his arse had even left the chair.

Apparently it’s a bit ‘angley’ to change seats to have a better position on someone, but as long as it doesn’t turn into musical chairs I think it’s fair enough and part of the tactics of live cash play. As I sat down he said something really interesting: ‘Changing seats to pick me off, huh?’ I replied with an unconvincing, ‘Nah just not getting any cards over there’ and hoped my accent and surfer shorts would convince him I was a tourist.

I didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity to make some chips from him. He opened the cutoff and I found A♠-8♠. Three-betting is an option as I’m way ahead of his range here but we were a bit deep and I wanted to keep him in with his complete junk, and also wasn’t sure I wanted to go to war with A-8.

<h3>Hit and run</h3>

The flop came a super helpful K-8-4 rainbow, great for me as I almost always have the best hand. He bet and I called. The turn was an offsuit nine and he fired again. In a normal situation I have a decision to make.

However here my mind was made up ­ I was calling all three streets and if he’d hit something good for him. I called and the river was a Queen. He bet and I called. If he had Q-5 I was going to be sad but he sighed and commented, ‘you got it’ as he mucked. Unfortunately I had to show to take the pot and he was able to see that I was calling him down light. More fortunately he lost another pot soon after and his manic play turned into tilt and the rest of us all benefited!

The point about the hand isn’t my play or the experience of having an aggro player at the table, it’s the villain’s lack of thought in our hand. The thing to remember is that he was on to me ­ he even announced that I was trying to pick him off. It’s clear he was aware of his image: he knew he’d been raising 80% of his hands, firing three streets often and winning a ton of chips. He knew that I had moved seats to be on his left. Yet he still fired blindly during the hand.

On reflection I even made a mistake in calling the flop and turn too quickly, possibly letting him know I was ‘going to be stubborn’. The point is he was clearly in one mindset: fire, fire, fire. It was working and he wasn’t about to back down. However if he’d thought about the situation he could have adjusted and saved some chips.