Short-handed hold’em #2

Next time you’re in America, here’s a bar bet you can always win: ask your victim to name the source of the quote, ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.’ Nine times out of 10 the person will say Shakespeare, because here in America, whence I hail, most people think almost every clever thing said in English stems from Shakespeare. These words, of course, are not Shakespeare’s but Sir Walter Scott’s.

The only reason I bring this up is to introduce a fundamental fact of shorthanded poker: even more than in its full-handed cousin, you have to lie to win. Not only that, you have to be thoughtful and forward-looking in your lies, because success in short-handed no-limit Hold’em is predicated on weaving patterns of deception, and on untangling the webs of deception woven by your foes.

By the end of this article, you should know how to use patterns of deception as both an offensive and defensive weapon. And you already know how to use Americans’ misapprehension of Shakespeare to win yourself free beer when you’re on holiday.

Pattern play

Because everyone in a short-handed game takes such swift and frequent turns at being the small blind, big blind, under the gun, cut-off, and button, it’s easy to fall into predictable, position-based, patterns of play. It’s not uncommon, for example, to encounter players who open-raise pre-flop from the button or the cut-off regardless of the cards they hold. They’re not necessarily wrong to do so, for position is a powerful tool in short-handed play. But if you know they’re doing it, you have cracked a pattern of their play, and now have a useful weapon to use against them.

Say you’re in the big blind against such a player. Your first thought may be to wait until you have a strong enough hand to re-raise his button steal and take his chips away from him. Yeah, you could do that, but then you’d merely be falling into a play pattern of your own, a pattern we might describe as surrendering crap hands and counter-attacking with good ones. Your attentive foe will quickly become aware of this deception trend and simply won’t give you action when you re-raise because he’ll know that you’re strong.

To break this cycle, which really doesn’t work to your advantage, simply disconnect your trends and patterns from the hands you hold. In other words, have it in your mind to let him attack your blind exactly twice, but then repulse his third attack with a big re-raise, no matter what cards you have. Since your first two folds will have created in his mind the impression that you won’t defend your blind with bad hands, he’ll naturally credit you with a good hand when you fight back. This is an example of using patterns of deception – as opposed to actual hand values – as a means of controlling the action in a short-handed joust.

The trap of continuation bets

Continuation bets are another area where unwary or unschooled players fall into predictable, and easily exploitable, patterns of play. Suppose you’ve limped in early position and the button has popped the pot with a raise. Based on his prior play, you figure that his raise indicates a medium-to-large pocket pair or two unpaired big cards. Now here comes the flop, and it’s low cheese… something like 2-7-6 rainbow.

It’s not likely to be the sort of flop that a pre-flop raiser hit very hard, yet when you check from early position, you invite – indeed, almost demand – that your foe make the expected continuation bet. Having done so, he leaves himself wide open to a big check-raise from you. After all, you limp-called pre-flop. You could easily be in there with something like a low set, two-pair, or a very live draw. His continuation bet followed a predictable pattern – and put him right out ahead of his hand. He’ll have a very difficult time calling your re-raise with just over-cards. If he should happen to call, any turn card in the lower half of the deck will leave even an over-pair feeling vulnerable and willing to fold.

This, then, is another example of detecting and exploiting a pattern of play. If you know that your foe is hooked on his continuation bets, go ahead and limp-call out of position. Then look for flops that don’t connect with the medium-to-strong cards that most raisers raise with, and plan to check-raise the flop to take the pot away. Again, the cards you hold are much less important than your pattern analysis skill – and, of course, your willingness to back up your reads with significant bets.

Heed the warning signs

Since poker is, among other things, a game of setting traps, when you’re surfing deception trends, you need to be aware of the possibility that your foe might be laying back with a huge hand, looking to take you off your entire stack. Nefarious ne’er do well – how dare he? Well, dare he may, but if you’re on your toes, it’s not a given that he’ll succeed. Say you raise in position and the small blind calls.

First of all, recognise that a defensive call from the small blind carries much more clout than a defensive call from the big blind, simply because the cost of folding the small blind is so much lower, and the chances of getting the right price to call are considerably more remote. So, you get a call from the small blind and you’re immediately on your guard. The flop comes little – let’s say 3-4-4 rainbow. Your opponent checks to you, and this looks like a perfect opportunity to make a pot-size continuation bet and adopt that orphan pot, so that’s what you do. But now you’re met with something very suspicious: a flat-call.

What can that action mean? If your foe is on a draw, he’s not getting the right price to call. And, realistically, the only draws he can be on are 2-5 and 5-6, and why would he have called pre-flop with rags like that? Through process of elimination, then, you can interpret his call as one of two things: either a call with intent to steal on the turn or a hidden big hand.

Here’s where your pattern reading comes into play. Have you seen this sequence of actions from him before? If not, it’s much more likely he’s dragging a big hand than running a big bluff (for the simple reason that planned, uncharacteristic bluffs are much less likely than fortuitous opportunities to trap). So now your plan is simple: shut down your betting and try to get to the river as cheaply as possible. If that proves impossible, go ahead and fold without a second thought. Your opponent’s betting pattern has been so uncharacteristic from the start of the hand that he almost has to have an uncharacteristic holding. What’s an uncharacteristic holding? A big one: trips or better. Now you’re using not just patterns but also anti-patterns to control the short-handed game.

Uncharacteristic changes in others’ webs of deception characteristically leave traces of evidence behind. Something just doesn’t look right or feel right or smell right. I call these traces ‘rifts in the fabric of space’, and, whenever I encounter one, I assume that my foe has deciphered my pattern of play and has launched a counter-measure. At this point, I simply shut down and wait for more predictable behaviour from that player – or for more predictable players to enter the game.

Bamboozled

The overall goal of pattern analysis in short-handed play is to get your foe or foes ‘out of phase’ with your actions. If you’re manipulating their patterns, and their analysis of your patterns, correctly, you’ll find them calling when they should fold, folding when they should raise, and raising when they have absolutely no chance to win. Fighter pilots describe this as being ‘inside the other guy’s turning circle’, and that’s what you should be trying to achieve whenever you get involved in weaving patterns of deception and in decoding the deception patterns of other players.

It’s really a matter, more than anything, of staying one step ahead of your foes’ adjustments – and making sure, of course, that your tangled webs of deception don’t get you all tangled up as well.