Having a purpose

No Limit Holdem / Marcus Bateman / 19 July 2010 / Leave a Comment

One of the things that always become apparent when watching the very best in the game go at it in a show like High Stakes Poker, is that the strongest players in the game will have a purpose and a plan for pretty much every possible route that a hand can take. This is something that the vast majority of poker players can not keep up, and ultimately decides the edge (if any) they have over their opposition.

Most players in flop games of poker tend to plan up to the flop when they first look at their hand. They will raise a hand like ace king big pre flop, continuation bet pretty much any flop from any position, but then frequently become very lost if called on awkward boards. Good players, although they may well follow the exact same betting pattern, will have a much stronger picture of how to play the hand out if called.

Imagine in the example above that we consider the actions of a weak player versus a strong player playing the same hand in the same spot. A tricky, loose player minimum raises from the button, and our hero re-raises 3.5x from the big blind with AdKh. The villain calls. The flop comes out 8c9c2s, and our hero continuation bets 2/3 of the pot and the villain calls. The turn is the 8d.

Weak players often become flustered here, either over playing their hand by continuing to fire big bets, or under playing their hand, by shutting down and allowing themselves to be bluffed off the hand by a single small bet. Strong players tend to be on the right side of these choices much more, as they are using their general experience of the situation, thoughts on the flow of the game, bet sizing, and player type, to try and think ahead and form a plan of action depending on the villain's actions and possible river cards.

In the sort of situation above, many different routes are fine depending on the different factors, but it is important to understand what they are. Calling a big bet on the turn and then another on a big scare card (such as the 7c) is probably not profitable long term without very specific reads, but calling a single river bet may well be depending on what card falls and what bet is made. Each pathway has its pros and cons, and it is important you think through your likely responses to what will happen in each case before just instantly checking or betting.

Having a plan and purpose to the possible outcomes of each street enables both your decision making to be much clearer, as well as much more accurate in big hands. Often people steam into big pots without quite thinking through the consequences, quickly checking or betting in certain situations that actually require a great deal of thought and generally playing on auto pilot - a flaw that can quickly cost them a fortune against astute opposition.

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