Playing Poker Against The Flow
Sunday, August 27, 2006
In many cases the most profitable way to play poker is by going against the flow of a game.
Here are two situations and examples of what is meant by this.
You sit down and find that the table you have chosen is pretty tame. Not a whole lot of re-raising, bluffing, crazy play etc going on. Everyone is having a good time. Not many confrontations taking place. Raises are always the standard three times big bet. 80% of the time the raiser picks up the pot with no resistance. Even the confrontations that do take place are for the most part anticlimactic.
The most profitable thing for you to do in this situation is to expand to fill the void they leave by going against the flow. Start splashing around in pots. Check raising and stealing pots often. When your opponents are playing like docile lambs you must be like the wolf. A famous quote by Bruce Lee comes to mind.
When the opponent expand, I contract,
When he contracts, I expand,
And when there is an opportunity,
I do not hit--it hits all by itself.
-- Bruce Lee
Poker, like life, is a delicate balance of Yin and Yang, light and dark, up and down, aggressive and passive. When a poker table regresses to such a passive state, there is a huge void left, this can be exploited in a big way.
The second example draws from the same basic principle. If when you sit down at the table you find it is a mad house of activity. People are itching for confrontations. People are making plays for just for the sake of getting under someone else's skin. A few people are on tilt because of the pace. People are playing and raising with any two cards. Calling everything down to the river.
In this situation we once again go against the flow of the table. The table has swung so far to the aggressive side that the most profitable play is to tighten up, or "contract" as Bruce puts it, and wait for the perfect time for it to hit.
posted by JD52 @ 12:22 AM,
