Faking Out in NL Holdem
Learning to manipulate your opponents is a skill of marginal importance in many forms of poker, but in no limit hold ‘em it’s very important. If you play at medium stakes or higher, most of your opponents will be at least somewhat competent, and it may sometimes be hard to get their money.
Particularly, it can sometimes be difficult to make a lot off your big hands: Flopping a big hand is fun, but if you can’t convince someone else to lose their stack to you when you do, it isn’t worth all that much.
To win the most on your big hands (and other hands too), you need to concentrate actively on manipulating your opponents. Trick their hand-reading processes into thinking you have the wrong hand at just the right time. Or cloud their judgment so they’ll make the wrong play even if they do read your hand correctly.
Get Pigeonholed
Being pigeonholed is usually bad, but it’s definitely not in poker; that is, as long as you don’t fit well into the perceived hole. Poker players of all skill levels love to categorize their opponents: “He’s weak, she’s a bluffer, he’s wild, and she always has the nuts.”
Some players play so one-dimensionally that a few words can describe their play almost entirely. Not you! Your play is complex, and you are capable of incorporating a number of factors into your decision-making, making your plays difficult to read.
But that won’t stop your opponents from trying to sum your play up glibly. Raise a few hands in a row, and you “play fast.” Fold for a long period of time, and you’re “squeaky tight.” People like labels, stereotypes, and neat categories. That tendency doesn’t change at the poker table.
You can use your opponents’ pigeonholing tendencies against them. Encourage your opponents to stick a label on you, then surprise them at just the right moment.
There are several ways to do this. The first (and cheapest) is simply to use the randomness of the cards to shape your image. This method works great against people you haven’t played with often – those who don’t already have a conception of your general style.
Say you sit down, and you happen to fold your first twenty or thirty hands. Maybe you see a flop or two, but you fold quietly to the first bet after missing. Oftentimes none of your opponents will pay this fact much mind (either because they don’t notice or because they know that a cold run could happen easily to anyone).
But some people will make a lot more of this “information.” They will assume you are tight and a “folder” (on all streets, not just preflop). An aggressive player might use this notion as an impetus to run an extra bluff or two at you. Others may decide that if you bet big, “you must really have it. ”
You can use these ill-informed conclusions against your opponents. Against aggressive players, you might call with some slightly weaker hands hoping to snap off some of the extra bluffs they will try. And you can run those extra bluffs yourself against the players who assume that you “must have it. ”
This idea, to use to your advantage the image your natural play may have formed, is certainly not new. Indeed, even unskilled players sometimes realize this. So don’t get carried away.
Many players won’t drastically change the way they play against you no matter how they perceive you. Even if they just saw you get caught bluffing ten times in a row, they still won’t call a big bet with acehigh hoping to catch you an eleventh time. So don’t overestimate the impact that your “accidental” image might have. Don’t think, “I haven’t played a hand in a while; it’s time to try a bluff.” That’s too general. You should think specifically that this player is likely to change their play this hand because of something you’ve done in the recent past.
Make Obvious Errors to Induce Costly Errors
There is a big difference between obvious errors and costly errors. An obvious error is a play that most players will instantly identify as wrong. Raising preflop with 8?5? is usually an example of an obvious error. Even people who have only watched poker on television know that playing such “trash” hands is usually a mistake. Calling with a weak draw without getting sufficient implied odds is another example. Even bad players are familiar with the idea that longshot draws are usually not worth playing for.
The thing is, just because a play is an obvious error doesn’t make it an expensive error. Some obvious errors are actually, mathematically speaking, only very slight errors.
Say you have Jh Th and the flop comes As Kc 4d
The preflop raiser (a player very likely to have aces, kings, or ace-king in this situation) bets an amount that offers you about 8-to-1 implied odds. Your chance to make the gutshot on the next card is 4/45 (assuming your opponent doesn’t have a queen), or 10.25-to-1 against. Calling is an error (unless you expect you might get a free card on the turn).
But it’s a small one. Your implied odds come up only slightly short of break-even. If you make this call again and again, on average you’ll lose only a small percentage of your stack each time.45
But if you catch a queen and bust a flopped set, your opponent isn’t likely to see it that way. He may call you all sorts of names like “fish” and “chaser.” He’ll do the math in his head, and every time he’ll come to the conclusion that your call was wrong. Except he won’t see it as slightly wrong; he’ll see it as horribly wrong. (Getting stacked tends to mess with some people’s sense of magnitude. Nondescript beats turn into whoppers.)
More importantly, he’s likely to remember that you’re a “chaser” the next time he plays a hand with you. Call another flop bet, and he’ll wonder what kind of stupid and crazy draw you have this time. This attitude will make it a lot easier for you to win a big pot if you happen to flop a big hand. Your opponent is likely to take your calls less seriously than he normally might, and he’s also likely to bet more with weaker hands to “make you pay to draw.” Both adjustments will allow you to slowplay, just calling on the flop and turn, without arousing suspicions.
Furthermore, you can sometimes use this flawed perception to run an extra river bluff or two. If an unlikely straight or backdoor flush comes in on the river, often it’s hopeless to try to represent it because your opponent will think, “There’s no way you called the flop with that draw.” But if your opponent thinks you are a crazy “chaser,” he’s more likely to give you credit for having some very unlikely hands. After all, if you’re stupid enough to call with a gutshot against an obvious flopped set, you must be stupid enough to do anything.
The key to using this concept for profit is to identify situations where you can make an obvious, but relatively inexpensive, error that may induce your opponent to make not as obvious, but far more costly errors later on (either on that hand or on future ones). Thus, you’re trading small loses for hopefully big gains.
Indeed, this tactic is powerful enough that some successful players have built their entire style around it. One such style is known variously as “loose-aggressive” or “hyper-aggressive.” These players raise frequently on the cheap streets, preflop and the flop, with marginal and weak hands. But when the betting gets big on the turn and river, their play becomes fairly orthodox. They get a little out of line with the small money, but play straight when it gets big.
This style seeks to unsettle tight players by peppering them with frequent, annoying raises. The tight players start by folding, but soon they realize they are being taken advantage of. They resolve to “take a stand” by lowering their standards somewhat and calling or raising these light bets. They flop top pair, and they aren’t going to be pushed off it this time. They call a $100 flop bet, confident they should let this wild player bluff off his cash. Then they call a $400 turn bet. When the river $1,500 bet comes, they get a sinking feeling. “Maybe he really has a big hand this time?” But this is the “taking a stand” hand, and that means calling the $1,500 also. Sure enough, the loose-aggressive shows down a big hand.
The loose-aggressive style works because the frequent early bets and raises are clearly wrong, but they tend not to be very costly. 8c5c isn’t a good hand, but if you play it with position and against the weak players at the table, it will mostly hold its own.
But constantly attacking your opponents with raises with hands like 8c5c can have a profound effect on their decision-making. They may begin to consider you a truly wild player, and some may even feel like they need to “teach you a lesson” for getting out of line so willingly. You know there’s a big difference between making a slightly wrong $50 raise preflop and a hopelessly wild $2,000 bluff on the river, but they don’t know you know that. They may assume you are just as crazy with your big bets as you are with your small ones. That mistaken assumption will make you lots of money over time.
The loose-aggressive style is quite popular now, however, so many of your opponents will be wise to it. (Many will try it on you as well.) Please don’t read this example and conclude that all you have to do to be a big winner is to start raising all your trashy hands preflop. No matter what style you choose, you have to apply it with sophistication, or you won’t win.
Nevertheless, making obvious errors to induce costly errors (either later on in that hand or in a future hand) is a valuable no limit tactic.Look for opportunities to befuddle your opponents without giving up much; those small investments can pay big dividends down the road.
Final Thoughts
There are many more ways besides just these to manipulate your opponents. Some players are very good at putting their opponents on tilt by saying annoying or obnoxious things. Others can influence their opponents’ thought process by asking pointed questions during a long thinking period. Be on the lookout for new techniques. Many good no limit players use some very devious tricks indeed.
