Loveable Rogues Poker

by Jim McKenna

First published in Poker Player Newspaper

There’s a trait that goes beyond good poker skills. This is usually a trait that is reserved for players who like themselves, other players, and the game itself. It can turn lemons into lemonade. When you have been around this trait, you are glad you were there-even if you were beaten by another’s good will and sense of humor. It’s the trait of being happy and being up-in good times and in bad. Not many poker players have it. Those that have this trait seem to be the consistent winners.

Have you ever seen a negative player who is constantly complaining and whining ever do consistently well in poker? It’s a pretty rare sight. While they may get lucky occasionally, playing loose results in losing.

The same seems true of consistent winners. True, when you are doing well, it’s easy to be positive and upbeat. Yet, notice a consistent winner. When they have a bad run, they are not complaining. They are instead busy staying upbeat and positive. They are dealing with bad times and staying in a good frame of mind.

This is one of the reasons that I wrote Beyond Traps: The Anatomy of Poker Success. It’s coming out in June of 2007. What I say in that book is that, “Having the right attitude is probably the single most important power a person has to bring to the table. The best attitude to play with is a positive one. Attitude is like an odorless gas that can poison the room or infect others much like ‘laughing gas.’”

This is true in most of what we do. I learned a long time ago that when I did therapy and didn’t approach it as being my usual upbeat self, I would not do a good job. There’s something about my being myself, which is more on the upbeat than the serious side that brings out the best in my therapy and in my poker. There’s also something about being an upbeat poker player that can help your game. I was discussing this with a friend who plays a lot of high stake limit and no-limit games. He agreed that, “Having a positive mood is good for your cards!”

There’s also something beyond just being good at what you do and knowing all the odds of when to play and when to lie hands down. There’s having the self-control to deal with hard times and bringing an attitude to the table that other players are lacking. It’s the ability to bring an attitude of gratitude- that’s being grateful for being alive and still in the game. It’s the ability to look on the brighter side of things.

There’s the opposite attitude that will show up more often at low limit tables and in some very high staked games (where there’s already a lot of money in the pot from large blinds and antes). In these games, there are those with a “hold’em attitude” who play their positions with good combinations of high cards and connectors. Then there are the “no-fold’em hold’em” players who will play any two cards until the flop-regardless of position. It’s the difference between playing “hold’em” and what I call “flop’em.”

That said, let’s get back to how attitude helps or hurts your cards. Attitude will turn a seasoned and skillful player into a pompous child sulking because someone broke the “secret bargain” and stayed long enough to beat them. Attitude is not something players are born with. Besides being learned, attitudes can be changed. That’s the good news. By changing attitudes, players will enjoy others, the game, and even themselves more.

In short, players with bad attitudes are much easier to beat than players with good ones are.

by Lou Krieger

First published in Poker Player Newspaper

If you took a poll of poker players and asked them whether they thought online poker or the brick-and-mortar variety was more aggressive, I’d venture to say that most respondents would come down on the side of online poker being the more aggressive of the two. Although there’s plenty of room for disagreement, there’d also be loads of anomalies just based on the nature of the players even if there were some perfect way to determine which kind of game was more aggressive.

I play a lot of hold’em online, and if you ask my opinion, I’d tell you that in the mid-limit games that I play, and those include $10-$20, $15-$30, $20-$40, and $30-$60 as well as the hold’em segments of mid-limit HORSE games, poker in cyberspace seem to be more aggressive than games at the same limits in brick and mortar casinos.

Anyway, that’s my opinion. It’s not scientific. I didn’t take a survey. It’s just anecdotal – one man’s opinion. But I think it’s easier for players to be aggressive online because they are not subject to the constraints that occur when you look other players in the eye and know when they see you acting a bit friskier than you ought to be. It’s probably also the reason online players call too much. There are no other live players to serve as speed governors.

But it’s transient aggression. I see it all the time. I come into a pot for a raise and someone else comes in for three bets by reraising. I’ll call his raise but check when the flop misses me. When another blank comes on the turn I’ll either come out betting or raise my opponent because I’m putting him on two overcards and my raise tells him that I’m the guy with the big hand, not him.

If he three-bets the turn, I’m outta there, but usually he will fold and I’ll type something like “good laydown” in the chat box. Sometimes I’ll type “just a pair of treys” which, of course, usually convinces him that I had a pocket pair of aces.

If my opponent is the aggressor from early position- let’s say he limped in and then reraised from early position-he’ll always come out betting regardless of what flops. I’ll call or even raise if the flop looks like the kind that missed both of us. Often all it takes is for me to come out betting the turn to cause him to release his hand. When players are often overly aggressive before the flop they can’t have a powerhouse hand every time they raise. Sure, sometimes they go on a real rush and make hand after hand, but usually they speed around far too much, and even they realize they have to fold when someone plays back at them.

This kind of early aggression that turns into declining aggression on later betting rounds is very common online, and you can take advantage of it if you don’t over do it. By positioning yourself in your opponent’s mind as a very selective player, you can take advantage of early declining aggression by forcing your opponent to fold the weakfish hands he bluffs with too often.

There’s money to be made there, and every time you play correctly by folding your weak hands, you’re even supporting your selectively aggressive strategy because your opponent sees you fold. After a while, he’ll begin to see you as a frequent folder. And compared to his style of play, you are. But if you dial in this play at the right frequency-so that your opponent continues to buy it-you can bet or checkraise him at the right opportunity with little more than a better knowledge of his playing style than he has of yours.

by Doyle Brunson

first published in Poker Player Newspaper

I’ve always been a believer in attitude. If a man thinks he’ll win at poker, then he’s more likely to prevail. Confidence won’t make you any luckier, but it can make you play better. Assuming you have enough skill to win, confidence will keep you from turning against yourself and letting self-doubt and panic prompt you to make poor decisions.

I guess my ultimate recollection in this regard happened years ago when a young man came to Las Vegas and conquered the seven-card stud games. His name was Keith. And I’m here to tell you, Keith just couldn’t lose. He destroyed those games. You knew from the moment he strode into the poker room that he expected to win. He acted as if it was his destiny to win.

I befriended Keith briefly. Beyond just being confident, he had a keen interest in learning the best tactics and would ask me for advice. He confided that he always psyched himself up before games. In fact, he told me that he used mental tricks to get himself into the “perfect winning mood.”

A trance. Once I found him in the men’s room minutes before the first deal, gazing into the mirror and saying, “I will win!” He repeated it over and over. Then he concluded solemnly, “Keith, you cannot lose.” And he left for the game in what appeared to me to be almost a trance of invincibility.

And, of course, he won.

He even convinced me to try a few of his experiments in self-confidence, such as imagining myself with all the chips piled in front of me. It seemed to work. As I’ve said, a player with confidence has a long-term advantage over one without it. There’s nothing supernatural about that, either. It’s simply that confidence is a psychological force that keeps you on target and unnerves your opponents. Then Keith’s behavior tilted toward bizarre. He once rose from his seat across from me in a restaurant and shouted, “Win! Win! Win!” After that, I never socialized with him. His mind was clearly cracking. Everyone could tell.

Play even better. Then he decided that he’d play even better if he could convince himself he was losing a little in the beginning of a session. That way, he figured, he’d have to be even more dedicated to win his way back to even. Even that mental trick seemed to work for him — for a while.

Then, one day, he tried his biggest psychological gambit ever. He spent hours making himself believe that he was an enormous $100,000 behind in a $300-limit game. Clearly he had bought into his own fantasy, because when he won the first pot and was ahead $2,000, in his mind he was still $98,000 loser and he still appeared desperate. That’s when he crumbled like sod squeezed through your fingers during a drought. In less than two days, he unloaded his bankroll. All gone.

I suppose playing mind games can be helpful or harmful, depending on how you use them. Personally, I stick to the simple stuff and leave elaborate mental experiments to more the more adventurous – like Keith. Poker players should have faith in their own abilities. That helps. And that’s as far as I take it.

By Dr. Tim Lavalli,

First published in PokerNews

Absolute threshold is a very specific psychological and sensory term. Absolute threshold refers to the smallest intensity of a stimulus that has to be present for the stimulus to be detected. The most common example of this involves sensitivity to heat. Think of an electric burner on a stove. You place your hand on the burner and then turn it on low. At first you won’t feel anything because it is takes time for the coils to heat up. Eventually it will get warm enough for you to detect heat; there is some temperature that is just hot enough for you to notice it. In this case your absolute threshold is the point at which it is just hot enough for you to detect the presence of the heat. Now for someone else the absolute threshold could be higher or lower; sooner or later. In psychology such a variation in perception or feeling is referred to as a threshold.

A threshold simply implies that there are different levels of response or perception to certain stimuli, which varies among people. We all have different levels of response to heat, light, sound, color and dozens of other sensory inputs. Your particular response or perception of a stimulus is your threshold. It is possible to measure when you become aware of something and often your awareness precedes your conscious recognition of the stimulus. You know when someone says: “The noise from those fluorescent lights is driving me crazy.” You hadn’t even noticed the annoying buzz but now that someone has mentioned it, you can’t stop hearing it. Did you actually not hear the noise before? Or was your absolute threshold for the noise reset?

OK, what’s the application of absolute threshold to poker? Very simple. Your skills of observation at the table not only can be improved but can actually be reset. This means that you can detect and utilize more vital information from your opponents by resetting your threshold of awareness.

There is another interesting concept in psychology called signal detection theory which says that our ability to observe is not an absolute quantity but rather depends on situational and motivational factors. Simple example, you learn more about your poker table opponents when you are paying attention and are not tired, distracted or drunk. Seems obvious but wait there is something much more subtle and valuable to your game and your bankroll going on here.

Let’s say that you are looking at the player in seat two when he tables his AKo to pick up a pot, which is to say you are watching the action instead of the cocktail waitress as she walks away from the table. Because you are watching the table, you also hear the player in seat seven say: “Played big slick a bit faster that time.” And the seat two player responds: “Well I was in early position this time.” Now you have three pieces of information instead of one and you have also reset your threshold to a higher level to receive more information. How?

Here is the point. Absolute threshold can be reset to receive more information (“to feel the heat sooner”) simply by paying attention. Signal detection is enhanced by paying attention to more information and the ability to remember the information and access it later in the game is also increased by both paying attention and having more information available. Notice that nowhere have we mentioned remembering the information or storing the memory. In fact, studies have shown that with absolutely no attempt to increase memory or use any memory tricks whatsoever, an individual will recall more information simply by paying closer attention to events as they unfold. The additional information actually makes you more sensitive to more subtle clues you would have missed previously.

By resetting your thresholds higher, you remember more of what you see and hear even with no conscious effort on your part to save those memories. It is a proven function of threshold behavior that as you make more refined observations, you simply retain more information. The simply truth at the poker table is: ‘Paying Attention Pays’.