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’.

by Ashley Adams

First published in Poker Player Newspaper

Certain general poker truisms have become like gospel for many players. Here are six.

1. Don’t play at stakes you can’t afford.

2. Don’t drink alcohol while you play.

3. Play tightly in a loose game and loosely in a tight game.

4. Don’t draw to an inside straight.

5. Bluff more in a shorthanded game.

6. Don’t play when tired.

In my experience, however, there are exceptions to these rules that can be the source of considerable profit. Let me address each of them in turn.

1. Don’t play at stakes you can’t afford. This is usually a good rule. You don’t want to play with “scared money”. If you are afraid of the stakes, for the most part, you won’t be able to compete at the same level as the others in the game missing some opportunities to maximize your advantage while at the same time being too inclined to fold to betting pressure even when you may have the best of it.

That being said, you need to realize that you can take a brief stab at a game that is a higher than your regular game even if you are on a short bankroll. Let’s say, for example, that you only have a poker bankroll of $1,000, earned by playing $.50/1.00 and $1/2 on line. Your friends and on line poker buddies have all told you the conventional math that says you need to have 600 times the large blind to sit down in a game. You’ve believed them and had planned to wait until you had $6,000 or so before making the move up to $5/10 Even so, you join your poker buds on a trip to a nearby poker room where they play. You’re watching a game and notice that the players are awful. The game seems to be really passive and really loose. Five players typically call the $2.00 bring in. It’s rare for someone to complete the bet to $5.00. There’s usually some betting on all of the streets, but there’s also a lot of checking and calling.

All you have is that $1,000 you brought along “just in case”. True, you have a regular job, but you don’t make much money beyond your expenses – maybe only $50 a week for entertainment. Still, you’d like to play and this game looks juicy. Do you forego the game in the interest of strict financial discipline?

No, this is an exception to that rule. This is a great game where you have a shot at winning. Take the shot. Set yourself a loss limit of $300. What’s the worst that can happen? You buy in for $300 or so, lose it all, and your bankroll goes down to $700. You know you can make money on line at $.50/1.00 and $1/2. You have some small stream of income to reseed your poker account. So go ahead and try playing over your head.

You can make certain adjustments when you do this, to minimize your risk while not killing your ability to win. Play a generally tighter version of your best game – playing fewer speculative hands. Set a strict stop loss limit so you can return with enough of your bankroll still intact to handle the low stakes on line games if you fail to win here at $5/10. True, this is not the ideal way to play, but it can be a winning way to play in a particularly good game. So make an exception to the rule, play over your head, and enjoy yourself. You may win enough to make the step again for a longer period of time.

Rule 2. Don’t drink alcohol while you play This is generally a wise guideline. Alcohol interferes with the brain’s ability to function. Top-level poker requires considerable brainpower, so why put yourself at a disadvantage? Similarly, alcohol works as a depressant – tending to make many tired, distracted, inattentive, and sleepy. This surely diminishes your ability to stay and take advantage of a good game – yet another reason to eschew this intoxicant while playing poker.

Still, there are at least two good reasons to indulge, at least from time to time, even while playing poker – presuming that you can control your drinking once you begin. First of all, if the game is good, and others are drinking, you may not want to draw attention to yourself as an abstemious teetotaler. If everyone is drinking, laughing it up, and having a good time, it may look weird or at least somewhat suspect for you to ask for only a cup of coffee or water. You’re probably already going to stand out some as a serious player. Not drinking is an unnecessary red flag that you are there to make a profit, not to have a good time. And that may be all the excuse that is necessary to rescind your invitation the next time there’s a game.

I’m not suggesting that you drink like a fish. But if everyone’s handing out the brewskies and the host asks, “What’ll you have” there’s no harm in asking for a beer too. You don’t have to drink more than one – or even the entire beer. Few if any of the drinking players will notice how much you drink of your beer. But they may notice if you don’t have one.

There’s another reason – and this is admittedly a bit Machiavellian. If it’s your home game, you want others to drink. Your apparent eagerness or at least willingness to imbibe may be the signal that it’s “that kind of game” and therefore safe for your guests to indulge as well. Encourage this inclination with your behavior.

Consider this scene. There’s a game at your house with people whom you’ve met in other games but never had to your house. They’ve seen you in the local poker room perhaps, where serious play is the rule. They don’t know what to expect. Is this a “friendly game” like they’re used to with their buddies – where players talk, watch TV, drink, eat and don’t take the poker too serious. Or is this a serious affair like in the casino – where everyone tries to play their best game all the time, orders bottled water, and focuses nearly all of their attention on the game? They’re waiting to see how you act to determine how they’ll act.

Give them an excuse to drink by having drink yourself early on. Of course you need to have an eye on your own sobriety – because you really are trying to take their money. But have a beer at the start. But it’s OK to drink early on just so long as you’re at your best as the poker game progresses into the wee hours, when others tend to be more tired, looser, and easier to take advantage of – especially if they’ve been drinking.

Next time will examine more exceptions to these six rules.

by John Vorhaus

First published in Poker Player Newspaper

Emotional intelligence, loosely speaking, is your awareness of your awareness. Poker players with high emotional intelligence are able to assess their strengths and weaknesses frankly and honestly, with acceptance, and without freaking out. To test your emotional intelligence, I’m going to present you with a number of poker situations and ask you two questions:

Has this ever been you?

How did you feel at the time?

To make the most of this quiz, just answer truthfully and write your answers down. Shine a light on your inner life; that’s how emotional intelligence grows.

SITUATION ONE: You’ve been playing online poker for several hours in a multi-table tournament, and things have not been going your way. You took more rebuys than you wanted to, and never built a stack. Utterly unable to gain any sort of traction in the tournament, you ultimately busted out not on a bad beat but a on very bad decision. Now it’s late, and you’re mentally exhausted. You know you’re not on your game, but the sting of defeat still owns you, so you jump into a sitngo tournament or a cash game and proceed to double or triple your losses. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

SITUATION TWO: You’re in a cash game and running well. You’ve been getting hit by the deck and enjoying a major rush. You’re enjoying that rush in every sense of the word — not just financially but emotionally. You feel high, like you’re invincible, a veritable king of poker. Not only do you want the feeling to last forever, you’re convinced it can. Like a golfer who has finally found the sweet spot in your swing, you believe that you have poker “solved.” So you push every small edge — or sometimes not even any edge at all — and end up giving back most of what you won. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

SITUATION THREE: You’re playing against a foe you know to be inferior. He makes manifestly bad decisions, and you can’t see any reason why you’re not taking all his money. Yet, you’re not. He keeps sucking out on you and winning pot after pot. The more you play against him, the angrier you get, until your primary motivation for playing at all is just to make that bastard pay. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

SITUATION FOUR: You’re in a poker game and you’re stuck. You’re beyond tilt — you’re a cork bobbing on the sea of poker — yet you can’t tear yourself away from the game. There seems to be some magnetic force that keeps your ass anchored to the chair. At one point you thought you’d just keep playing until you got back to even, but you’re past that point now; you’re past the point of pain or even of rational thought. You probably won’t move till you go broke. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

Look, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad, but if you want to have a long career in poker, it’s not enough to learn how to bet with the best of it or to get away from a hand when you know you’re beaten. Success in poker absolutely requires that you acknowledge and address your whole underlying emotional landscape. Only when you’re truly honest with yourself about what you feel and why you feel it can you hope to master the game. Grow your emotional intelligence and – I promise – poker profits will follow.

by Dr. Tim Lavalli

First published in PokerNews

Every poker tournament is different. The structures are different, the players are different and certainly the cards are different. Recognizing how a tournament is different can increase your chances of making the money. Your pre-game ought to include at least an awareness of the internal psychology of a poker tournament.

To find the psychology of a tournament, ask questions like: Why are players here? Why are they playing this event? How can I use this knowledge to gain an advantage?

Let me illustrate what I mean by the “psychology of a tournament” by using a current NLHE event I have been playing the last several weekends. The tournament is Ultimate Poker Challenge being played each weekend at Binions in downtown Las Vegas. This is a year-long set of tournaments, so if you are going to be in Las Vegas in the coming year you might want to consider my analysis if you intend to sit down at one of these tables.

So what is the internal psychology of this event? Well it is the combination of the Binions celebrity name and the television coverage that gives these events their unique psychology. First, this is Binions, the original home of the World Series of Poker. Poker tourists often make the trek to downtown Las Vegas to play at Binions; they hold four small buy-in NLHE tournaments everyday. But the poker tourists are also there when the $340 Ultimate Poker Challenge events go off on the weekends, they see the permanent television final table set-up, they see the previous days event being taped, they see the scattering of professional players in the UPC events and they often plunk down their cash for a seat in the bigger buy-in UPC event. For that reason the Ultimate Poker Challenge events have a very fishy flavor, particularly in the early rounds.

Quite frankly, I have never seen so many first-timers playing in this size buy-in event before. Identifying the dead money is easy because they tell you “This is my first event” or they ask about the blinds every time they come around. Now the psychological aspects of such a mix of players require a savvy player to make many subtle adjustments. For example, after a table change, I found myself next to a lady who asked about the button and blinds every round. She simply could not “get it” how the button moved, and therefore how the blinds moved. Two seats past her was professional Kenna James and next to him was the super-aggressive tournament chip leader. Each hand had a very different make-up of players with varied psychological reasons for their play. The psychology of the event changed as the day wore on, players were eliminated and the TV final table loomed ever closer.

These can be very tough tables to play, trying to isolate that fish and avoid the sharks.

However, there were still players in the event who had not considered the motivations of the other players. They had not considered the psychological aspects of the play and therefore they could not manipulate the others players with their bets and raises. There is more to the psychology of a table or an event than how a bet or raise will produce the desired effect in a particular hand. The key is how your move will affect the particular players in the hand with you. Reading a player needs to be done repeatedly during a tournament, reading a table is more complicated still but reading the tournament is easy and you can do it before the cards are in the air.

To determine the psychology of any given tournament, just ask yourself: Why are players here today? Why are they playing this event? How can I use this knowledge to gain an advantage?

by John Vorhaus

First published in Poker Player

Here’s a little item I recently spotted in that bastion of hard news in America, USA Today:

PREDATORS PREFER DIMWITTED PREY Chimps and large predatory cats are more likely to target dimwitted prey less capable of escaping attack, a new study reports.

The researchers focused on predators from Africa and South America such as chimpanzees, jaguars, leopards and pumas.

To determine whether these hunters were biased towards certain types of prey, the scientists compared how often a prey species appeared in the wild with how often it turned up in the diets of the predators.

The results suggest prey with small brains relative to their body size, such as mongooses, the red river hog and certain small antelope, were hunted more often than prey with larger brains. Among all the prey species considered, primates, which have large brains compared to most other mammals, were targeted the least.

Yeah? May I just say: No sh*t, Sherlock. Any half-decent poker player can tell you that the law of the jungle — survival of the fittest — is the only law that matters in poker. And how do the fit survive? By preying on the weak! The small stack. The loose caller. The timorous titmouse who will fold to a reraise bluff. Success in poker is directly measured as a function of who has the best brain — plus heart, courage and a whole lot of other Wizard of Ozian qualities — and the best brains know to punish and pummel their dim bulb foes first.

This is where the whole concept of “dead money” comes from in tournament poker. It’s a given that in any tournament field there’s a fixed percentage of players who simply don’t know what they’re doing. For the rest of us (you, me, and that canny chimpin- a-chair over there), our job is simple: prey on that loose, dead money and scoop up as much of it as we can before the other smart predators beat us to it. Thus, while it’s true that, “patience is precious when chips are cheap,” it doesn’t do to be too patient in a tournament’s early stage. If you are, you’ll find yourself treading water while other, tougher players are building big stacks.

Next thing you know, you’re not predator, you’re prey. Not good. Think about this next time you go into a tournament determined to “survive.” Make sure you’re not confusing survival with “lasting a long time,” and make sure that your game plan includes at least a decent set of tactics for preying on the weak minds you find. Be prepared to steal blinds. Be prepared to reraise bluff. Be prepared to blow some smoke with your image, so that if the cards cooperate and bring you the right hand at the right time (a little thing we call situational luck) you’ll be able to convince some dim bulb pumpkin to pay you off. In other words, give yourself a decent chance to win the tournament, and give yourself that shot from the start, even at the cost, sometimes, of an early exit from the field.

Also be aware of the dangerous cats around you. Know who’s capable of bold, tricky moves, and who is not. It’s easy to know this stuff, you know. Just watch your table’s play for half an hour, and then try to categorize each player at your table as “tricky” or “straightforward.” You won’t, I promise, be too far wrong. Then attack the straightforward players, avoid the tricky ones, build your stack, and move ahead. It’s simple, really. When you think about it, successful poker play, and successful tournament play, and even successful life in the wild, really just boils down to this:

Don’t Challenge The Strong, Challenge The Weak.

That’s What They’re There For.

by John Vorhaus First published in Poker Player Newspaper

A while back, we were talking about different types of bluffs. Here’s another one for you consideration, one that relies on a phenomenon known as applied luck. Applied luck is not quite the same as general, or garden-variety, luck, which just amounts to running good or running bad. To enjoy applied luck is to receive the right hand at the right time, in a confluence of cards, image, and recent history. This harmonic convergence adds up to an excellent bluffing opportunity.

NAME OF BLUFF: CAUGHT STEALING — AND STEALING AGAIN

YOUR IMAGE: You’ve been caught bluffing in the recent past. Now that the flush of embarrassment has faded, you’re turning your attention to the salient question of how to use your larcenous table image against your foes.

YOUR TARGET: Prideful, arrogant, ego-driven players who have recently enjoyed the satisfaction of catching you with your hand in the cookie jar. They wouldn’t mind snapping you off again, because thieving bastards like you need to be kept in their place.

THE SITUATION: You were caught bluffing. It felt like the end of the world. It wasn’t. It was the end of your old image (tight, perhaps, yet savvy) and the start of your new image: chastened by defeat, and capable of almost any eccentricity. THE BLUFF: Here’s where applied luck comes in. Should you be fortunate enough to pick up a real hand shortly after having been caught stealing, you have the opportunity to essay what looks like a tiltdriven drive. Your opponents won’t credit you with good cards. They’ll assume that you’re stung by your recent setback and, like so many of them, are now trying to exorcise your psychic pain by pushing another hand too far, too fast. In this instance, you’re actually bluffing that you don’t have a hand. It’s called “bluffing with the best of it,” and it’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.

NUANCE: Your foes know you just got caught, and may suspect that you’re now on tilt. (Reinforce this suspicion by making many tilt-like noises.) Even so, they won’t expect you to drive-bluff again very soon because they know that you know you’re likely to get called. When you bet, then, they ought to credit you with a real hand, and fold. But they’re damned if they’ll let you resume your thieving ways so soon, and without a fight; using your own tilty behavior to justify their bad call, they’ll go ahead and pay you off. Remember, these are ego-driven players, and their egos will take them places their wallets shouldn’t go.

WHAT NEXT: Settle down. Circumstances have allowed you to steal some chips by masquerading as a maniac. You were lucky to have caught a real hand when you needed it, but don’t push your (applied) luck too far. Let the cards and the character of the table determine where your image goes next. CAVEAT: The trouble with too far is you never know you’re going till you’ve gone. If you think you’re faking tilt, but you really are on tilt, you’ll try to push second-rate hands like first-rate hands and end up losing all your chips. In all instances, know your own mind, and don’t let emotion rule — or ruin — your game.

by John Vorhaus

First published in Poker Player Newspaper

A while back, we were talking about different types of bluffs. Here’s another one for you consideration, one that relies on a phenomenon known as applied luck. Applied luck is not quite the same as general, or garden-variety, luck, which just amounts to running good or running bad. To enjoy applied luck is to receive the right hand at the right time, in a confluence of cards, image, and recent history. This harmonic convergence adds up to an excellent bluffing opportunity.

NAME OF BLUFF: CAUGHT STEALING — AND STEALING AGAIN

YOUR IMAGE: You’ve been caught bluffing in the recent past. Now that the flush of embarrassment has faded, you’re turning your attention to the salient question of how to use your larcenous table image against your foes.

YOUR TARGET: Prideful, arrogant, ego-driven players who have recently enjoyed the satisfaction of catching you with your hand in the cookie jar. They wouldn’t mind snapping you off again, because thieving bastards like you need to be kept in their place.

THE SITUATION: You were caught bluffing. It felt like the end of the world. It wasn’t. It was the end of your old image (tight, perhaps, yet savvy) and the start of your new image: chastened by defeat, and capable of almost any eccentricity. THE BLUFF: Here’s where applied luck comes in. Should you be fortunate enough to pick up a real hand shortly after having been caught stealing, you have the opportunity to essay what looks like a tiltdriven drive. Your opponents won’t credit you with good cards. They’ll assume that you’re stung by your recent setback and, like so many of them, are now trying to exorcise your psychic pain by pushing another hand too far, too fast. In this instance, you’re actually bluffing that you don’t have a hand. It’s called “bluffing with the best of it,” and it’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.

NUANCE: Your foes know you just got caught, and may suspect that you’re now on tilt. (Reinforce this suspicion by making many tilt-like noises.) Even so, they won’t expect you to drive-bluff again very soon because they know that you know you’re likely to get called. When you bet, then, they ought to credit you with a real hand, and fold. But they’re damned if they’ll let you resume your thieving ways so soon, and without a fight; using your own tilty behavior to justify their bad call, they’ll go ahead and pay you off. Remember, these are ego-driven players, and their egos will take them places their wallets shouldn’t go.

WHAT NEXT: Settle down. Circumstances have allowed you to steal some chips by masquerading as a maniac. You were lucky to have caught a real hand when you needed it, but don’t push your (applied) luck too far. Let the cards and the character of the table determine where your image goes next. CAVEAT: The trouble with too far is you never know you’re going till you’ve gone. If you think you’re faking tilt, but you really are on tilt, you’ll try to push second-rate hands like first-rate hands and end up losing all your chips. In all instances, know your own mind, and don’t let emotion rule — or ruin — your game.