Selected Poker Myths - Part 1

Some Favorite Poker Lies, Myths, and Misguided Advice

They are everywhere. They come from out of nowhere. They may astound you, humor you, even annoy you. And there is no place on earth to hide from them. They are opinions. Other people's opinions.


You've heard that everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that - in itself - is just someone else's opinion. And, in fact, it isn't a very good one. If you ask me, not everyone is entitled to an opinion. Why should they be? Opinions are things you are free to express in most advanced civilizations. So, nobody can stop anyone from speaking his mind. But, to me, being "entitled" to an opinion happens after someone has done some thinking or research - or has stumbled upon some special knowledge - that makes that opinion worth learning. Otherwise, a person may have an opinion, but he isn't entitled to it.


Sometimes common poker players advice that sounds like wisdom is not very good and not very profitable. It is simply the fault of a society too permissive of opinions.


1. You can't overcome the rake.


If you played poker at your kitchen table or in your basement, you probably wouldn't take anything out of the pot to cover expenses. Every dollar lost by someone would be a dollar won by someone else. But casinos and cardrooms create an enhanced poker environment, complete with a selection of games, food and beverage service, advanced surveillance, professional dealers, and more. Obviously, they need to recoup their costs and earn a profit. So, typically, either money is taken from each pot or your poker seat is rented to you by the hour or half hour.


Overcoming a rake or a time charge takes skill. If all players are equal, only the house makes money. It doesn't matter if all the players were very poor or very excellent. When there is equality, nobody wins in the long run. It is simply inequality of players that allows the best ones to win. If you have a significant advantage over your opponents, you probably can overcome most house rakes. Usually, when tou play poker the larger the limit, the less the house fees are when measured proportionally to the sizes of the wagers. This makes the fees easier to overcome. For this reason, there are many more professional players at higher limits.


2. Jack-10 suited is a powerful texas holdem hand.


At one time, many thought jack-10 suited is the most profitable hold 'em starting hand. It isn't. It usually should not even be played against a double raise before the flop. And you should often fold it in a full-handed game from early positions.


3. Play loose in tight games and tight in loose games.


Anytime opponents stray from correct strategy, you can take advantage by playing more hands for extra profit. If opponents are too tight, compensate by bluffing more often. You also can win more hands with moderate strength simply because they go unchallenged by tight players. If opponents are too loose, compensate by playing more semi-strong hands that usually would not be profitable.

Because your opponents have relaxed their standards considerably, you can relax yours, too, and still play the better hands more often than they do. So, you don't need to be as selective. Although you won't loose profit if you fail to adjust (and can expect to win even more money), you will maximize your profit if you do adjust. If the pot is raked, though, you shouldn't loosen up your standards as much to match loose opponents. That's because, although more hands would be profitable without a rake, many of the marginally profitable hands become unprofitable with a rake. For reasons I've discussed in previous columns, this doesn't apply to seat-rental games or games where the button pays the fee no matter who wins. In those games, you should loosen
up in response to loose opponents, just as if there were no fee at all.


4. World-class players can easily detect cheating.


The most sophisticated forms of card marking, card manipulation, and poker partnerships are the least obvious. Surveillance at many major casinos is very effective, providing players with protection they don't have in home games. But players need to stay alert, because even world-class players can be and have been cheated. I personally feel much safer playing poker in reputable casino environments than in home games. You should, too.


5. A "stop loss" is a good concept.

The term stop loss simply means that once you have lost a predetermined amount of money, you will quit no matter what. Unless you're using it for purely psychological reasons, or to keep you out of games where you may have miscalculated your edge, stop loss is not an effective means of money management. Since stop loss means to quit if you lose a predetermined amount, you are often merely stopping your opportunity for profit. Stop loss then becomes stop win. If you can emotionally handle the loss, the game is good, and you're playing well, you will eventually earn more money the more hours you play. Despite this, there are some good reasons to quit when you're losing. For instance, the game may not be as good as you think or opponents may not be intimidated by you and thus tend to play better. So, yes, tend to extend your sessions when you're winning and shorten them when you're losing. But - unless you've worked out a complex personal formula that dictates that you drop down to a lower limit if your bankroll
shrinks to a given level - there is no fixed magic amount of maximum loss that you should use to save money. Consider each situation separately.


6. Don't count your chips while you're sitting at the table.

Counting chips is useful in measuring how well you're doing. But, you shouldn't use this count for things like quitting when you're ahead to manufacture a win streak. Still, you should know how you're doing in a game. So go ahead and count. Almost all professional poker players do.


7. A player acting nervous is likely to be bluffing.

Bluffers bolster themselves, are sometimes rigid, sometimes don't breathe, and seldom look nervous or shake.


8. Skillful players seldom check and call.

Checking and calling is a natural tactic in poker. It often means that your hand is not good enough to bet and not bad enough to fold. Against frequent bluffers and overaggressive foes, checking and calling is very profitable.

9. Holdem requires more skill than seven-card stud.

Nope. Stud is more complex, but there is more luck involved, so your tough decisions aren't as consistently rewarded. But to figure out what the actual best decisions are in stud requires a lot more analysis, largely due to the interaction of your cards versus your opponents. In holdem, all face-up cards are communal, and the possible combinations of all the opposing hands are fewer and easier to consider. Additionally, it is helpful to remember folded face-up cards in stud, but this profit-making skill is not available in hold 'em, where no faceup cards are ever thrown away.
Yes, there often are fewer skilled players in seven-card stud than in holdem. But this speaks to the type of players the games attract, not to the theoretical levels of skill needed to play perfectly.


The cards will break about even in 100 hours. Cards may not break even in a year or in a lifetime when you consider factors such as holding big winning poker hands in the right games against the right players. However, the best players will almost always win for a year, but luck will determine how much. - Mike Caro

Action In Poker Play

"When Not to Raise"


1. Always ask yourself the reason before you take any assertive action in poker play. If you're betting, make sure you know why. Just a vague notion is not good enough. Justify your choices. Once you get in this habit, you're apt to discover that you have been taking actions for the wrong reasons - or for no reasons at all. You should do the same exercise before you call and - especially - before you raise. There are more experienced players than you might expect raising for faulty reasons, or without a clue as to the reason. From today on, unless you have a reason to raise, don't. That means never. Quite simply, I'm asking you to adopt the approach to raising where you first assume that you won't raise and then argue yourself into a raise if you can.


2. Two reasons to raise.


Excluding the psychological aspect of playing poker, there are really only two basic reasons to raise. (1) To build a bigger pot, and (2) to increase your chance of winning. Sometimes you need to evaluate both these factors to decide on a tactic. Building a bigger pot means more money if you win, and is often the best choice for a strong hand, but it sometimes actually decreases your chances of winning that pot. This can happen, for instance, if you build a bigger pot by not raising with an exceptionally strong hand, inviting many players in. You are then more likely to lose, because there are more opponents remaining who might get lucky and beat you. But you're hoping that the increased risk will be overwhelmed by increased profit from a bigger pot if you do win. Conversely, if you raise from an early position, you may be making the pot smaller by chasing opponents out, but you will tend to win more often. In addition to these two key strategic reasons to raise, you might sometimes raise to enhance your image - and profit later. When you make an image raise, you are working toward being the one force at your table to be reckoned with. It is not necessary that the raise will add an expectation of extra profit on that pot itself. The extra profit can come from subsequent pots, because your raise has helped to build a commanding image in Texas Holdem that lets you manipulate your opponents. So, when you begin with the premise that you will not raise, image can sometimes be a factor in changing your mind. But be careful. Don't let yourself be argued into a raise frivolously. If you don't really need to enhance your image right now, or if the raise would be too costly for the benefits, just call or even fold.


3. Be careful whom you drive out.


You should usually not raise if you expect to drive out the weak hands and remain against the strong ones. This, unfortunately, is a common result of "thin the field" strategy. Often you would prefer to play against fewer opponents. Some hands simply make more profit that way. But what if your raise will thin the field in the wrong way? What if the most likely callers are those you least want to play against and the most likely folders are those you most want to play against. In that case, a raise can be wrong, even though you did want to thin the field and play against fewer opponents. That's because you didn't want to thin the field if it meant playing against only opponents with the stronger hands. And that's often the case. This is why - in general - I'm not an advocate of thin-the-field raising for many common situations for which it is advised.


4. Hold 'em raising pre-flop.


Before the flop in hold 'em most players raise too often. This is not just guesswork, but a viewpoint I've formed after studying hold 'em opponents for many years and comparing what they do to the ideal strategies I've devised through computer research and other analysis. I believe that you should often just call and see what develops. Since most of a hold 'em hand blossoms on the flop, you really aren't usually raising with the advantage you assume. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be very aggressive in short-handed games and when attacking the blinds from late positions when no one else has entered the pot. But it does mean in full and nearly full games, there are many times when you should opt to just call before the flop, rather than raise. Also, for a different reason, in seven-card stud it's better to just call with selfdisguising small "rolled up" trips. If I start with 5-5-5 with a king and a queen waiting to act behind me, I'll usually just call. Raising looks suspicious and makes players think that I might have greater than a pair of fives. If I just call, I'm likely to be called or even raised by weak hands that might otherwise have folded. With rolled-up threeof- a-kind, do what would look most natural to your opponents who are only seeing your upcard. If that upcard is high relative to other exposed cards, your raise will look natural and opponents will not even think that you necessarily have a pair. In that case, you should usually raise. But, with a small three-of-a-kind to start, you should seldom raise.


5. When opponents are deceptive.


One of the biggest mistakes in poker is routinely raising with marginal hands against deceptive foes. Since a raise with a marginal hand is a borderline decision that won't earn much extra profit - on average - even in ideal situations, it will often lose money against deceptive opponents. How come? It's because those opponents won't behave. You can't count on them to just call with stronger-than-average hands. Instead, they are likely to get full value by raising with their marginally strong hands, and they may occasionally even be bluffing. These possibilities can often remove all the value and more out of that "value raise." Also, don't raise in middle position on the last round with anything except a super strong hand or a bluff. You'll make more by just calling and giving the next player a chance to overcall. This advice isn't obvious, but it's the answer. Research proves that middle-position raises, in most common situations on the final betting rounds, should seldom be made with hands of secondary strength. Save these raises for super powerful hands or for occasional bluffs.


6. When to steal blinds.


If the "blind" players are aggressive and unpredictable, abandon most blind stealing. The best types of opponents to steal against are tight and timid. Always remind yourself of that before you barge into the pot with your precious chips.


7. Handling a bluffer.


Don't raise with strong hands on an early betting round against a frequent bluffer. Let him continue to bluff. This strategy can sometimes work against you, but overall you'll make more money if you allow your opponent to exercise his most glaring weakness - in this case, bluffing too much.


8. Wrong people to raise.


Don't chase away your profit by making daring raises against solid players when weak players remain to act after you. When you do this, you are just chasing out the wrong people. One concept of poker that is seldom talked about is that you should be much more willing to raise when a loose poker player has bet and tight players remain to act behind you than when a tight player has bet and loose players remain to act behind you. The reason is that often you'd like to be able to chase others out and face only the loose bettor. But you seldom want to chase the loose players out and face only the tight player.


9. What if you're losing?


One of the most important lessons is to stop "value raising" when you're losing. These daring bets for extra profit only work when your opponents are intimidated. When opponents see that you're losing, they're inspired and they become more daring and deceptive. And as we discussed in point #5, you definitely do not want to be making marginal raises against deceptive foes. There is a lot more to the science of raising. But you'll be on the path to mastering it if you always make sure you have a reason before you raise. - Mike Caro