Poker Principle #1: Think Ahead and Reason Back

Principle:  Think Ahead and Reason Back

            How would you play in a poker game in which there were no blinds?   The correct play, although boring, is to never play a hand other than aces; then, when you have aces pre-flop, go all-in.   This strategy cannot lose any money in expectation.  It will not win money in expectation against strong opponents; against weak opponents, will never lose money in expectation, but will sometimes make money in expectation when your opponents mistakenly call your bet with non-aces hands.   

            This is the reason why my first advice to those who want a fun, action-heavy home game is always: add an ante.  Adding an ante (or, less effectively, a third blind) gives players more to fight over, and thus creates a much more aggressive, interesting game.   No-limit Hold’em without an ante is a boring game when played with a full table of nine players; the proper strategies are quite tight. 

            Of the 169 possible starting hands in no-limit Hold’em (13 pairs, 78 suited hands, 78 unsuited hands), exactly one (AA) is playable when there are no blinds.  In a game with no ante, blinds creates the action dynamic.  The small blind and big blind, both forced to put money in the pot with a random hand, are vulnerable to attack, especially from late position players. 

            If the three hundred hour study program in poker will tell you the optimal level of aggression to employ in each position and with each possible hand in this war for the blinds, given that the other players are also employing an optimal strategy, then the two hour program is more of a series of short-cuts that gets you to a rough approximation of the game theoretic optimal solution.  

            Over the course of the two hour program, I’m going to introduce a number of core principles that I think are helpful to good game theoretic thinking about poker.  Game theoretic thinking about poker is akin to strategy in chess.  Game theory in poker is a guide to the overarching game plan. 

            In analyzing moves, chess players consider both the long-term strategic considerations of maximizing material, pawn structure, king safety, space, and piece development, and short-term tactical considerations.  Poker differs from chess in that, with chess, it is possible to come up with truly brilliant tactical assaults.  By contrast, poker tactics, in my estimation, are mostly about avoiding clearly stupid and illogical moves; moves that, with some contemplation, can be clearly seen to be dominated by other alternatives.  

            In chess, tactical considerations are arguably more important than strategy.  A good tactician can assure victory by slowly decimating his opponents’ pieces.   In poker, tactics are fairly simple.  It is the broad strategy that determines how good one is at poker.  Decisions in any given hand about whether to call, raise, or fold, are mostly important in how that fit in with the overarching strategy (i.e. how they fit in with the way the player acts with all possible holdings in all possible situations).  

            In poker, strategic considerations tend to dominate tactical considerations, and, for this reason, I despise isolated hand histories.   I don’t think players learn from them.  It’s a local way of thinking in a game that demands a global framework.  In advanced play, one hand can’t be considered in isolation. 

            While poker is mostly a game about strategy, there are some logical mandates of good tactics that can’t be violated.   My guide for thinking about tactics is simply this:  to the extent possible, when in a hand, think ahead and reason backwards, and make sure that your plan for the hand is logically consistent.

            A common pre-flop experience for inexperienced players goes something like this:  they raise pre-flop with a strong hand, say QQ; they are initially delighted when re-raised by a late-position player and decide to re-raise; their adversary then moves all-in; the inexperienced player then puzzles over what to do for several minutes and ultimately decides to fold.   To be clear:  this should never happen.   You should always be thinking ahead and reasoning back, and of course when you four-bet your opponent with QQ, it is quite foreseeable that one of he might exercise his option to move all-in.  Giving that this was a possibility, and given that folding a hand as strong as QQ pre-flop is a disaster, one should have determined that calling the three-bet with QQ is the tactically superior play.  An implication of this is that, strategically, QQ should not be in the set of value four-betting hands in this position; rather, it should be the best of your calling hands, while your four-betting hands include AA, KK, AKs (maybe) and some bluffing hands like A5s.  

            So, to repeat:  if you make a move, and then your opponent responds to that move, and then you are genuinely mystified about what to do, you have committed an utter failure of poker tactics.  You have failed to even look one move ahead!  

            We can make a distinction between events that are on the strategic path versus off the strategic path.  An “off the strategic path” event occurs when, for instance, you three-bet an initial raiser with JJ with the intention of calling if he jams, but then, before the action returns to the initial raiser, the small-blind decides to cold four-bet all-in.   It is acceptable to be fully unsure about what to do in this spot; you correctly made decisions about your interaction with the initial raiser, and a jam from the small blind wasn’t a move that you could have or should have anticipated.  

            In advanced play, a common situation is to have an opponent check to you on the river in a spot where you have a good, but not great hand, and you have to decide whether to go for thin value.   These are complex spots where you, first, have to perform a calculation that is unnatural even for experienced players:  that is, you must estimate the expected value of your bet conditional on the opponent calling you.  This is not enough, however, as you also have to think ahead and reason back, asking yourself, “If I make this thin value bet, and I am raised, what is my plan?”  

            If your plan in this spot is to fold to a raise after making the thin value bet, you have to tend towards checking.  It is an absolute disaster for you if your opponent bluffs you off the pot.   Whether your plan is to fold a bet or call a bet, keep in mind that your opponent’s raise is unwelcome in either case.   The net result is that the EV of your thin value bet conditional on a call has to be quite high to make betting better than checking. The trickier your opponent, the more this holds.   If your plan is to fold to your opponent’s raise, the EV of the thin value bet has to be very high indeed for you to consider attempting it.  The thin value bet is leaving aside a quite good option (you can check and take the whole pot if you have the best hand) and opening up a truly disastrous possibility (you have the best hand, but fold after your opponent bluff-raises your thin value bet).  

            Many players fail to “think ahead and reason back” in spots where like the ones above, where it’s quite simple to do so.  As a player, you want to make yourself dangerous against opponents who fail to think ahead adequately.  One way to do this is to make sure that your bluff frequencies are about right.  Most weak amateur players have bluff frequencies that are roughly correct (or maybe even a bit high) for simple moves such as flop continuation bets, but their frequencies are too low for big plays where their whole stack is at risk.