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4. Winners Manage Risks and Information Very Well

The key to successful gambling is simply to “get the best of it” and then to “make the most of it.”

—Mason Malmuth¹⁴

“Getting the best of it” means discovering or creating situations in which you have an edge, a positive expectation (+EV). “Making the most of it” means acting decisively to get the full value from that edge.

These two steps are easy to describe, but very hard to do. Losers don’t perform either one well because:

• They don’t get enough information to discover or create an edge.

• They give away information that reduces or eliminates their edge.

• They don’t act decisively enough to make the most of it when they have an edge.

Malmuth’s quotation is the foundation of this book’s organization. Parts 2–5 describe how winners manage risks and information to discover, create, and increase their edge. Part 6 discusses how winners make the most of it by acting decisively.

Many people respond primarily to their emotions instead of managing risks in a controlled, unemotional way. Risk avoiders are so afraid of losing that they go to extreme lengths to avoid taking chances, while risk seekers take foolish chances to get a “kick.”

Instead of responding emotionally, winners avoid both extremes. They realistically analyze the situation, select the strategy that will give them “the best of it,” and act decisively to “make the most of it.” If you lack the motivation, discipline, and knowledge to get the best of it or if you lack the decisiveness to make the most of it, you can’t become a poker winner.

The Interdependence of Risk and Information Management

Because poker is an incomplete information game, you can’t manage risks properly without managing information well.

You do not need to manage information in chess, checkers, and other complete information games. Every piece is clearly visible on the board, and you know exactly what each piece can do. In poker you cannot see your opponents’ cards, nor can they see yours.

The Central Risk-Management Principle

Getting the best of it does not mean that you are probably going to succeed. In fact, your chances could be quite slim. There are three critical issues:

1. The probabilities of success and failure

2. The amount at risk

3. The potential payout

The combination of these factors is called expectation, expected value, or just EV. If you already understand this subject, skip the next few paragraphs.

If your EV is negative, you should pass. If it is positive, you should take the risk. “It is often worth taking chances on something that is probably not going to succeed if the rewards compared to the risk or cost compare favorably with the probability of success.”¹⁵

For example, there’s an overly simplistic rule: never draw to an inside straight. It’s not a bad rule, except for the word “never.” That rule is usually valid because the odds against making the straight are about 10 to 1 and the pot usually offers lower odds. However, if you get better odds, you should draw to it. Let’s look at the way winners decide whether a risk is worth taking.

Calculating EV

We will deal with a 50:50 risk, but the same principles apply regardless of the probabilities, if you can financially and psychologically tolerate the risk.

[EV is] the amount of money that you will win or lose on average by making a wager. Say you and a friend agree to bet on the outcome of a coin flip. If the coin lands on heads, he will pay you $1. If it lands on tails, you will pay him $1. Your expectation for this bet is zero. While you will win $1 half the time, you will lose $1 the other half. On average, this bet is break-even.

Let’s say your friend decides to pay you $2 for heads, but you still pay only $1 for tails. Now your expectation is fifty cents.... On any given flip, you will either win $2 or lose $1. But on average, you will win fifty cents per coin flip. Similarly, your friend’s expectation is negative fifty cents.

If you make fifty cents per flip, he must lose fifty cents per flip. Money does not appear from nowhere or disappear into nowhere: If one person has a positive expectation, another must have a negative one, and the sum of all expectations must be zero.¹⁶

Over the long term, EV will be approximately equal to results, but random variance (aka “luck”) will often cause short-term results to vary considerably from EV. For example, even though betting on heads with 2-to-1 odds has a large, +EV, tails might come up several times in a row, causing you to lose.

When flipping coins, there are only two possible outcomes, and each probability is obvious. In poker you may not know all the possibilities or their exact probabilities. If so, you can’t accurately calculate your EV.

EV and Poker

Casinos win, and their customers lose because nearly every bet is–EV for the customer and +EV for the casino. Only a few poker players win because the house takes so much in rakes and tips. They win only because they make far more +EV than–EV bets.

Your EV is positive when you are getting better odds from the pot and future bets than you are paying. If, for example, you have a 50 percent chance of winning, and the pot and future bets offer you 4 to 1, you have a large +EV. If you make 100 bets like this, you expect to be way ahead. All gambling can be reduced to two simple sentences:

1. If you make enough +EV bets, you must win.

2. If you make enough–EV bets, you must lose.

If you bet only when you are +EV and don’t bet when you are–EV, you must eventually win. However, because there are so many unknowns, it is impossible to make only +EV bets. Even the greatest players often misread situations and make–EV bets.

Winners continually strive to make +EV bets.¹⁷ They constantly count the pot, calculate the odds of making their hands, determine the probability that their hand will win, assess the chances that others will fold, check, bet, call, or raise, and consider many other factors. Of course, they make some mistakes, but they are right more often than they are wrong. Once they estimate the EVs, they act decisively.

Losers don’t know or don’t care about EV, don’t bother to make these calculations, or miscalculate. Sometimes they get the best of it, but fail to act decisively enough. Many aggressive losers appear to be acting decisively, but they are just gambling foolishly. Decisive action occurs only after you have determined that you have the best of it.

The Central Information-Management Principles

Accurately estimating your EV is often difficult, and it’s occasionally impossible. You usually can’t calculate the exact probabilities and potential gains and losses because you don’t know the other players’ cards, nor do you know what they’ll do.

Risk management depends on information management because:

• The less information you have, the higher your risks and the lower your rewards.

• The more information your opponents have, the higher your risks and the lower your rewards.

For example, since you don’t know your opponents’ cards, you can’t know whether your hand is better, equal, or worse than theirs. You may not know whether the cards you hope to catch will let you win the pot. And you can rarely be sure of what your opponents will do. Without knowing their cards and thoughts, you can’t be sure of your EV. (Slansky puts this all in bold type.)

If everybody’s cards were showing at all times, there would always be a precise, mathematically correct play for each player. Any player who deviated from his correct play would be reducing his mathematical expectation and increasing the expectation of his opponents.

Of course, if all cards were exposed at all times, there wouldn’t be a game of poker. The art of poker is filling the gaps in the incomplete information provided by your opponents’ betting and the exposed cards in open-handed games, and at the same time preventing your opponents from discovering any more than what you want them to know about your hand.

That leads us to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker:

Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their cards the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.¹⁸

Virtually every significant winner knows and applies that theorem. It is the foundation of all information management. It can be briefly summarized as the more you know, and the less they know, the lower your risks and the greater your edge. Therefore, the critical risk/information-management tasks can be simply stated.

1. Learn your opponents’ situations and intentions.

2. Conceal your own situation and intentions.

If you perform both tasks well, your risks go down and your rewards go up. For example, if you see that an opponent will fold if you bet, you can easily bluff him. Your superior information management lets you take an apparently risky action without taking any risk!

The law of supply and demand applies to information. If everyone knows certain information, it has hardly any value. If you are the only one who knows it, it can be priceless. Speed is therefore critically important. The sooner you learn something, the more valuable it is. As an extreme example, if you could learn in advance which cards were coming, you would always win. If you can read your opponents faster and better than they can read you, you will usually have the best of it.

More Details About Information Management

Sklansky’s theorem and Malmuth’s quotation are, I believe, the most important statements ever written about poker. The rest of this book will discuss the ways that winners:

• Get the best of it by acquiring more information, processing it well, and transmitting only the information they want opponents to have.

• Make the most of it by acting decisively.

The goal of parts 2–5 is to help you create a favorable information balance by getting more and transmitting less information.

Part 2, “Winners Control Their Focus,” states that winners focus on whatever helps them to win, and they ignore or minimize everything else. They are so single-minded that poker becomes their entire world, at least when they are playing. If something helps them, they will use it. If it does not affect them, they will ignore it. If it harms them, they will avoid it. Losers do not focus nearly as well. Their attention drifts from subject to subject, and they waste time and energy on irrelevancies.

Part 3, “Winners Control Their Thought Processes,” states that winners and losers don’t just focus on different subjects. They think in very different ways. It doesn’t matter what information you get if you don’t process it correctly. Losers think badly because they don’t want to work hard, and they want to preserve their cherished illusions about poker and themselves. Winners have the discipline to work hard, they want to know the truth, and they think in ways that help t0 discover it.

Part 4, “Winners Control the Information They Transmit,” discusses the second half of The Fundamental Theorem of Poker, deceiving your opponents. Since deceptive actions normally reduce your short-term EV, you must ensure that you pay less now than you gain later. One cost that winners minimize, but losers overvalue is their opponents’ feelings about them. Winners make deceptive moves and create images that cost them affection or even respect, but get the best long-term results.

Part 5, “Winners Control Their Reactions to Feelings,” is a transition between getting the best of it by managing information and making the most of it by acting decisively. You need to control your emotional reactions to perform both tasks well. Poor emotional control has destroyed many talented players, and good control has helped many less gifted players to win consistently.

Accepting responsibility for your own results is the foundation of good control. Losers blame bad luck, mistakes by dealers and other players, unfair rules, and many other factors to protect their egos by rejecting this responsibility. Winners accept responsibility, and it helps them stay in control.

You Must Act Decisively

Parts 2–5 tell you how to get an edge. but that edge will accomplish little unless you exploit it by acting DECISIVELY.

The word “decisive” was emphasized because you can’t fully exploit your edge without being decisive. The ability to exploit edges is almost independent of the ability to get them. Some losers know what to do, but don’t do it.

Unfortunately, no matter how well you manage information, nearly all poker decisions must be made with incomplete information. Some risk seekers don’t care; instead of trying to get enough information, they just act impulsively. Some risk avoiders say, “Don’t make a decision until you get all the facts,” but you’ll hardly ever get them all. This position is often just an excuse for indecisiveness.

Whether you like it or not, you must make your decisions quickly with incomplete information. You can’t stall, procrastinate, or form a study committee. When it’s your turn to act, you must put in your money or fold your cards.

Indecisive players often choose the “safest” option, checking or calling, rather than betting or raising. These actions seem to minimize risk, but they will often increase it. The small amount they save by not betting or raising can cost them a whole pot.

Winners accept that decisions must be made without complete information, but they definitely don’t act impulsively. They do everything they can to obtain the information they need, to get the best of it, and then they act decisively to make the most of it.

But What About Luck?

Forget about it. Nothing you can do will affect it, and over the long term it usually evens out. This book focuses on the only things you can control: your own thoughts, feelings, and actions because they determine whether you get the best of it and make the most of it.

• If you control them, you will win.

• If you waste your time and energy trying to control luck, you will lose.

David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth put luck into the proper perspective. The final words of their book were, “We wish you ‘average luck.’ That’s all you will need if you have been paying attention.”¹⁹

Winners’ Laws

This chapter has four Winners’ Laws, and they are very general. The remaining chapters will spell out the specific actions you should take to apply them.

1. Do whatever it takes to get the best of it.

2. Get as much information as possible.

3. Give away as little information as possible.

4. When you get the best of it, act decisively to make the most of it.

How Do You Rate?

This chapter covers managing risks and information, but we will rate only risk management now. In parts 2 through 5 you will rate yourself on many information-management skills.

Circle the number that best describes your agreement with this statement: I am neither a risk seeker nor a risk avoider. While playing poker, I always try to get the best of it and to make the most of it. (7) Agree strongly, (6) Agree, (5) Agree somewhat, (4) Neutral, (3) Disagree somewhat, (2) Disagree, (1) Disagree strongly.

Circle that number in the appropriate place on page 262.

The Critical Questions

Review this chapter, especially the Winners’ Laws and How Do You Rate? sections. Then answer two questions:

1. What are the implications of my self-rating?

2. What should I do differently? List specific actions you should take to improve your risk management.

Discuss your answers with someone you trust and take good notes.