Читать книгу Killer Poker Online/2: Advanced Strategies For Crushing The Internet Game - John Vorhaus - Страница 14

Even as we’re busy trying to break our enemies’ codes, those devious scoundrels are hard at work cracking ours. In realworld poker play, defense against this would involve switching gears from time to time, throwing a little misdirection into the mix. Given the pace of play online, though, the fact that our foes are trying to profile us actually creates an opportunity to use against them the information they gather. To do this, we need to understand and exploit a little something called context density.

To weigh context density is to gauge the amount of information available within a given space of time. The more information that’s available, the higher the context density is said to be. In television, for example, a show on public TV has higher context density than a commercial broadcast, where program content is interspersed with, and diluted by, commercials. Likewise, a medical periodical like the New England Journal of Medicine has higher context density than, say, Men’s Health magazine, for the latter’s hard data is watered down by ads for Lucozade and Trojan-ENZ. In the poker realm, if you were trying to gather information on how a certain foe defends his big blinds, and you went after this data in a ten handed game, you’d have 10 percent context density, because he takes his big blind one hand out of ten. In a six handed game, you’d be able to get meaningful stuff on this subject one-sixth, or 17 percent, of the time. Heads up, your context density on just this one subject rises to 50 percent, because your foe has to take the big blind every other hand. That’s some thick context density. Thus we say…

PATTERNS ARE EASIER TO SEE WHEN CONTEXT IS DENSE.

But the number of players at the table is not the only factor in determining context density. Basically, anything that’s not directly related to the strategic considerations of poker thins poker’s context density. In realworld cardrooms and casinos, we find that context is broad but it’s not dense. There’s lots of information floating around out there—betting tendencies, body language, facial expressions, measurable attentiveness, and how people defend their blinds—but it’s spread out over time and diluted by such information-poor irrelevancies as shuffling, dealing, pushing pots, rack fills, arguments, brawls, and CPR for heart attack victims. Online, hands don’t just happen faster, they happen in an environment of very high context density, where the information stream is rich, deep, swift, and almost purely relevant. In this environment, we can reach conclusions about our opponents and make adjustments very quickly, while the relevant information is still fresh in our minds. We don’t have to wait hours for certain exploitable situations to recur. Online, they may recur in mere moments.

It is this ability to make snap adjustments that gives us a powerful weapon to use against certain foes.

Imagine that you’re playing in a full ring game against, among others, a frisky Joe who raises from middle position. You hold a bad ace and don’t feel like getting involved in a reckless adventure, so you fold. But you notice that the guy winds up showing down 8♠-7♠, and you go to school on that, formulating the hypothesis that this foe likes to mix up his play by raising with middle suited connectors. In another lap or two, you see the same middle-position, middle-card raise, and you consider your hypothesis confirmed. Now you’re on the lookout. Next time he makes that mid-lap raise, you can go to war with a wide range of hands, because you know that with a variety of overcard flops—whether you hit them or not—you can scare him off the pot with a bet.

Naturally, this trick works both ways. If you’re the one making the mid-orbit, middle-card raises, your more focused opponents will quickly get hip to your tricks. This is not necessarily a bad thing, not so long as we understand that…

THIRD TIME’S THE ADJUSTMENT.

Third time’s the adjustment. Give an attentive poker player one look at a move, and he’ll wonder, What was that about? Show it to him again, and he’ll form a postulate about the way you play. Make the move a third time, and he’ll have a counter-strategy prepared. You yourself have often worked this trick in defending your blind against an inveterate blind stealer. The first time he steals, you let him get away with it because you don’t know whether he has a real hand or not. The second time he steals, you label him a blind stealer. The third time he tries to steal, you’re ready, and you play back at him.

Now here’s the thing: In the realworld, such a sequence may take an hour or more to play out, depending on how long it takes your blind to come back around. In fact, only the very best, most attentive and retentive players will track the sequence and plan a response. Online, though, you can whip through three laps in ten minutes or less, and the speed at which certain situations repeat themselves allows even the most inattentive opponents to catch on.

Which is exactly what we want them to do.

In the realworld, we have to worry about our best foes not just cracking our code but also deploying effective countermeasures. After all, if they’re focused enough and smart enough to detect our trends, they’re also (possibly) focused enough and smart enough to anticipate our adjustments. Online, though, we can count on our worst foes having knee-jerk reactions to our play. They absorb our patterns without really understanding what they mean, and they react to those patterns without considering that we may be anticipating their reaction. Online poker, then, with its sizzling pace of play and ultra-high context density, gives us the chance to victimize our foes by their predictable assumptions and flawed responses.

You attack a guy’s blind. He folds. Two minutes later, you attack it again. Again he folds. Maybe he even does you the favor of chatboxing about it, protesting, u cant have a hand every time. Two minutes later, you attack again. This time he’s ready to take a stand—but this time you actually have a hand. Yes, you’re lucky to pick up a real hand at an opportune moment, but you’re also prepared to exploit the luck that comes your way. Should you happen not to pick up a real hand here, you merely refrain from attacking the blind. You know the guy is primed to play back at you, so you don’t give him a chance to do so unless and until it suits your ends.

Can you think of other examples of “third time’s the adjustment” thinking?

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Here’s one, from the end stage of a sitngo tournament.

Fortunately for you, you’re down to heads up play. Unfortunately, your opponent currently outchips you by about 4 to 1. Given the size of the blinds relative to your stack, you know it’s time to start making some all in moves and try to double through. Do you wait for a premium hand before pushing all in?

Hell, no.

You look for a semi-strong hand like A-middle or K-J, and push all in with that. Given the random distribution of hands, it’s unlikely that your opponent has a better hand than yours at this moment. Even if he does, there’s a range of better hands he’ll fold here (e.g., little pairs and A-T) because this is the first time you’ve pushed, and his first impulse will be to believe that you have a quality hand. In the name of not letting you double up and get back into contention, he’ll fold to your first all in stab.

Now, though, he’s on guard. Now he’s alert to the possibility that you’ve taken your small stack into push and pray mode. Good. This is exactly what you want him to think.

You swap the blinds back and forth a few times. Since you’re playing online, this takes all of forty-five seconds. Then you pick up another semi-strong hand.

And you push all in again.

Of course he’s suspicious. Of course he’s wary. He thinks you’re just trying to bully bet your way out of trouble. And, of course, you are. But he still can’t call because, again, he probably doesn’t have a hand, and, again, he can’t discount the possibility that you do. So he folds once more. Even as he folds, though, he cements a picture of your strategy in his mind. He figures you for desperate. He concludes that you’ll keep making desperation raises with semi-strong hands (or even no hand at all) and that all he has to do to beat you is to wait and call you down with a major holding. He might not even wait for all that major a holding, since the lower he thinks your raising standards have fallen, the lower his corresponding calling requirements will go.

Meanwhile, you’re anticipating this adjustment, and you’re right out in front of it. Having taken a couple of shots with indifferent hands, you picked up a couple of blinds before your foe was in the mood to call. Now that he’s in that mood, you just wait to pick up a hand of real quality, something like Q-Q or J-J, go all in and hope to get a call from a worse hand like A-x or T-T. Will this happen? Sometimes. If it doesn’t, you continue to joust and trade blinds, let some time pass, and create the impression that you’ve given up your desperation-raise strategy. Then you go ahead and steal all over again! Prime him to call, and manipulate him into calling with a worse hand.

Luck is a factor here, but not the way we conventionally think of luck. It’s pure luck, for instance, to pick up pocket aces when your foe has pocket kings. Of course, the money will go in the middle. It’s a no-brainer. What we’re talking about here is something called applied luck, where you launch a sequence of actions leading to one conclusion if the cards break your way, but a totally different conclusion if they don’t. With applied luck, it doesn’t really matter if you get lucky or not, since you have a plan for every eventuality. Plus, no matter what happens, you’ve got your foe leaning the wrong way because you’re anticipating, or actually dictating, his adjustments.

Consider the orphan flop trifecta.

An orphan flop is something like 8♣-3♦-3♥, a forlorn little waif featuring no straight draws or flush draws, and not likely to have hit anybody’s hand. These orphans are just looking to be adopted by the first person who bets. If that person is you, your foes will naturally be incredulous. Incredulous or not, though, the first time you go the adoption route, they can’t be sure where you’re at, and in their uncertainty they’ll often give you the benefit of the doubt and fold. If you bet at the next orphan that pops up, you turn incredulity to suspicion—and you do so by calculating design. This guy is a lying sack of sushi, your foes now will think, who thinks he can adopt every damn orphan that comes along. I’ll show him! It’s the “I’ll show him” part of their thinking that’s important. They postulate that you’ll bet at all unwanted pots and now plan their little response. Next time you bet at that orphan, they decide, they’re gonna raise you no matter what they have. That’ll teach a lying sack of sushi like you a lesson!

But you know this. You know they’ve made an adjustment—it’s just the adjustment you’ve guided them to. And you’re already a step ahead. When the next orphan comes along, you’ll either have a piece of it or you won’t. If you miss it completely, you won’t bet, and you’ll be content to have adopted two orphans out of three with virtually no risk. But if you happen to have hit the flop, look where you’re at: You can bet a strong hand into opponents who are primed to counterattack—probably with less of a hand than they folded the last two times you tried!

Again, you’re relying on applied luck: adapting your strategy to the actual cards that fall. If they fall your way, great. You’re in the catbird seat. If they don’t…that’s great, too. Your fold in this situation just tells your foes, See, guys? I don’t attack every orphan that comes along. Which, of course, just lends more credibility to the steals you later launch.

It’s all about balance, adaptation, response to circumstance, and staying a step ahead. Thanks to context density, your balance and adaptation are quickly rewarded in ways they just usually aren’t in b&m games. In the realworld, it can take so long for the orphan flop trifecta to play out that your inattentive foes can’t be counted on to remember what you’re doing and to make the adjustments you want them to make. As previously noted, the cardroom players most likely to suss you out are your best, most attentive enemies. They’ll make adjustments, but not necessarily the ones you want. Online, weak minded opponents will acquire a sense of how you play your orphans without even realizing it. The notion will be forced into their heads that you’re getting way out of line and you must be stopped. Because the pattern presents itself to them in so short a space of time, these weakies are both more likely to make the move you want them to make and less likely to see it for the trap it is. You can train them like Pavlov’s dogs. They’ll fold when they should raise, call when they should fold, and basically give you everything they’ve got.

Like all orphan attacks, the orphan flop trifecta works best against few foes because the fewer foes you face, the less the chance that one of your enemies has a real hand. So pick your spots. Can you think of other spots where applied luck, plus context density, can put you into a position to manipulate the few or the many weak minded foes you face?

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Here’s one you see a lot online, especially in short handed play. Someone makes a raise and two players call. The flop comes A-x-x. The first player to bet at this flop is certainly representing an ace, which the other players may give him credit for—at first. If he goes too often to this same well, soon his foes will stop believing he has the ace and start putting him on the steal he’s making. If you’re the one betting into the naked ace, count on your opponents yielding to you the first or second time, but not the third. Again, they’re more likely to follow this line of lockstep thinking online because they’re much more likely to see an A-x-x flop several times within the space of their modest attention spans. In the realworld, the only opponents retaining information about your theft attempts are the very ones you’ll have most difficulty manipulating.

I don’t want to give the impression that your internet opponents, as a class, are less skillful and more easily beaten than your realworld foes. This may be true, simply because online poker is the port of entry for thousands of new players every day, and new players, as a class, are less skillful and more easily beaten than experienced ones. But that’s not really the point. In both online games and b&m games, you will find a distribution of strong players and weak ones, and you will naturally make more money by avoiding the strong ones and engaging the weak ones. That’s Poker 101, as I’m sure you already know:

DON’T CHALLENGE STRONG PLAYERS:

CHALLENGE WEAK ONES—THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE THERE FOR.

Nor do I want you to adopt something like “third time’s the adjustment” with the force of religious conviction. Some foes adjust more quickly. Others never adjust. In all cases, it’s a matter of nuance, timing, and knowing your foes. But the thing about context density is that it creates a circumstance unique to online poker, one in which your weaker foes can be exploited in a particular way.

For this reason, online poker requires us to think strategically not just about each bet and each hand but about each hand within the flow of hands recently seen and those we can reasonably expect to see soon. If it’s true that “third time’s the adjustment” (and against some players it certainly is), you should plan to bet at many flops whether you hit them or not, just to put yourself in position to win big when you happen to hit your hand at the exact moment your foes have been manipulated into showing some spine. If it doesn’t happen during this sequence, it’ll happen during the next one or the one after that. If it doesn’t happen at all, well, you still have the benefit of being the active, aggressive bettor at your table, and that’s never a bad thing.

Of course, you can’t go slinging your bets around all day without ever having a hand. Consistent naked aggression makes you just too easy to trap. Here’s a rule of thumb I use to moderate my aggressiveness and give my opponents ample opportunity to lean the wrong way:

STEAL TWICE, REAL ONCE.

Steal twice. Real once. Be bold and aggressive with your theft attempts, and be aware that every time you steal successfully you hasten the moment when your foes will play back at you. To reiterate, if applied luck breaks your way, you’ll surprise them by having the goods. If it doesn’t, no problem! Just dial back on your aggression until you find the opportunity to resume your manipulative ways. Thanks to context density, you have a strategy that will give you the confidence to play aggressively and outfox the foes you face.