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OUT ON THE EDGE
I walked into one of my regular cardroom haunts on Friday afternoon. For some reason the usual crowd of $20-$40 holdem players had not materialized. I saw one game going three-handed. I knew the players, and also knew that while I welcomed two of them in a ring game, they were aggressive and would make for a challenging short-handed lineup.
To make matters worse the third was a solid player who happened also to be experienced, and skilled at short-handed play. I had once played him heads-up for a brief time and had found him to be a tough, thinking player. Nevertheless, I enjoy short-handed play and felt I should still have an edge, though not of the magnitude I would normally like. As I expected the game to fill up before long anyway, I took a seat. I quickly saw that the two normally loose, aggressive players had jacked up their usual levels of aggression by a couple of notches, and were deeply into an extreme “attack and counter” mode of play. Despite their usual over-aggressively styles and excessive bluffing these were thinking players. Their bets and raises were not indiscriminate. They bet aggressively, but were also capable of laying hands down.
They were deceptive and had some mix in their play. Often they were functioning around the third level of thinking that Sklansky has described. (See the “Psychology of Poker” section in The Theory of Poker.) A player would bluff his opponent, who has a hand of equally little value, would bluff his opponent, who had a hand of equally little value, would suspect the bluff and bluff-raise, then the first player, aware of the likelihood of the bluff-raise, then the first player, aware of the likelihood of the bluff-raise, would bluff-reraise. In other words I realized that his game was even tougher and my edge even smaller than I had anticipated. I would often have opted to take a break until more players showed up. On this day, however, I was feeling good and saw it as an opportunity to sharpen my short-handed game. Before describing the way one had played out, I should mention that I do not present the hand to suggest that I had an easy time in this game.
This just happened to be an especially interesting hand which I happened to remember, perhaps only because I won it. I would also like to point out that in an aggressive short-handed game such as this one, a play which might be correct at one moment, may be completely wrong just a short time later against the same opponent. Your image, your opponent’s emotional state, and what he is thinking about the details of your play all change rapidly under these conditions. You must stay attuned to all of them to keep your edge. I had been in the game for less than an hour. We were four-handed. I was in the big blind. The two players not in the blinds folded, and the small blind, whom I’ll call Pierre, raised.
He was one of the usually loose, aggressive players, and the better thinker of the two. I had suspected that he had stolen a couple of pots from me in previous hands. I knew he was capable of raising very loosely in this spot. At times he might do so with all but his weakest poker hands. I looked at my hand and saw:
I could have reraised. It would have been a reasonable option against some players, or against Pierre at a different time. I would have liked to send him the message that he would often be looking at three bets when he raised my blind. But I was not especially concerned about it at that point, as he had not so far been raising to excess in that spot anyway. More important was that at that time in session I felt that my raising frequency was just beginning to approach a level at which Pierre would take my raises less seriously. This would damage my ability to bluff successfully, and invite even more resteal attempts from Pierre. With protecting my ability to bluff in mind, I simply called his raise.
Heads-up, we saw the flop come:
He bet. Should I fold, call, or raise? It was actually closer than it would look to many players used to playing only in ring games. In fact, readers without a lot of short-handed experience might understandably wonder how I could even consider anything other than a fold. Granted, under normal ring game conditions mucking here would be routine. However, these were different circumstances. In short-handed play, especially when aggressive players are involved, bluffs and semi-bluffs come at a frequency that far exceeds that of typical ring game play.
I knew that Pierre would almost certainly bet that flop regardless of his hand. If he had little or nothing, he would hope that I would fear a king and fold. With a stronger hand, he would bet in the hope that I would pay off. With a very strong hand he just might check, but might well bet even then, as he would know that I would find his hand, but since he would usually have little, yet still bet, there was a strong chance he was bluffing or semi-bluffing. Sure, he could have a hand like
The Strategic Moment in Holdem / One Way Not to Fold /
Beating the Berserko: Preflop Against a Maniac /
On Into the Storm: Playing the maniac After the Flop
One Reason to Reraise a Maniac / A Simple Read / Countering a Good Reader
Thinking About What They’re Thinking
Considerations in Two Blind Stealing Defense situations
Easing the Transition to the middle Limits: Part I
Easing the Transition to the middle Limits: Part II / Multiple Changing Images