About Playing Tight

About Playing Tight

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guerrabrazil Nibs: 943 Member Since: May 4th 2008

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About Playing Tight

Most of you - all of you, likely - have seen a chart over suggested starting hands for beginners to play. Some are fairly complex, taking every position into account, taking other peoples' actions into account, and more. Some are the opposite - extremely easy-to-read, but not at all as detailed. The chart posted in the Online Poker Guide appendix is of the latter kind. I've discussed preflop concepts in another article, specifically in regards to equity and implied odds. But this article will focus on something else: Why the suggestions for beginners are so tight.

If you ask an experienced poker player to list the top 10 hands, he will probably come up with something along the lines of

1. AA
2. KK
3. QQ
4. AKs
5. JJ
6. TT
7. AKo
8. AQs
9. 99
10. AQo

The exact order of these hands can be argued, and some player will rate pocket pairs like 88 higher than offsuit broadway cards like AQo, or JJ higher than AKs, but it will be something like this. Now, what is the primary criteria for listing these hands? It's equity; we look at what hands are the most likely to win, and pocket aces top that list, quickly followed by KK. But then, in some starting hands charts, you will notice something seemingly odd happen: Some list AKs as a better hand than QQ. Or at least as a better hand than pocket tens or nines. And I've never seen a starting hands chart that lists AKs lower than pocket deuces. Why is this odd? Because 2-2 is actually a favorite over AKs - not a big favorite, but still a favorite. So why does the list look like this, then?

Well, there are a couple of factors. One is that big suited connectors such as AKs and AQs play better than 4-4 in a multiway pot, and they usually win bigger pots than small pocket pairs (with the exception of small pocket pairs hitting a set) as people don't often call to the river with anything that a pair of treys or fours can beat. Still, if the pot is heads-up, if you're in the big blind and only the small blind completed - what hands should you raise with? The list above will still likely be the recommended, despite even small pocket pairs having higher chances of winning unless the small blind has a higher pocket pair. But why?

Because small and medium pocket pairs are a lot more difficult to play on and after the flop. Specifically, they are hands that induce a lot of mistakes when you have them. To understand this, you must understand the Fundamental Theorem of Poker - Sklansky's stipulated truth, from the book Theory of Poker - which states, and I'm paraphrasing, that you make money when your opponents make mistakes, and they make money when you make mistakes. A "mistake" is here defined as playing a hand differently from how you would have played it if you knew what your opponent has. And small pocket pairs are very easy to make mistakes with:

Let's say that you're on the big blind, the small blind completes, and you raise with 4-4. The flop comes 9-8-J, two hearts. Small blind checks.

• Question number 1: Do you bet? If you could know that your opponent has missed the flop completely, yes. If you knew that he had a pair, probably not (unless you know he's prone to folding second or third pair with a bad kicker, let's say). You can see why it's easy to make a mistake here - one time in three, if your opponent has random cards, he will have hit something on this flop. One time in three, you will make a mistake on a flop like this. And mistakes, as mentioned, cost you money.

But you have statistics on your side, so let's say you bet. Your opponent checkraises!

• Question number 2: Uh oh, now what? Here, your opponent can have a wide range of hands. He could be saying "no way" to your flop bet, thinking that's a lot more likely that you are just continuation betting with a hand like AK (or possibly a lot weaker than that), when he himself holds a hand that's paired with any of the three cards on the flop. Or, he could be tricky and in fact semi-bluff raising you with a hand containing a 10 or maybe a flushdraw. Or, he could be taking a stab at the pot (still figuring that you have missed as well) with absolutely nothing like 52s. You can't know. Now, it's extremely difficult not to make mistakes.

But what if he just called the flop? Do you bet again on the turn? You can see how quickly this turns into a real dilemma where you're likely to make mistakes all over the place, and - according to the Fundamental Theorem - losing money. But this article is not an instruction on how to play marginal hands after the flop.

No, I focused on small pocket pairs, because it allowed me to make my primary point - I'm getting there, I promise - with an easy example; the same reasoning works with any weak, but positive equity, hands like medium suited connectors, ace-rag, and even weaker than that. If you could play all these hands perfectly, you'd make a ton of money, but you can't. Playing JT perfectly on a flop of K-T-7 is hard, when you get raised. You could be calling, despite being badly behind to a pair of kings, or you could fold, despite being ahead of a draw.

This is why playing tight is right. Because when you play premium hands, your decisions on the flop get a lot easier, and when you have easy decisions to make, you make less mistakes. Fewer mistakes means more money. Of course, there's a flipside to this coin: When you fold a hand like QJ preflop, you may be folding the best hand - it's possible that your QJ actually has the highest equity of the hands dealt, so then you've made a mistake, and you've - accordingly - cost yourself some money. But, and this is the key to this entire article, the point I wanted to make: The mistake you make preflop by folding a non-premium hand is small in comparison to the postflop mistakes you are liable to make with the same hand. Most of the good, but not great, hands are only favorites by a few percentage points, often translating to only a few cents of lost earnings. But folding the best hand on the flop can translate into several bets, as can calling with the worst hand. For non-experts - and that means most of us - exercising tight preflop hand selection means that we make fewer mistakes and more money.

Playing marginal hands well is the hallmark of an expert poker player. But even experts make mistakes with these hands, but they can play a few more hands because they make the right plays often enough to find profit in them. However, the profit they gain from these marginal hands is exactly that: Marginal. They make some money from them, but nowhere near as much as they make from their premium hands, and this holds true for all poker players, expert and beginner alike: The big money is to be had in the strong starting hands. Knowing this, we can easily see that playing tight and waiting for the premium hands is (as long as you have opponents that don't do the same) a winning concept.

Conclusion

In closing, I feel compelled to add this: As your opposition gets tougher you may no longer have the luxury of playing only in comfortable spots. In order to be a consistent winner against decent players, you will need to learn how to play more and more marginal hands. The first step on this road is often to learn how to play a hand like AK on a board of rags. Then how to play middle pair against two other players, perhaps, and then... You get the point. But to beat low limit games filled with poor players, you can comfortably sit back and play premium hands, knowing that you don't have to make tough decisions very often with them. Because, and I hope you excuse me for repeating myself, tough decisions means more mistakes, and more mistakes means less money.

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