Make The Observation; Make The Adjustment

Distributed By Wise Hand Poker, Nov 2007

When you first sit at a poker table, you’re stuck assigning default player profiles to your opponents. As time passes, you try to peg each of your opponents more precisely. Sometimes, you need to make lots of inferences based on betting pattern analysis. Basing your reads off of these inferences is an extremely important skill, but sometimes just one showdown can give you information equivalent to inferences made over several hands.

Just One Showdown

I was recently playing in an online shorthanded single table tournament. One player seemed to be involved in many hands. He was entering a lot of hands preflop, and doing a lot of calling postflop. When playing someone like this in a shorthanded setting, you need to stray away from aggressive, bullying play and to shift over to value-based play. And in a tournament setting, you want to control the pot size because you know you’ll whittle this opponent down given enough hands; raise less preflop, and make most of your chips with skilled postflop betting. Unfortunately, without a showdown, my exact value-betting range was unknown. But that changed in one hand…

Blinds were T25-T50. Action folded to the loose player who limped from the button, the small blind completed, and I checked from the big blind with 8♦7♠. The flop was 9♣7♦5♣. The small blind bet T50, I called, and the button called. The turn was the 2♠; the small blind checked, I bet T200, the button called, and the small blind folded. The river was the 7♥. I checked to the button, looking to control the size of the pot since I didn’t know exactly what the button had (middle pair with a better kicker seemed to be a real danger). The button checked behind and showed 43 (no club draw). This guy called on the flop and the turn with a gutshot straight draw. After this hand, I went to value town with medium board pair (any kicker) or better, and I steamrolled my way to a first place finish.

AttenTION!

Every table you sit at is like a treasure chest waiting to be unlocked. And while you can try to jimmy the lock open, sometimes, one showdown is the key to unlocking the chest easily and expediently. When you’re multitabling, it’s sometimes tough to see every showdown, but it’s essential to be disciplined and use hand histories to view showdowns that you missed. Also use hand hand histories to see mucked hands that aren’t shown on the table. If you’re not using hand histories to obtain showdown data, you’re not playing nearly as profitably as you could be!