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Originally Posted by LUCIUS VARENUS
Buzz this made me laugh!
Thanks, Lucius.
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Judging by posts you've made in the past, often specifically discouraging preflop raising and seeming to be a proponent of a somewhat more passive style to the game than many of the posters here, I couldn't have imagined that you would do something like this!
There are different successful styles of play. I advocate
selectively aggressive play.
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I like stories! Tell us some!
When I was younger, I had a few boxing matches. I wasn't a very successful boxer, but I did win a couple of matches before quitting the sport. When you get into a boxing ring with an opponent, you want to keep your guard up. When you take a punch at your opponent, you may leave yourself temporarily unguarded. My last match was an occasion when I did that. And the guy, a lefty named Knudsen, hit me so hard that I saw stars and my teeth didn't match up properly for a couple of weeks. Knudsen was a good boxer, better than I was. Perhaps relatively somewhat passively, he watched for an opportunity, and then when he saw it, he pounced when I momentarily let my guard down to go on the offensive.
I change gears when I play poker.
A style that works well for me, and is probably the style I use most often, my default style, is to try to keep the pot relatively small on the first betting round, and then try to out-play my opponent(s) on later betting rounds, where I think I may have more of an advantage of
knowledge of my opponent's cards.
What I mean is it's pretty hard to know what cards your opponent has before the flop. You have a better idea in some cases than in others, and sometimes you can exploit that on the first betting round, but I usually have a better feel after the flop, then after the turn, and finally on the river.
I don't want to denigrate knowledge of starting hands. I think I probably have as good or better knowledge of how good my starting hand is than probably any of my opponents. Thus I believe I do have a knowledge advantage on the first betting round. But I believe I have even more of a knowledge advantage on the second, third, and fourth betting rounds.
In other words, I think I generally have a better idea of what cards my opponent has than he has of what cards I have, and as the hand proceeds, the gap widens. Think about what an advantage you would have if you knew what cards your opponent held but he didn't know what cards you held, if you could see your opponent's cards but he couldn't see your cards.
I'm a
card player, rather than a gambler. I used to play bridge (the card game). I met my wife playing bridge. I was immediately attracted to her but I doubt that she was immediately attracted to me. The way I got her attention is when she and her partner moved to our table (duplicate bridge), after the (somewhat competitive) bidding when she made the first lead and I had seen the dummy (and my own hand, as declarer), I asked for a minute, and jotted down her hand on the back of a score card, something like this:
XX
KQJX
AXXXX
XX
The suits are listed in order, spade, hearts, diamonds, clubs.
(Those aren't what her exact cards were, just an example of how I thought of bridge hands. Somehow I "knew" she had four hearts, five diamonds, probably no singleton or void, with high cards probably as shown, and ten points. I knew all that from the bidding and the opening lead. There were several possibilities, but the one I chose was the most likely one.)
Then I handed the score card to her and told her to turn it over and look at it after the hand. And, as luck and fate would have it, I guessed correctly and she
was favorably impressed.
I would have looked like a jerk if I had gotten it wrong, but on the basis of the bidding and her opening lead, I "knew" that's what she had. (And of course then her partner's hand was also an open book - and then I played accordingly. I think I end-played her partner on that particular occasion and got the top result in the room on that hand.)
That's how you play bridge. You figure out as soon as possible, using logic, where all the missing cards are, and then you play accordingly.
Poker is different, because deception is a part of the game. (Deception in the bidding in bridge is (or was, as I recall) more or less against the rules, it's a partnership game, and partners need to communicate with each other in the bidding and play of the cards. I guess you can probably play deceptively, so long as your partner is not in on the deception. But if you play deceptively, you must also deceive your partner and that will ruin the partnership, because you have to be able to trust your partner).
Even so, on the basis of the cards you can see, probabilities, and logic in the betting, you can often get a very good idea of what cards your opponent holds. Some poker players are uncanny at this. (Daniel Negreanu comes immediately to mind).
I'm certainly no Daniel Negreanu, but I try, and it makes the game of Omaha-8 poker interesting for me, even when I'm not actively involved in a hand. I'm still trying to figure out what cards people are playing and why they're acting as they do. This may sound strange to you, but I really don't care much about the money.
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Do you straddle or straddle straddles too?
No. It's a bad bet. But I've done it, just for the heck of it, in a poker game for fun.
I did it a couple of times just last Friday night, just for the heck of it, at the annual 2+2 get-together (to which you all were invited) in Las Vegas.
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Ever bought the table a beer/massage/buffet each time you won a pot? Anything else like that?
No. I try to keep a low profile when playing poker.
Buzz
Sorry for the side-track, Borys.
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