Play For The Long Term

I played an interesting hand recently in a local cash game, blinds 50-100, stacks 15 to 30k. I was in the big blind when the player to my left, under the gun, a loose aggressive player, raised to 1500, just above the standard raise for this game. Everyone folded. I put him on JJ or TT, looked down at KQ, both clubs, and called. The flop was K72, with one club. I checked, expecting a continuation bet, planning to raise that. My opponent bet 2k, I check-raised to 7.5 with top pair. My opponent insta-shoved, putting me all-in. (I had 7k left.) He then revealed his cards. (The house rules for this particular game allow that when it's heads-up.) He had AA. "You should fold," he said. "I have you beat." And indeed he did.

I revealed my cards, went into the tank, and thought for about five minutes. Then I called. I spiked a queen on the turn and won the pot. My opponent started steaming and called me insane. He told his bad-beat story the next day to all the players in our circle, and they all thought I was nuts. And yet, I maintain that, regardless of the outcome, I made absolutely the right play, that it was a no-brainer, and that the only embarrassing thing about that hand was how long I took to make what should have been an insta-call. Let me explain.

His all-in move took the pot to 25k, and I had 7k to call into that pot, getting odds of slightly more than 3.5 to one. I had five outs: two kings and three queens. That came to 20% over the next two cards. Plus, the backdoor flush draw gave me about 4% more. That comes to 24%, odds of just about 3 to 1. Even discounting the cards that help my opponent, I'm just about better than 3.5 to 1 to win the pot. (Cardplayer.com's Odds Calculator puts it at 22.8%.) Therefore, the right decision is to call.

Ironically, had my opponent not shown me his aces, I would have folded. When he shoved, I put him on either AK or AA, and AK made my king outs redundant, thus mandating an easy fold. Counter-intuitively, AK was actually a better hand for him to hold than AA. Also, I made my opponent an offer before my last decision: return 5k to me, and I fold, and the pot is yours. Given that 5k was 20% of the 25k pot at the time, and his chances were losing were greater than that, he should have insta-accepted -- but like most players I play with, he doesn't do the numbers, and his aces looked good to him.

Indeed, this is the huge weakness of many of the players I play, and the reason many of them will lose money over time: they take poker hand-by-hand, and don't understand that it is a long-run game. Here's a basic truism of poker: In the short run, good decisions can lead to bad outcomes, and vice versa. But in the long run, good decisions will make you money, and bad decisions will wipe out your bankroll. A good player recognises this, and aims to just keep making good decisions, and not get disheartened by their immediate outcomes. As the Bhagawad Gita, that fine poker guide, says, keep doing the right thing, don't worry about the fruits of your actions.

Now, let's define a good decision in poker. Every time you put money in a pot when the odds of winning the hand are better than the odds the pot is offering you, that's a good decision. It's as simple as that. Obviously there are many subtleties here: poker is a psychological game, and you have to get your reads right to calculate your odds. Also, there are all kinds of plays one makes at the board, like bluffing when you sense weakness, that may not seem like they have much to do with maths -- but they all do. If you're last to act on the river, with a hand that's missed its draw and cannot win, and you put your opponent on a similar missed draw, and think of bluffing out into a pot worth 10k, how much should you bluff? If you think your opponent will fold one in three times, then a bet of half the pot is break-even for you. If you think he will fold half the time, a bet of 9k is profitable. (Naturally, he may expect you think like this and reraise what he sees as a bluff while holding nothing himself, but even this should be based on his estimation of the probability of winning the hand.)

All poker decisions, at their heart, involve maths. The psychological aspects are a bonus, and separate the great players from the merely good. But you cannot be good in the first place without mastering the math. That is essential to winning in the long run.

And yet, in the local poker games that I play in, I see many players who ignore the science behind the game and try to coast from one good hand to another. They play for the thrill of gambling, for the dopamine rushes they get during big hands, for the false sense of achievement that showing down a good hand gives them. But every serious player knows that the game is a cold, hard grind, and winning it requires you to control your emotions, to observe and remember, and to do the hard work required to make as many correct decisions as possible, especially when those decisions involve folding a hand and missing out on action. (Learning how and when to fold is perhaps the most important part of a poker education.) It takes a heck of a lot of discipline -- and perhaps the good sense not to insta-fold a pair of kings when the opponent goes all in and shows a pair of aces.

Let me end this piece with another example of a hand in the same game that led my fellow players to look at me as if I was crazy. I had 78o in the small blind, and called a raise from the small blind. The flop came 99T rainbow. I bet my open-ended straight draw, one player flat-called. The turn was a king, I again made a bet 2/3 the size of the bet -- a common-sized bet for me whether I have the nuts or pure air -- and my opponent called again. The river was  T, making the board read 99TKT, with no flush possible. I had missed my draw, and checked, suspecting that my opponent had also missed his draw, and we'd split the pot. My opponent bet 2.5 into a 7.5 pot. At this point of time, I was playing the board. And yet, I sensed weakness, and felt that my opponent had also missed his draw -- he probably had 8J or the same hand as me, or maybe lower pockets. I had to put 2.5k into a 10k pot, but I was only playing for half of it: 5k. So if I got that split pot more than one in three times, it was a profitable call.

I called, and my opponent, who indeed had nothing, assumed that I surely must have a piece of the board to have called, and actually mucked his cards. I picked up the entire pot, and, to get the poor guy steaming, showed my hand. Mouths fell open across the table. How could I call with air? (Thinking of it later, it's clear that raising was also a viable move, making a play for the full pot instead of half of it. But, given my read, even if I felt there was a 40% chance of my opponent having nothing, calling is also positive equity.) To my fellow players, this was just one more example of my unpredictable play. But while I do mix it up with regard to pre-flop play and betting patterns, in decisions like this, I'm immensely predictable: I play by the numbers, and I play for the long term. There is no other way to play winning poker.

Amit Varma is a consulting editor of Yahoo! India, and has written for various Indian and international publications. He won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007. He writes the popular blog, India Uncut, at www.indiauncut.com. He is a regular final-tablist at local tournaments, and was runner up in the IPC Main Event in September 2010.