[Article] The Information War

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PanoRaMa United States. Apr 08 2010 01:51. Posts 1655

Another article that I've written for the May edition of Baller Magazine. You can find previous articles (this is now my 4th) in previous pages of my blog if you want. Keep in mind this is directed mostly at newer, live players, but I suppose has some application no matter who you are. Thanks to Etter from TL for proofreading and making my articles a lot better than they were originally

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Poker is often called a game of hidden information. Imagine how easy it would be to win if you knew what is largely unknown to most of us – our opponent’s hand, or the cards to come. Outside of cheating, there’s no way for us to preemptively figure out exactly which cards will fall on the flop, turn, and river, but there are legitimate ways to figure out what cards your opponent is holding – to varying extents of accuracy, anyway. In a nutshell, that’s the premise of hand reading. We can safely say a large aspect of poker is the struggle to ascertain what your opponent is holding, to make hidden information known information. This struggle is part of the underlying Information War that is waged every second of every hand at every poker tables around the world. The first step to winning the Information War is to actually know you’re in it. The second step is to acquire as much information as possible without leaking your own.

Poker is a cutthroat game, and your money is at stake. Assuming your goal is to win, you cannot afford to give away information. It’s a simple rule with deep complexities. Are you the type of player who likes to show your mucked hand to your neighbor? You’re leaking information. Do you like showing one card when you rake in a pot that didn’t go to showdown? You’re leaking. Ever talk about a poker hand or story with a buddy at a table when opponents could be listening? You’re leaking. If you were a secret agent, you’d be killed for that sort of conduct. Thankfully, the stakes in poker are not life-threatening, but repeated leaks of information just might kill your bankroll.

You can also leak information involuntarily through your own physical tells. That is a subject for another article, however, so we’ll be focusing on deliberate actions. One common leak is exposing any of your hole cards unnecessarily. If you’re folding a hand, your opponent cannot see your mucked cards. That should be the end of it. If you show him what you’re mucking, you only allow him to capitalize on that bit of information in the future. Now your opponent is ahead in the Information War and risked nothing to gain that advantage. The worst application of this is when someone calls the river and shows a losing hand at showdown when he wasn’t required to do so. People often do this to engender sympathy; they typically show a “cooler” hand, such as when their pocket aces lose to an unlikely two pair. This sort of conduct garners, at best, ten seconds of sympathy from those waiting to take your money. At worst, you’ve just made everyone aware of your potential inability to fold aces, along with any sort of physical tell you gave away in the process of losing (e.g. you were noticeably slower to act pre-flop).

With so many factors working against us in the Information War, we can take solace in the fact that our opponents are working under similar conditions. The best way to capitalize on leaks is to become observant enough to notice and digest useful bits of information. My favorite method involves listening to someone talk about a previous hand to a random player at the table. First of all, it might be a good story, but more importantly, he is likely to divulge a lot of information. Let’s see what we can extrapolate from this quote, taken five minutes after sitting down at a $5/$10 table:

“So I was playing my normal $1/$2 game when I caught pocket Queens pre-flop on the button. I raised it up, and instead of calling, this aggressive kid in the big blind re-raised me! I felt like taking a bit of a gamble and re-raised him back. He went all-in, I called, and guess what he showed? ACE KING! This punk was overplaying Ace King! Anyway, like usual, the river paired his Ace, and I lost a $200 pot. It was so infuriating that I had to go back to my hotel room.”

Stories like these reveal a lot. From the first sentence, we know that he is playing much higher than his usual stake. Maybe he just won a tournament and decided to play higher, making it likely for him to be a bit more careless with his money. Moving on, he found it surprising that someone would re-raise him pre-flop. Perhaps he usually plays at significantly tighter, more passive games. Next, he was baffled at the fact that his opponent would show Ace King. Because the pot was $200 at the end, we can infer that this hand was a rather shallow stack pre-flop battle. In situations like this, Ace King tends to be a reasonable hand with which to go all-in. Because of this, we can infer that he likely doesn’t know that effective stack sizes should affect your pre-flop hand selection and strategies. Likely he just plays whatever he feels like at the moment. Additionally, he thought his opponent was overplaying AK by getting it all-in, which means our friend here might have a very tight all-in pre-flop range overall (QQ or better only). Lastly, he was infuriated over losing a pre-flop coin flip scenario in which he lost 50 big blinds, which was enough to make him take a break. We can infer that this player lacks experience in controlling tilt and most likely doesn’t understand basic pre-flop all-in equities. Sometimes your assumptions will be wrong, which is why it pays to be continually observant and factor future information into your first impression of a player.

Get in the habit of being a keen observer, and take good mental notes when you’re playing at the table. You are only depriving yourself of information, which subsequently impacts your bottom line, if you are not paying attention and collecting on tells or reads – any sort of leaked information left on the table. Most people make very broad generalizations about their opponents and stereotype them accordingly. One of the most useful approaches is to make a mental note every time another player takes an unexpected line or shows up with a holding that you were not expecting. We all have our benchmarks for what we think is “good” poker (usually the style of poker we play ourselves). If I see someone do something that is not in my arsenal – for example, check/raising all three streets in No Limit Hold’Em – I’ll definitely want to see and take note of that player’s holding. If that hand occurred when you weren’t in the pot, even better; now you’ll have that extra bit of information if that player ever pulls the same line on you, and you came by that information risk-free.

I’m not encouraging you to be a soulless robot at the felt. Sometimes I just can’t help but want to listen to my favorite song on my iPod and shut everything else out. Normally, though, you should engage in friendly conversation and give people the basic respect that everyone deserves. Just make sure you’re not revealing anything about your poker game in the process. Let common sense prevail. Saying, “I’m from Hawaii, and I love the weather there” while on the felt is fine. Saying, “I’m 25, I’ve been playing professionally for the past four years, I’m Phil Ivey’s student, and they call me ‘Tourist Eater’ at this casino” is only going to put you at an immediate disadvantage in the Information War.

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Jelle Belgium. Apr 08 2010 03:29. Posts 3476

really nicely written! some of the concepts you wrote about are advanced (not to a poker forum audience but still) but I think even a total beginner could understand everything

GroT

Exhilarate United States. Apr 08 2010 06:38. Posts 5453

so beat right now, def. gunna read it later

YoMeR United States. Apr 08 2010 17:40. Posts 12438

nice article. but stop teaching fish how to play live!

eZ Life.

PanoRaMa United States. Apr 08 2010 20:49. Posts 1655

thanks for the comments

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