Playing Deceptively - Part I, By Ed Miller

Before turning to the first article in an excellent series about the game tricky (topic introduced through a translation of Huck Seed) we will give you good news: Ed Miller, one of the true luminaries in what refers poker theory , has completed his new book, which should have been Volume 2 of the Professional No Limit Hold'em. You can see in this blog post Noted Poker Authority that comment. The book will be first in the form of an e-book. I can hardly wait! I've been thinking lately about cheating in poker and I decided to write a modest series of articles describing my idea of ​​what it is exactly like playing in a misleading way. I think if you ask people to define what it means to play poker "deceptively? I think most mention something about playing in a manner contrary to the strength of your hand. If you have a weak hand solidly play or bluff. If you have a strong hand weakly or do you play it slow play. I never liked that definition of "cheating?. One reason is because many times people become more transparent and readable try to play just as deceptive.

Consider this hand, for example. It is a table of 9 players $ 2 / $ 5 NLHE. A player opens up to $ 20 from early position. A middle position player made the call, the button and both blinds also. The flop comes Qd 6s 7c and the blinds go early player bets $ 40. The middle position player calls. The button raises to $ 100 to $ 500 back. The blinds fold and the player in early as well. The middle position player goes all in for $ 600. What is the middle position player? Confused? I hope not. It has a set. The clear indication is the way "misleading? in which he played the flop. The preflop raiser bet $ 40 for a pot of 100 $ (and this is not a play that demonstrates particular strength, but you will often see in live games). The middle position player called. This could do with a wide range of hands, from a straight to a middle pair that has not improved, or maybe low or middle pair and a lady, or even a monster.

The button raises to $ 100. These small bets and raises are fairly typical of many live games. The button will probably have a lady with a decent kicker or better. He may be bluffing with a straight two-pronged. The preflop raiser folds. Probably take a small pair that has not improved or maybe a decent hand than partner, but did not improve on the flop. Then the middle position player goes all-in. This is the kind of play that most players will just live with monsters. If the stacks were smaller, maybe $ 300 instead of $ 600, the middle position player could have gone all in with a good queen or better, or can with a straight does not want to shoot. But with such large stacks, the call / shove suggests carrying a trio. The call on the flop is clearly a move "misleading? because the player has flopped a strong hand, but played poorly. However, the shove on the flop destroys all his deception by anyone paying attention that limits its range to two or three possible hands.

In other words, the deception did not even last a round of betting, and it did well enough to fool anyone and that is leave your stack. So, as an example of deceptive hand, is clearly a failure. The deception has to do not with specific plays, but entire strategies completely rejected the distinction between a game "straightforward? and a "misleading?. If you make a big raise with a strong hand, you're not necessarily playing so straightforward. If you make a big raise with a weak hand, you're not necessarily playing a deceptive way. These labels are best used for entire strategies. Your strategy includes the whole paradigm of your decisions. It's all these little rules in your head that you use to decide whether to raise, call or fold. A straighforward strategy is generally quite easy to read. By contrast, a misleading is that it's really hard to read. What makes a strategy easy or hard to read? Everything is in the range of hands. When your opponents are reading your hand, with each share in a boat are (generally speaking) getting in a shrinking range of hands. Imagine, for example, you are playing a hand against a rival.

You raise preflop, bet the flop, you check and call on the turn and river bets. Your strategy is what I did play for the pot in that particular way. And, presumably, your strategy would have you play a set of your possible hands in this way, while the rest would play in another. The set of hands you would play that's your range. In general, deceptive strategies produce wide ranges and compensated for the majority of betting patterns. Instead, strategies "straightforward? produce narrower ranges and / or unbalanced for many betting patterns. A wide range is a range that has several possible candidates hands. Offset range is a range where the hands are candidates of various types and with different strength. There are hands made strong, strong project hands, hands made feeble, weak hands and lanterns project within a range. (In this case, a made hand is one that has a highly polarized equity profile and a project tends to have a more centralized equity profile.) Each of these types of hands occurs with a frequency proportional to the size of the pot ( the bigger the pot, the more commonly appear weak hands in range).

You're playing deceptively when you tend to have broad and balanced range of hands. You play "straightforward? when you do not. For example, according to this definition, a player who plays only pocket pair of aces played in a very "straightforward?. Each time the player enters a pot, you know very precisely what it takes. But a player who plays only 84 pre-flop also plays "straightforward?. Even if you play a weak hand so strong, no deception because his hand range is narrow and unbalanced. In addition, a player who plays every hand aggressively to the river is in some sense, "straightforward?. While the range is extremely broad hand, tends to be unbalanced toward weak hands. You can assume that this player has a weak hand and play accordingly, and do quite well. If you want to be misleading, you should try to have a wide range and offset. Discuss how you can do this in the next parts of this series. Source: Noted Poker Authority

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