How to Think Poker

It is almost a contradiction in terms, but in poker, the more you have to think, the less likely it is that you should act. In other words, folding is often the right answer to a particularly hard-thought puzzle.

The act of pondering options is itself a "tell." Put differently, hesitation, lack of confidence, doubt, and uncertainty all telegraph to the other players that your hand is not convincingly strong. It says, "I'll probably fold if pushed hard enough." Hesitation is a "tell" that can come across even in online play. (Beware: It is also one of the easiest false tells, even for a miserable actor.)

The best antidote for having to think is, of course, experience. By confronting the same tactical decision many times, the answer need not be analyzed, but simply remembered.

While in the process of building the experience base necessary to make quick reactions to situations as they develop at the table, a couple of techniques will cut back on the amount of time and mental effort it takes when your turn comes to act.

• Tip Number One: Take Names. This first tip may seem a little silly, but it is not. Try to remember the names of the people at the table. Practice it with them. Most people are flattered if you try to remember their names. But the reason for it is two-fold. Making that effort forces you to focus on those people. It helps to put your mind in the right place to study them. How can you expect to pickup on subtle "tells" if you don't even care to learn their first name? The second reason is that it helps you avoid confusing one player with another later on, when you draw conclusions about individual play. If you remember things by position rather than by name, life will get complicated if someone leaves or changes a seat. Online play is much easier in this regard, as each player is uniquely identified.
• Tip Number Two: Think All the Time. Use a "poker brain" (like a poker face). Do not let on that you are thinking. Look relaxed. Enjoy yourself. But keep the wheels turning. When your starting hand is dealt, memorize it. It wastes time going back to look at it over and over, and, unless it's a draw game, the starting hand is not going to change. If this is hard for you, practice it a lot, just as kids used to learn math facts with flash cards. It does not take advanced intelligence to do this task. It is a skill, like driving a car. It needs to become automatic.
• Tip Number Three: Know What You Want. As soon as you have memorized the starting hand, visualize what you need to get in order to make the hand better. In draw poker you will need to relinquish cards to get cards, and in Hold'em and Stud games, you just wait for them to come. But either way, when the next card is revealed to you, you should know immediately if it is a help to you or not because you have already visualized what you need.
• Tip Number Four: Know Your Chances. Not only is it important to know what you need, you need to know how likely it is that you will get it. Stud and Hold'em employ the concept of "live outs." An "out" is a helpful card that might come along. You know that to turn a pair into trips, for example, you have two outs maximum (the other two of the same rank in the deck). Check the board (if applicable) to see if any outs are dead. Study the tables of outs and probabilities so that you know, at least roughly, what the probabilities of hand improvement are. After a few hands this should come more quickly. This should give you an idea - a starting premise - of whether you're going to be calling, raising, checking or folding. Do not make a definitive decision yet, as there will be more information coming at you in the form of the bets of the other players (unless you are "under the gun" and have to speak first). Just consider it to be your tentative decision for now. All of this "knowing" and thinking should be lightening fast, as the rest of the time needs to be devoted to other things.
• Tip Number Five: Study Each Player in Turn. When it is not your turn, be studying each player for indications of his or her hand. The first, of course, is any face up card (in Stud) and the community cards (in Hold'em). The second level of information is what they say or do - their bet. The third level is very important. It has to do with "tells" - the manner in which they conduct themselves, compared to other situations in which they have been observed. Are they thinking and hesitating?
• Tip Number Six: Know Where the Threats Are Coming From. When each player acts, try to form an hypothesis about their hand. In early rounds, each player has little to go on from the others, so the bets are more a reflection of the hand and less a reaction to opposition. The sooner you can move from acting in terms of your own hand to acting in terms of your opponents, the harder it will be for them to understand your hand, and the more likely it will be that you will get it right about when to attack, when to defend and when to retreat.
• Tip Number Seven: Take Your Stand. The acts of others may or may not cause you to modify the initial reaction about what to do. In any event, when your turn comes around, do it! And quickly! Good players do not hold up the game, and they try to keep attention away from themselves. You do not want people spending too much time studying your "tells" or concentrating on where your hand may have weaknesses. By reacting quickly, you turn the spotlight on the next player, and you have more time to study the bets and behavior of your adversaries.
• Tip Number Eight: Take Breaks. Even as this thinking routine becomes more second nature, it still can be mentally tiring. Until a good bit of this is automatic, take frequent breathers. That will give you a chance to recapitulate to yourself how well you are doing. Maybe you can even make a few notes about what needs to be sharpened up.
• Tip Number Nine: When Inactive, Stay Sharp. If you have folded, do not consider it a recess. Go to school on the active players. There's more to see and heed when you are relieved of the pressure of contemplating your own cards. If necessary, mentally form statements, like "Bob always looks at his chips for a second before making a call he's unsure of." Though it is not often mentioned, do not ignore your study of the other inactive players. Their conduct when they are out of the game and when they think no one is watching may provide a "baseline" for judging tells later on.
• Tip Number Ten: Study the Board. In Stud games, when a player folds, the face-up cards in that hand are mucked. You need to remember them, or at least have already checked them for dead outs, so you don't care if they are turned over. In both Hold'em and Stud games, the board increasingly becomes the answer to the question, "What does my adversary have?" You have already figured out your own situation, and that is not particularly hard. As soon as a card is revealed, you will know if it does you any good (Tip Number Three). As the board builds (either with player cards in Stud or community cards in Hold'em games), your mind should be working through the hypotheses: What other cards are there that would make a great hand? Does this match the betting behavior of anyone at the table? Am I going to win? For sure? Or just maybe? Obviously, if you have closed on a really good hand, you may feel relaxed and stop focusing on the board. This can be dangerous, and costly. (Remember Will Rogers' famous statement: "It's not what we don't know that will kill us, it's what we know for certain that ain't so!")

Remember that over half of a player's cards are visible to the opposition in Stud and Hold'em. With the River card in Seven-Card Stud, four out of seven cards of each player are visible. In Hold'em it is five out of seven. In Omaha it is five out of nine.

Hesitation as a Strategy

Suppose you are dealt a made hand, or your hand comes together nicely very early on. You want to induce players who think their hands are playable to be active in the pot. Obviously, if you start betting aggressively and responding more quickly to your turn than usual (unusually fast play), they will "smell a rat" and flee, if they're smart. If you slow down the play too much, everyone will know you're just a big actor, trying to slow-play a made hand. So keeping the pace about the same is a good starting point, and then perhaps slowing down for just a hesitating moment before making a bet, a call or a raise. If an important-looking card appears on the board in an opponent's hand (in Stud, obviously), feigning the need to collect your thoughts is a good ploy to make everyone think you're playing a draw hand (i.e, still hoping for a certain card).

The opposite of hesitation would be a form of fast-play, designed to shoo away a hesitant player from a hand. If they are thinking too hard, a few quick calls or a raise might successfully make them cave.

In short, being seen as a thinker is OK in circumstances when thinking is not warranted. Being caught thinking when it is required will betray a weak hand.