My Poker
Saturday, August 15, 2009 - C00LHandNuke
Well another WSOP is behind us. My intention was to post a couple blogs during the Series that I’ve come to call pokerpalooza, but then things turned bad and I lost my appetite for recounting it. Things started off great. I was cashing in every other event I played and I made a final table at Caesar’s. The cash games were being easy too. I got to the point where if I needed a thousand dollars, I would just sit in a 2-5 NL game for an hour or so. Then, just like that, the poker switch flipped to “off.” I had Aces cracked three times on or near the bubble of big events. Usually by hands like Ace-ten offsuit or King-Jack (“but it was suited!”). How did these guys get all in preflop? Better still, how did they win? I gathered up all my mental strength and started to turn things around right before the Main Event. But alas, the Main Event ended badly for me in a set over set situation late on day one. Ugh.
One of the things I did to turn it around was a little experiment in a $1500 tourney dealing with table image. It was probably 2/3 of the way through the Series and I was getting desperate to make something happen and change the slide I was heading down. With that in mind, I made a conscious decision to change my table image in one tournament. Normally the image I try to establish early is that of a tight player. This image lets me steal later in the tourney when the antes kick in and my aggression kicks up. But for this tournament, my image was going to be that of a crazy Scandinavian. To accomplish this Kafkaesque metamorphous, I did three really simple things:
The first thing I did was I raised or reraised the first three hands (regardless of my cards). I cbet each time. I made the reraise with J4, which I showed after folding on the flop. I even managed to win one of the hands with a K9 that I got to show down. My starting stack was 4500. The one win didn’t make up for the losses in the other hand (the reraise hurt), but in total I think I lost like 300. Not a bad price to pay for an image.
My second step involved wardrobe. I left my usual novelty t-shirt and ball cap at home and wore my bright red Ajax jersey. Ajax is the local football (uh, soccer) team in Amsterdam. A few people in the US would recognize it if they were into soccer, but anyone from Europe would know it immediately. Add in the fact that it said Amsterdam in prominent type and it should suggest to even the casual poker player that I am freaky-deeky Dutch. Scandanavians typically have a very loose image – think Gus Hansen.
The last thing I did was the hardest . . . I didn’t talk much. And when I did, I used short, broken sentences. So instead of asking someone “Do you really have a Queen for the nut straight?” I would say “You have Qween?”
The results were perfect. After playing the first 3 hands fast and loose, I tightened up and luckily got some cards. For my first big hand, I raised under the gun with AA and had the same player that I previously three-bet with J4 make a gross over-sized reraise with AJ. He pot committed himself preflop and we got it all in. Then I got paid off by middle pair when I bet my KK on every street. Next I faded what a player thought was two overs and a gut-shot with my top set. By the end of the first break I was one of the chip leaders with up over 30k. I got paid on hands that my normal image would never get paid on.
I don’t know how long I could keep my image going. For sure, a few of the original players remaining at my table were starting to reevaluate me. But as new players came in to fill empty seats, many of them would eye me and my stack and make the assumption that I was precisely the Scandi laggtard I was trying to portray. For more than one of them, that mistake was fatal. I think that between showing the occasional crazy raise and the stream of new players, I could have kept things up for quite some time. Ultimately, my image was busted when a reporter from PokerNews stopped by and wanted to interview me. Too bad he tried to do it in Dutch! My subterfuge was done.
So aside from being mildly amusing, what can we learn from this story? I think it illustrates several key things to remember about table images. Everyone talks about reading players – which is to say establishing a table image in your mind for that player. And occasionally people talk about their own table image, but most players probably don’t think about their own table image enough. Some great players go to great lengths to define the precise table image they want. Chris Ferguson started wearing his trademark hat when he was young so he would be the “cowboy” rather than the long-haired pimply-faced computer geek. Phil Helmuth certainly spends a fair amount of time establishing his table image . . . love it or hate it, it works for him. But I think my story illustrates a few points:
First impressions are dangerous. I cemented my table image with just the first three hands of the tournament and a jersey. This first impression lasted much longer than it should have. Even after I had played pretty tight for two hours, many of the players at my table still only remembered the fact that I raised or reraised with some crazy hands early. You need to constantly reevaluate the players around you with an open mind. You also need to realize which players are adjusting to you. Keep in mind that players tend to remember the plays you make against them more than the ones you make against others.
Which brings me to my second point. For the players regularly seen on TV, their table image is a relatively fixed thing. But for the rest of us, our table image is a very dynamic thing – in addition to changing over time it changes from player to player. If you bluff a player and show the whole table, the table may very well forget about the bluff in an hour (or at least assign it less importance). But the player you bluffed will likely have you labeled as a bluffer until you bust him with the nuts once – for some players you may have to bust ‘em twice, or more, before they reevaluate.
So once you establish an image at a particular time and against a particular person, what do you do with it? Most of us know that you play against it. But what does that mean? When I was a crazy Scandi, it meant that I couldn’t semi-bluff my draws. I was going to get called down. But it also meant that I could value bet top pair with a weak kicker and get called.
But what do you do when you’re in a multi-way pot with two players that have differing images for you? Well like most things in poker, it depends. Say you are in the small blind w/ KJ and see a cheap flop of J84 with two spades. If the big blind thinks you’re crazy loose and the third player thinks you’re tight, you should lead out. Many times the big blind will raise. If she does, the third player will likely fold and you can call. But if the big blind folds or calls and the third player raises, you can probably fold.
Now switch it so the big blind thinks you’re tight and the third player thinks you’re loose. Now with the same hand you can check to keep the pot small. The problem with leading out is too often the big blind calls with a draw or pair and the third player sees it as an opportunity to squeeze what are likely to be (in his estimation) two weak hands. If you check and the big blind bets, you can check raise almost no matter what the third player does. If the big blind checks and the third player bets you can just call and make your play later if no spades appear.
Thinking about image is equally important online. Online, many players use programs that provide them statistics about your play. For them, your image is based on a mathematical model, but it is still an image. And if a player is multitabling, your image may solely consist of hands he has played with you. Also, remember to pay attention to players in a tournament that get moved to your table. Their image of you is neutral unless you have history with that player. And speaking of history, take advantage of the note-taking abilities on poker sites like Ultimatebet. If you play for any amount of time, you should have notes on a lot of players. Even in mega fields of over a thousand or more players, I often have notes on a couple of the players at my table before the first card is dealt. My notes in effect tell me what image to assign to that player as well as what image they have of me.
Well that’s enough rambling for today. Think about your image next time you’re at the table and maybe you’ll make a play that you couldn’t before. Good luck.
