JV'S KILLER POKER: CONSISTENCY

BY: John Vorhaus

To prove that my high school years were more than a teenage wasteland of nickel-ante poker games and futile assaults on the virtues of various young ladies, I now quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, who I studied extensively (or so I am told) in American literature class, and who had this, among many other (or so I am told) pithy things to say:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

How, you might ask, does this amorphous aphorism, foisted upon me in Am lit class, apply to poker? And glad I am that you ask, for otherwise this would indeed be a meaningless musing upon virtues and nickels long squandered or lost, and not the erudite Emersonian essay that it will momentarily prove to be.

Okay, here's the deal: To win at poker, you have to play consistently good poker. This we know. All the pundits agree – come with your A game or don't come at all. Ah-ha, yes, but also to win at poker you must occasionally play deceptive poker, which means inconsistent poker, which means not consistently good poker. We have a paradox here, and I heighten its importance immeasurably by setting it off in italics in its own little paragraph:

For the sake of deception, you must sometimes play wrong on purpose.

Suppose you're playing hold 'em, you're first to act and you have 9-8 offsuit. This hand is trash. You know it's trash, I know it's trash, even the mooks you play against know it's trash. The obvious decision here is... fold. That's exactly the choice that "quality poker" mandates. But instead, in the name of seeding your game with a little inconsistency, you contemplate a raise. Of course we Killer Poker players never hate to raise, but in this case this raise is a horrible play, a dreadful one, a stone-dead long-run loser, as I'm sure that you and any self-respecting computer simulation would swiftly and enthusiastically agree (unlike those girls in high school, who never swiftly and enthusiastically agreed to any of my propositions, though that's another story and not one, I'm almost completely certain, appropriate to this time and space.)

Frequently this reckless raise will cost you both your bets, because even if no one reraises you before the flop you'll mostly miss on the flop and have to throw that basura away. (Basura is Spanish for rubbish; did you think that I studied only Emerson in high school?) But here's the thing: On those rare times when you do connect to this holding, none of the foolishly consistent hobgoblins you play against will put you on the hand you have. Plus which, when you show down that ragamuffin hand, you really confound the small minds, so that when you next raise with a monster, you can make A-A look like 9-8 to them. That's when deception and inconsistency – the wrong play made at the right time – turn into winning poker the Killer Poker way.

I love this play. (Love it more than I loved Stephanie Long, who I loved with all my heart and body parts in 11th grade; but, again, different subject.) I love to raise situationally with hands that have to hit the flop in order to work. You can too, if you're shrewd enough and disciplined enough to get away from the hand if it misses, and perceptive enough and aggressive enough to drive it home when it hits. Of course you don't want to make this play against wily opponents, but you generally don't want to play against wily opponents anyway; not if your smart. I know I've made this point before, but I'll make it again and, again, add italics for emphasis:

Don't challenge strong opponents, challenge weak ones; that's what they're there for.

Fortunately for you, weakness and consistency go hand-in-hand. For instance, weak opponents consistently raise with only premium hands. This makes them terribly easy to read, and there's no reason on the planet for a Killer Poker player ever to get trapped in a tangle against them. For another instance, weak opponents frequently make decisions based not on what they think you have, but on what they hope you have, and it is to stimulate this wishful misthinking that we get into the whole thing of consistent inconsistency in the first place.

Suppose your foe has Q-T offsuit, and you raise into him. If you raised consistently with only good cards, he'd know to put you on a quality hand, A-K or a big pair. He probably should fold, and possibly even knows it. But he doesn't want to fold. He wants to play; that's why he's here. And that's why you flavor your play with a little inconsistency. You want to give this weak player every reason to believe that you have the hand he wishes you had instead of the hand you actually do have. Thus he calls when he shouldn't, and thus you crush him with his own delusive thinking.

So, yes, you're throwing off chips when you raise incorrectly. But at the same time you're encouraging your opponents to call incorrectly. And since you play generally better than they do (don't you?) you end up making money on the margin. Can you see the logic of this? I thought you could. If only Stephanie Long had seen the logic of getting busy in the back of – well, never mind.

You know, for all the hours of all the American literature classes that I zombied through in high school, I can't tell you one word Emerson wrote beyond "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." But they always tell you in high school that the things you learn in high school will pay massive dividends later in your life. Mostly I've just said, "yeah, right," and mostly I've been right. Diagramming sentences? Deriving logarithms? I mean, come on, who really needs these skills? The most pertinent thing I ever learned in high school concerned girls and virtue and the logical improbability of parting the latter from the former. But if Emerson's wisdom translates into money won in poker, then that's enough for me, and it should be enough for you, too.

All this talk of high school puts me in mind of homework, so now here's yours: Get out of line! Make a bad raise at a bad time from a bad position and see what kind of dividends it pays in terms of muddying the waters of your play and sowing doubt and confusion among your foes. Because a foolish consistency is the not just the hobgoblin but also the province of little minds, and your mind is much, much bigger than that.