Secrets of the Amateurs

When I was a kid, I had a poster on my wall. You might remember the one, there's a line of fish. At one end there's a really small fish. Then there's a slightly bigger fish about to eat the small one. And a bigger still fish about to eat the second one. And so on up to an uber-fish at the end that's going to eat everyone. The caption said "There's no such thing as a free lunch". Even at nine years old I thought "well, there is for the biggest one".

Reading through the blog I was talking about at the weekend, an image of this poster popped into my head. As I was saying, the point is that when you have a large group of "book players" playing in a predictable style, a style that's winning against the little fish, then the better player still, the uber-fish, can actually make more money off the book players than he can off the players at the very bottom of the food chain.

I think this is very clearly shown by the discussion I had with the guy who advocated "thou shalt always continuation raise". For a moderately winning book player, or 2+2er if you like, that might well be the right thing to do most of the time, against the kind of players who regularly call a raise pre-flop with sub-standard holdings. What I was trying to say is that if you take it to a higher level, then you are exploiting the "must continuation bet" mindset and part of that exploitation is not doing it yourself so much.

I also have to go back to the play I'm always banging on about on here, flat calling a raiser in position with a big pair. If the raiser is a bottom-feeding loser who will call a big reraise with 55 or KQ, then yes, just calling with Kings is probably giving up a bit compared to moving in. However, it's making a lot more against the book player who uses his hand-reading "skills" to assume that because you just called you don't have a big hand, whether that book player is the original raiser or someone round the back who's read about squeeze reraising.

Books can only take you so far. Even the best ones, like Harrington, Rodman and Gordon. There's only one book I've ever read that tells you about playing like an uber-fish [1] and that's John Fox. But most books are still worth reading at least once, even the bad ones. Perhaps especially the bad ones. Because you're reading them and thinking "how can I exploit someone who plays like this ?". Particularly someone who's not that bright and will half-understand the concepts and try to apply them too rigidly.

At the end of the day, you can study and practice all you like but playing the same way as half the field is only going to make you so much. Step out of the box. Be the uber-fish.

[1] I have very carefully said "about playing like" and not "how to play like". This is the whole point, a book can't tell you how to do it. But this one tells you about how he does it. The fact that it's set in the world of draw poker is neither here nor there. It's how you think about exploiting other players.