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he Guardian Poker Column |
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Victoria
Coren |
Wed 11 May 2011 |
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When it comes
to thinking through your play, stop at level three after that you can be
just too clever
When I was learning to play poker, back in the days when we travelled
to the game by horse and cart, I heard a lot about "good multiway hands": small
drawing hands like 6 7, with which players were encouraged to call a raise if
several others had called, trying to hit a big flop and get paid.
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What was once considered wily is now
considered weak. These days, players are encouraged to "squeeze" (re-raise) in
this situation, to punish the other limpers and win the pot straight away.
You're probably best off trying a mixture of both, especially online. Some
opponents will be running software that gauges your betting patterns, so you
have to keep them varied.
But here's the big danger of re-raising
according to the demands of fashion: if one of the other players then puts in a
fourth bet, does he definitely have a huge hand? Or is he just recognising your
squeeze and shovelling the pressure back on?
This is where we get into
what's called "levelling". Level one thinking is simply, "Do I have a good
hand?" Level two is, "What does my opponent have?" Level three is, "What does
my opponent think I have?"
Beyond level three, you get into a
complicated world where each player is psyching the other out; it's in that
rarefied world of "He thinks that I think that he thinks that I think . . .",
levelling that you see TV players getting thousands of chips in when neither
has any hand at all.
My advice? Stop at level three. TV can trick you
into thinking everyone's fearless and everyone's a genius. It's not the case.
Most of the time, when someone bets very strongly it's because he has the best
hand. You mustn't be naive in poker, but you can lose a lot of chips by being
too sophisticated.
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