Player's Stories

Shorthanded Poker: A Secret about Winning
by Jason Pohl

I have a secret for you. All those poker books and articles, as helpful as they may be, don't tell you everything you need to know to become a winning poker player. The pros know this secret. You don't hear Ted Forrest or Daniel Negreanu or Layne Flack (or just about any professional poker player for that matter) berating authors for giving away the secret formula to success. I didn't see an uproar in the poker community when Phil Hellmuth recently told us how to Play Poker Like the Pros. Why wouldn't they complain? Their whole livelihoods would appear to be at risk.

But that's not the secret. It might be a secret, unspoken by many players because they want you to believe their books will help you make millions of dollars and leave the boredom of your current paper pushing or burger flipping job behind. But it's not the secret I have for you. If it was, this would be a very short article indeed.

I've read over 40 poker books. Mathematics, strategy, and psychology are all covered. Tournaments, Low Limit Hold'em, Middle Limit Hold'em, No Limit and Pot Limit Hold'em, 7-card Stud, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo Split, Zen (or Tao) Poker. I kid you not. I've read them all, many of them more than once. My favorite book, Theory of Poker, I've read over 25 times. Most of them helped; a few of them hindered. But none of them told me what I really needed to know to become a winner. It took me years of playing and struggling and reading and discussing…thousands of message board posts, hundreds of articles, and more money spent on my "tuition" than I care to imagine.

But I'm going to give you a secret that will help take you down the path to success without all the heartache, pain, and tribulations. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper too. So, without further ado, here it is.

You don't need to know why you are winning in order to win.

Oh my, did I just say that? After all, I have spent the last year and a half demonstrating some strategies for short-handed play, and I focused on how important it is to understand why those strategies worked. But let's forget that for a moment.

A Recent Tournament
I played in a No Limit Hold'em tournament with about 25 friends last month, and it was a juicy field indeed. No Limit Hold'em is definitely not my best game, but I still couldn't help feeling like I was taking candy from a baby. Holding over 1/3 of the chips going to the final 8 man table, I could not have been more confident. But then, Lak sat down. Lak is a twenty-something years old Asian male, with no poker experience before 6 months ago. (And he's a great guy too.) He's never read a poker book or an article, and he is completely self-taught. And he may be the best No Limit player I've faced.

I focused on pot odds, the Gap Concept (see Sklansky's Tournament Poker), blinds as a percentage of my total stack, payout structure, and more. Lak just played poker. He attacked. He bluffed. He changed gears. He showed monsters. He struck fear into the entire table. I did not realize the whole truth until it was too late. Lak outplayed everyone...but he didn't know why what he was doing was so powerful. And you know, it didn't matter at the end of the night. He still took the money home.

You would think that with all the knowledge contained in poker books, every winning player would have a library of texts, bookmarks on all the poker sites so they could keep up with the articles, and an active life on at least one major message board. But I know this is not true. In fact, I have often heard it said by some of my closest friends that they fared worse after reading strategy books. How can it be that 'instinct players' and those with years of experience win without taking advantage of all that knowledge and strategy help? And why do so many new players struggle under mountains of literature and fail to attain success?

The reason, best that I can guess, is that they think "too much." And more importantly, it's too difficult to get it all right, at least at first. Poker is so complex, and so rich with information, that only a genuinely excellent player can hope to contemplate it all and reach the best conclusion. Sure, I hope to achieve that degree of aptitude in every facet of my game…eventually. I hope everyone reading my articles seeks the same expertise.

But, most people try to realize that high degree of proficiency first, and then try winning second. The order of learning should be opposite. Learn how to win first. Learn why you are winning over the long run. It may seem a subtle distinction, but it is not.

The EASIEST Path
Ah wait, I have another secret. Or, maybe it's really a secret within a secret. See, I've told you that you don't need to know why you are winning. And you know that the books aren't necessarily the easiest way to learn how to win (but they are immeasurably helpful learning why.) But I have not really told you the secret that trumps those two. It's been hinted by other authors. They tell of their early success and it very often includes one factor in common: a mentor.

A mentor is somebody who teaches you how to win. Or, maybe it would be better to say a mentor is somebody you learn how to win from. I make the distinction because the mentor doesn't even need to know they are teaching. Confused?

With even a fair amount of time, you will likely know who the "winner" at the table is. When I say the "winner," I of course am not referring to the winner of a specific session. I'm talking about the player everyone respects and fears, the player who brings home the chips in the long run. Now, keep that player in mind.

Next, stop trying to practice all those observation skills mentioned in the books. Reading each player's tells, interpreting the betting of every player every hand, counting the pot at all times, classifying the type of action (loose, aggressive, tight, passive), and predicting each opponent's holdings: forget about it. Trying to watch everything at once and think about what you are doing is just too difficult (at first). Instead, focus all that observation in only one direction now, instead of ten. Watch the "winning" player. Count the pot odds and observe how the "winning" player adjusts. Watch the winning player's actions each hand. And copy their play.

Their playing style is not copyrighted, trademarked, or in some way patented. And you can steal every last checkraise, bluff, and value bet. Make them your own. Do everything you can to become just like that player. Oh sure, the "winning" player in your local game probably has some flaws. Maybe they're a bit loose or don't bluff enough or one of a million other things. But I'll bet that 95% of those "winning" players do the fundamental things the same, because at limit poker, the options are...well...limited. And that's another secret too. Winning players utilize the same style at limit poker. If you see differences, they're either a) small or b) based on adjustments to the table. But all those players are fundamentally tight aggressive. Period. Bottom line. End of story.

Here's the great news. If you play in different places, or at different limits, you will see many winning players. You will be able to see the differences in their play, but more importantly, you can identify the similarities. Copying their play will give you a style of your own.

All you have to do is figure out how to be tight and aggressive, and there is no better way to learn that balance than matching the actions of a winning player who has already done the legwork for you. Only then, after you have figured out how to win, do you really need to put the effort into learning why. Eventually, you will have to put in that effort. And when you get to that point, I've got about 40 books I can tell you about. Maybe you can pay for them with your winnings.

Until next article, good luck! I enjoy receiving your emails, so if you ever have something you want to chat about, drop me a note at Jason@PokerPages.com.