Player's Stories

Sun Tzu's Guide to Poker By Michael Ireland

Nearly two thousand years ago a Chinese military strategist (the debate regarding whether or not Sun Tzu was an actual person or an Arthurian type legend is inapplicable to this article) wrote a book, which while solely intended to convey what were at the time radical and revolutionary military concepts, has transcended the context of the time and its inherent solidarity of purpose to become a very widely applicable educational text. This text has widely been adopted as a fundamental tenant in the business world and should receive the same reception amongst the burgeoning ranks of poker players embracing the game at such an exciting rate.

Surprisingly enough, not a great very many poker players have read The Art of War. The author feels compelled to warn you that it is a touch drier than Sklansky (yes, it is possible). The purpose of this article is merely to touch upon the most revelant portions of the work while dismissing the needless (if anyone in the poker community has need of advanced espionage, let me know in what context and I would be happy to include it in an amended edition).

A central theme of Sun Tzu's work is discipline. While Tzu is making this statement in the context of standing fast while a very large man is running at you full tilt with a very large and pointy weapon, his meaning is not lost on we few stationary and very lazy poker players.

Bad beats got you down? Do you find yourself raising with Q8 offsuit from under the gun? Have you just paid off two obvious straights and a flush with ace high? Stop and ask yourself, "What would Sun Tzu do"? (No, the answer is not swordplay or laying siege to and subsequently sacking a city.) If bad beats are the issue he would congratulate them and encourage them to draw to their two outs knowing that this is going to contribute greatly to his long term positive expectation. If sudden loose and overall horrible play is the issue, expect a boot in the behind (remember, Sun Tzu was in the military and while is not very likely they actually wore boots in the second century BC, expect a slipper at the very least) for, as the authoritarian Tzu would say in his pragmatically militaristic way, "better your backside than your bankroll".

Sun Tzu was also a tremendous advocate of making plays against opponents long before the first card deck was ever invented. He said: Display profits to entice them. Create disorder and take them. If they are substancial prepare for them, if they are strong, avoid them. If they are angry perturb them; be deferential to foster their arrogance.. Attack where they are unprepared. Go forth where they will not expect it.

Although many of these are completely apparent in their relation to poker they still deserve special consideration and discussion. It is very doubtful that the vast majority of opponents one will encounter at a poker table are there to improve and refine their game. Most of them are there to very simply put gamble since they view poker as a gambling game as opposed to the art form it truly is at the highest level. They are unaware that the poker tables are not in the pits for a reason (alright, unwanted utilization of sucker space being the primary but the point is not lost).

Therefore, most of them, while either painfully oblivious or painfully aware they are soundly beaten when they put that last call with a medium pair and no kicker into a gigantic pot, are hopefully imagining stacking that formless mound of chips into a structure with such height that the Sears tower, desperate in its newfound sense of minuteness, would give serious consideration to ending it all with a single bound from the apex. While it seems self explanatory, betting when you think you have the best of it is essential to increasing your bankroll. I know I have checked on the river far too many times with a marginal holding when I was confident I had the best holding only to found out that I missed a bet.

Insofar as purposely putting someone on tilt goes that's really up to the individual. I have found that those prone to tilt are going to go on full blown, super-mega tilt with very little prompting. Talking any additional smack is going to have a negligible effect if any and will only alter your table image to being someone your opponents don't mind losing to quite as much as they could (which of course prompts the age-old Machevellian question of whether it better to be loved or hated, but that is beyond of the scope of this article).

Interestingly enough, the next topic can have a substantial effect on just how tilted your opponents will be based on your play, not your demeanor. Sun Tzu tells his commanders to attack where their opponents are unprepared, and so too should the wily, unpredictable and most importantly winning player venture forth.

Depending on your comfort with aggression at the poker table it would not be ill-advised to throw in a raise every once in while with a non-premium holding. If you are uncomfortable with unchecked aggression, or you are sure that you will get called by horrific players behind you, your hand should have at least some chance of winning, be it however slight. Into this category falls the medium to smallish pocket pairs, suited connectors and connectors, and one card gapped connectors. Pocket pairs and suited connectors are pretty much standard fare for raising an unraised pot with correct position and is generally accepted and tolerated with grace if the hand develops into a monster (which, of course would be unexpected if shown down by a tightish player). However, my new favorite class of tilt inducing cards are the one card gapped variety. Hell hath no fury like a solid player who runs into a 6-8 offsuit that makes a monster hand (be it two pair, trips, or a straight) in a raised pot.

What that player probably doesn't know is that those hand ranking charts in Sklansky's books have a slight error. Thanks to our friends at the University of Alberta who are constantly and valiantly striving to write a perfect poker program which will demolish any human adversary (they admit this is and ungodly difficult task since poker is a game of incomplete information where as chess and backgammon are complete information games and similar programs routinely crush the top tier players in the world) we now know that one card gapped holds have about the same probability to make a straight as connectors. Seriously, they ran the simulations about a billion trillion times and they came out very close to even. Reference available if accepted, just not on hand. Given the proper consideration this makes perfect sense. It takes a near perfect flop to make even an eight-out open ended straight draw in that you need two of your random cards to hit the flop. With these types of hand! s you need the same two random cards to hit the flop and given that all flops are random (if you can predict a flop please contact the author as he is in dire need of this information) your chances are very nearly as likely to make a very good drawing hand that could develop into a monster given the correct pot odds.

Of course you still have what Daniel Negreanu refers to as the first to raise "crazy-berserko factor" and given your ability to read your opponents holdings this may be enough to move your opponents off of hands that a genuine premium raising hand could beat.

One important consideration when discussing these types of moves are that these hands are the kinds of hands that are (or should be at least) very, very easy to get away from if the flop misses your holding. And, as fate would have it, that also adds deception to your game. If your opponents see you raise and abandon your hand on the flop your legitimate raises will receive slightly more action from the more observant opponents at the table (which could be a very good thing or a very bad thing).

Sun Tzu, arrogant though he doubtless was, could never have possibly envisioned that his work would become a seminal staple in countless arenas. Luckily for us, poker is one of them. They points conveyed here are found rather hastily in the first three chapter of the book and this article scarcely does even that material justice!