On Being An Illusionist

I was reading a blog post by Shamus over at http://www.hardboiledpoker.com/ about how he feels he's been running in place over the past year at the tables--a feeling I've certainly felt. While reading, I was of course relating my own experience to his and was reminded of the frustration of knowing that I can play what i think is good poker, making a minimal amount of mistakes, and still lose or just break even over a significant stretch of sessions.

I don't know Shamus personally (nor could I pick him out of a crowd), but from having read his blog for some time, I perceive him to be a methodical thinker, writer, and poker player, paying attention to many details and making only rational plays. For example, I've never found a single grammatical error in his blog. Ever. Given my take on him, when I read of his troubles, I pictured him being a disciplined, thinking player, and perhaps a little on the risk-averse end of the spectrum, never making any -EV plays and such. Possessing some of these player qualities myself, I naturally wondered of a way out of a rut like Shamus's, and an answer immediately popped out at me.

A player like Shamus, and myself at times, can easily sit at a table for over an hour and go virtually unnoticed by other players. The unnoticed player never makes terrible plays, rarely wins huge pots at showdown, doesn't enter many pots as a result of playing tight preflop, and just seems to fly under his opponents' radar. Now, players may notice that he's being a nit or a rock, and, while this could be a good thing in that the unnoticed player could then profitably switch gears by loosening up, I think there's something better. Be the player that everyone can't help but notice. Why not have a crazy image, whether it's donkish, or just extremely loose-aggressive? Why not run the show? Why not make everyone annoyed by your play and get them emotionally invested in each hand?

Last Summer I was in Biloxi on a bachelor party trip playing some 1/2NL late night when I found myself up a buy-in after having caught a few hands. It may be fundamentally bad, but after winning some chips, I tend to loosen up and start seeing flops with marginal cards. This is what I did this night. I got aggressive, and people started to notice. I made a lot of post flop moves, pushing people off of hands and pouncing on every inkling of a weakness I detected. Before long, I found myself up another buy-in, and I noticed that the table dynamics had totally changed. I had become the "table bully". When I entered a pot, all players waited to see what I would do, and usually anticipated raises, reraises, c-bets, etc. At one point I was in LP with garbage, and it was my turn to act with two limpers ahead of me, and I was about to fold after some hesitation when the first limper says, "Here he goes again, raising it up." What was soon to be a fold suddenly seemed a good spot to raise. He had created a premise from which I could deduce lots of information later in the hand.  Or I could have just been drunk.  Nonetheless, he was emotionally invested.

This became such a tool for me that night. I noticed that since I had become the table bully, everyone's moves seemed so apparent. They were all acting defensively, as if to deliver me justice for having pushed them around all night, and, as a result, the strength of their hands seemed to polarize--they were either obviously strong or obviously weak.

So after reading Shamus's post, the idea that came to me is that there's a difference in my ability to gauge the strengths of my opponents' hands when I'm running the show at the table and when I'm flying under everyone's radar. Everyone loves to trap bullies. It's irresistible. It's pure psychology. Everyone wants justice. Not only will it satisfy the player to win some of his chips back from you, but he will satisfy the mob (the other players at the table) by delivering the justice that you, the bully, deserve. It becomes you vs. the mob. And in each hand your opponent sort of represents the rest of the table that aren't involved in the hand, and he feels a responsibility to deliver justice to them by punishing you. And the mob is surely paying attention because you are running the show, so your opponent will be trying hard not to disappoint (no one wants to lose their stack when their whole table is watching, so it becomes more apparent if they are strong or not by their commitment to their hand). This makes it easier to tell what each opponent is doing because you know their motives. They're being influenced by the mob. Then you can act accordingly without them realizing that they are making your decisions for you.

So while you are running the show, you're still flying under the radar, which is exactly what you want--to be deceptive. When you're flying under the radar by just, well, flying under the radar, you're not really deceiving anyone. So sometimes I think it's a good idea to blatantly create an illusion by means of a big production at your table. Otherwise, you may just be waiting for cards your whole life only to find you've been running in place.