My Poker Education Part II

By Star Pulver

 

I arrived at the World Series of Poker-Ladies Only Academy, not knowing quite what to expect. I took a seat at the back of the room and unpacked my program and my note pad. I was ready. Bring it on! I thought. It wasn’t long before I realized that I knew virtually nothing about the “art of poker”.

Annie Duke was amazing! It became quickly apparent to all of us (about 100 women) that there was no poker situation or scenario that Annie had not experienced and did not know how to handle. She explained that, “Poker is a game of decision making under conditions of uncertainty”. 

We were instructed on the importance of gathering information from your opponents by betting, rather than “limping” and by observing their habitual reactions to other players’ bets and raises, helping you to make necessary decisions down the road. Annie’s philosophy is that you should always be in the “observation mode”. From the moment you arrive at a poker table you can gather information on your opponents by simply making small talk, by listening to how they interact with each other and by observing their behaviors. How long have you been playing poker? Where are you from? Do you play tournaments often? On the other hand, she explains, it’s important not to give up this valuable information to your opponents.

The “meat” of her instruction involved betting strategies. She informed us that bets are designed to extract information from your opponents. You always want to have an idea as to what range of hands your opponent could be playing. If they call your raise, you can determine with some certainty that they are playing a range of hands equal to or better than the range of hands that you are “representing” with your raise, especially when you raise in early position. If you just call, in any position, you have gathered no information about the hand(s) that you are up against. Besides, as most of us know, being the aggressor not only gives you information, it narrows the field and gives you control. Annie explained that we have control over what “odds” we are giving our opponents by the amount of money that we bet or raise. By only raising the minimum amount we are giving our opponent the proper odds to call with almost any hand. I see this happen a lot in ladies events. The player under the gun comes in for a minimum raise. The blinds are $50 and $100 and the opening bettor raises it to $200. If 2 players call the $200 the pot is now $750 and the big blind is getting 7:1 odds to call (she only has to call $100 to win $750). So she can call with any hand and more often than not, she’s the one who will catch with her rag hand and beat you.

We took our early-acquired knowledge and split up into groups of 9 for simulated poker games with the instructors evaluating our play. During my first “situational” hand, I was involved in a pot where I held a pair of Jacks and the flop came with an A-9-10. There was a bet in early position and a call and I called. The turn came a Q a player bet. I went over the top for all my chips and after some thinking, my opponents folded. I never showed my hand. Immediately, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and it was Joe Navarro, Former FBI Agent and Expert Criminal Profiler! He asked to speak to me and I got up and introduced myself. He told me that he had been watching my play and he knew that I was holding a “marginal hand”, probably Jacks. He said that if he were my opponent he would have called with any Ace or Queen. I was shocked! How did you know? He explained that it was my hands that were giving off “tells”. “When faced with a threatening situation”, he explained “you clasp your hands together; fingers interlocked and start rubbing them back and forth (wringing them)”. I thanked him and returned to my seat. Amazingly, I started to notice that other players at the table, who were in the same situation, were doing the exact same thing! I was reading them! Yea! I couldn’t wait to hear more from Joe Navarro. I wanted to find other oddities that would give me information about my opponent before I had to make my decision as to call or fold.

It was day two and Joe Navarro was scheduled to speak. This is what I’ve been waiting for! Before us stood this soft spoken, intelligent, good looking man. He started out by identifying himself as an expert in the field of terrorist profiling and explained how criminal profiling related to poker players. I laughed at the similarity. He went on to explain that there is a part of the human brain called the Limbic System that responds honestly and immediately to adverse and/or positive situations. This part of our brain is the emotional or reactive (not logical) part of our brain that plays a key role in “non-verbal behavior” or “tells” as we call it in the poker world. For those poker players that want to read their opponents effectively, the limbic brain is the Holy Grail of tells. Why? Because it is the part of our brain that most honestly reveals the truth about the cards a person is holding and it does it through non-verbal behavior that can be observed and decoded by the trained eye.

He went on to explain that there are responses that are “hardwired” into our nervous system, making them difficult to disguise. In a nutshell, things like me wringing my hands when faced with an adverse situation showed that I was concerned and covering or rubbing of the neck means that you are stressed or rubbing your hands on your legs after putting all your chips in the pot on a bluff means that you are pacifying yourself because you are not confident in your decision. These are all things that are all hardwired into our system and unless we are very aware of them and practice avoiding these “immediate and honest” reactions, we are giving off tells. To our advantage though is learning how to read these signs in our opponents. If we can master the art of observation and knowing what “instant reactions” indicate confidence and which ones indicate concern we have a huge advantage over our opponents.

Joe has published a book called “Read’em and Reap in which he describes a number of non-verbal behaviors that will help you to identify when your opponent is bluffing and when he is holding the stone cold nuts. I bought the book and took it home to memorize these behaviors. Joe teaches that it’s important to always been an observer, to practice the technique of observation at and away from the poker table. The more you practice, like anything, the better you become at it.

I played the Ladies event at the WSOP the day after the academy concluded. I have to admit that I played better then I have ever played. I was able to use a lot of what I learned from Annie and from Joe to improve my poker game. I doubled my chip stack by the first break, tripled up by the second break and had over four times the amount of chips that I started with into the third break. Unfortunately, coming off my last break I ran into some “bad beats” and that was the end for me. Amazingly, Sally Ann Boyer the women who won the WSOP Ladies event was in attendance at the academy with me and Cindie Joy who was also in attendance placed 21^st in the event.  Pretty impressive!

I highly recommend that you purchase Joe Navarro’s book, Read’em and Reap, and if you ever get a chance to attend the WSOP Academy, it is a great investment in your poker game, I know it improved mine!