Holdem: Manipulating Your Opponents

 See also

Learning to manipulate your opponents is a skill of marginal importance in many forms of poker, but in no limit holdem it's very important. If you play at medium stakes or higher, most of your opponents will be at least somewhat competent, and it may sometimes be hard to get their money. Particularly, it can sometimes be difficult to make a lot off your big hands: Flopping a big hand is fun, but if you can't convince someone else to lose their stack to you when you do, it isn't worth all that much.

To win the most on your big hands (and other hands too), you need to concentrate actively on manipulating your opponents. Trick their hand-reading processes into thinking you have the wrong hand at just the right time. Or cloud their judgment so they'll make the wrong play even if they do read your hand correctly.

Being pigeonholed is usually bad, but it's definitely not in poker; that is, as long as you don't fit well into the perceived hole. Poker players of all skill levels love to categorize their opponents: "He's weak, she's a bluffer, he's wild, and she always has the nuts."

Some players play so one-dimensionally that a few words can describe their play almost entirely. Not you! Your play is complex, and you are capable of incorporating a number of factors into your decision-making, making your plays difficult to read.

But that won't stop your opponents from trying to sum your play up glibly. Raise a few hands in a row, and you "play fast." Fold for a long period of time, and you're "squeaky tight." People like labels, stereotypes, and neat categories. That tendency doesn't change at the poker table.

You can use your opponents' pigeonholing tendencies against them. Encourage your opponents to stick a label on you, then surprise them at just the right moment.

There are several ways to do this. The first (and cheapest) is simply to use the randomness of the cards to shape your image. This method works great against people you haven't played with often - those who don't already have a conception of your general style.

Say you sit down, and you happen to fold your first twenty or thirty hands. Maybe you see a flop or two, but you fold quietly to the first bet after missing. Oftentimes none of your opponents will pay this fact much mind (either because they don't notice or because they know that a cold run could happen easily to anyone).

But some people will make a lot more of this "information". They will assume you are tight and a "folder" (on all streets, not just preflop). An aggressive player might use this notion as an impetus to run an extra bluff or two at you. Others may decide that if you bet big, "you must really have it."

You can use these ill-informed conclusions against your opponents. Against aggressive players, you might call with some slightly weaker hands hoping to snap off some of the extra bluffs they will try. And you can run those extra bluffs yourself against the players who assume that you "must have it."

This idea, to use to your advantage the image your natural play may have formed, is certainly not new. Indeed, even unskilled players sometimes realize this. So don't get carried away.

Many players won't drastically change the way they play against you no matter how they perceive you. Even if they just saw you get caught bluffing ten times in a row, they still won't call a big bet with ace-high hoping to catch you an eleventh time. So don't overestimate the impact that your "accidental" image might have. Don't think, "I haven't played a hand in a while; it's time to try a bluff." That's too general. You should think specifically that this player is likely to change their play this hand because of something you've done in the recent past.