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How to Change Gears in Poker to Keep Opponents Guessing

To be successful in No-Limit Hold'em you have to be aggressive. However, if you lack the ability to change gears at the right time, your opponents will catch on and adjust their play against you.

When you sit down at a poker game you're constantly trying to figure out how your opponents play. You look at every hand they're involved in in an attempt to deduce their style of play and what their playing tendencies are.

You aren't the only one trying to do this. Your opponents are attempting to do the same thing against you. Just as you want to know how they play, they want to know how you play.

It's in your best interest to do everything you can to make this task more difficult for them. You want their picture of you to be imprecise and distorted.

You accomplish this by staying one step ahead of your competition and changing gears. You should always be aware of your image, because how your opponents perceive you dictates how they will play against you.

How Much Aggression is Too Much in Poker?

The optimal style (if there is such a thing) for playing No-Limit Hold'em is generally somewhere between tight-aggressive and loose-aggressive.

The key fact is aggression: it is good to be aggressive, because to make money you have to get money into the pot, and you can't do that by being passive. There is, however, such thing as too much aggression, and you have to realize that your opponents are likely to adjust to that.

Gus Hansen
Gus is a man who loves him some aggression.

When you walk that fine line between tight- and loose-aggressive there are going to be times when you walk all over the table. It's only natural; it can be by sheer aggression or by way of a hot wave of cards that never actually get to showdown.

You have to be able to accurately perceive how your opponents are going to react to you running over the table.

If they think you're going to walk all over them every hand regardless of what you hold, they are going to adjust their play against you.

Generally when people are getting run over they start to wonder if they are just getting bluffed all the time. The way they find out is by forcing you to see a showdown, meaning they are going to be more willing to call you down. This is not a bad thing. This is when you want to switch gears.

How to Switch Gears in Poker

Once you realize your image has gotten out of control, you have won too many pots without showdown or you have been caught bluffing a few too many times, it's time to switch it up.

Begin playing a more conservative game - bet and raise with only your strong hands. Your opponents will never be able to properly adjust right away.

Despite the fact that you are now playing a conservative game, your opponents will still believe you to be the same wild maniac from before. They will be more than happy to go to showdown with you with their marginal hands. You've switched gears, but they haven't.

After a while of you playing your conservative poker, showing down only big hands, your opponents will become complacent. They will think your LAG maniac days are behind you and you are just some ABC TAG that doesn't get out of line.

If you are always aware of your image and stay one step ahead of your opponents they will never correctly adjust for your play. If they are never sure, they will be left to make mistakes. Their mistakes are pretty much just dollars in your bankroll.

Allen Cunningham
Allen Cunningham knows the right gear for the right situation.

Stay One Step Ahead in Poker

When you have the loose-aggressive image you can switch it up and play tight and still reap the rewards of having a loose image. The opposite is also true. If you have been card-dead and folding your life away, your image will be ridiculously tight.

Just the same, you can switch gears and exploit your tight image by becoming more active. Your opponents will think you are only betting with the straight goods, and you will be free to steal pots to your heart's content.

The whole concept of changing gears revolves around staying one step ahead of your opponents. You never want to play in such a manner that you make it easy for your opponents to know what you have. If you make it too easy then they'll be able to play perfectly against you.

You want your opponents to make mistakes. You do this by constantly being aware of your image and switching it up just when they think they have figured you out.

If you remain consistently ahead of your opponent's reads, you'll leave them guessing and ultimately, usually guessing wrong.

How to Put an Opponent on a Hand Range

When you're up against an opponent in a poker hand, you try to judge what cards he or she is holding.

tom dwan5
What's his range? No one knows.

Most of the time you can't tell the exact two cards, so you put the opponent on a range of probable hands and then try to compare that range to your own hand - while taking account of pot odds and implied odds and so on.

For example, in a poker tournament, if a player raises in early position, maybe you put him on something like AA-9-9 plus A-K/A-Q, keeping in mind there's a chance he's just trying to steal the blinds.

If the raise comes from the button, the range of probable hands will usually be much wider, including suited connectors, low aces, etc., and the chance that he's on a steal might also be much bigger.

Your evaluation depends on all kinds of factors that are available to you, such as previous hands, the stakes you're playing at, trends in the poker community, anything you know about the individual player, and of course the bets that are being made in the hand.

While weak players may make a very specific guess about your hand ("I put him on A-K") and go with that guess, your skilled opponents will be reasoning about probable hand ranges when trying to figure you out.

Depending on how the betting goes they will try to narrow down your hand range as the hand goes along.

Preserve Uncertainty to Keep Them Guessing 

This is where you get the chance to manipulate your fellow players. It's important in poker to bet in a way that doesn't let your opponent define your hand. By mixing up your game you make your betting pattern hard to interpret.

Daniel Negreanu7

You sometimes raise with bad hands, sometimes just call with good hands. When you make a stab at the pot, you might have any two cards or maybe you just flopped the nuts - who knows? You try not to give away the kind of hand you have; you try to be unpredictable.

Bob Ciaffone talks about the "value of having an unlimited hand" in his Pot-Limit and No-Limit Poker (with Reuben).

Dan Harrington describes how he plays the same hand in different ways in order to be unpredictable (Harrington on Hold 'em). Game theory indicates that mixed strategies are necessary to optimize your expected value (EV).

If you can maintain your opponents' uncertainty concerning your hand, you will see your strong hands paid off more. For example, when you bet out on the flop with a top pair or a set, opponents will play their middle pair, knowing that you'll often bet out on a missed flop.

Strong opponents will know that your pot-sized river bet doesn't mean that you have the nuts. You can have a range of various hands, some of which they can beat, and so the pot odds tell them to call you down with their losing hands.

The situation is illustrated by Daniel Negreanu on High Stakes Poker, when he says to an opponent with a better hand: "I can't put you on a hand, I think I will have to call you."

Defining Your Hand to Pull Off a Bluff

On the other hand, when you bet a bluff, you don't want your opponent to call. In this case, a broad hand range in your opponent's mind will work to your disadvantage. It forces him or her to call you too often.

Phil Gordon Day 2

To set up an effective bluff you'll want to remove any uncertainty around your hand strength. You bet in a way that leaves little doubt that you're holding strong - you tell a story the opponent can really trust.

If it seems very likely that you do have the strong hand you're representing, calling will seem like a losing proposition to your opponent. For each degree of uncertainty left in your opponent, the probability that he will call you goes up, and the value of your bluff goes down.

For sure, when pot odds are bad or there's a lot of money left to bet on later streets, a bluff can succeed even though the opponent feels some doubt about the whole thing. Nevertheless, less is more when it comes to uncertainty in connection with bluffing.

Controlling Uncertainty with Your Betting

Various betting patterns influence uncertainty in different ways. Some bets divulge nothing about your hand while others pinpoint your holdings more or less exactly.

A bet that looks standard typically won't change the perceived hand range much, while an unexpected bet might narrow it down rapidly.

Sometimes, a re-raise or a check-raise may signal some pretty specific holdings, while a flat-call or a standard continuation bet may leave the door open for a lot of different hands.

On the other hand, using reverse psychology, a flat-call may sometimes signal more strength than the expected "standard raise" (e.g. the "float play").

Dan Harrington

In his Squeeze PlayHarrington lists a prime example of a bluff where you use the well-defined nature of your own hand against the wider hand ranges of your opponents: One player raises pre-flop, which can imply a range of hands.

One player just calls, which also indicates a wide hand range. If another player calls, his hand range is even wider. Then you step in with a sizable re-raise. Against two or three players, this typically defines your hand as being very strong.

The idea is that with their weaker hands, on average, the opponents will not be able to call you, most of the time. Remember, it's a match between the hand range you think the opponent puts you on and the hand range that you put her on. It's all about probable holdings.

Of course, the entire context in which a bet is made governs how it's interpreted. Good players develop a strong feeling for how to read different moves in specific situations. You must know their way of reasoning, so you can manipulate it. Your total understanding of poker comes into play.

In some situations it will be very difficult to find a bet that preserves uncertainty without putting your vulnerable hand at risk, for example, when you have flopped top pair on a dangerous board with straight and flush draws.

In this case you need to bet the hand to maximize your equity, even though it means defining your made hand and not winning any more bets with it.

After all, uncertainty is not the be-all and end-all of poker. It is a valuable implement in your poker toolbox, though.

Comparing Hand Ranges

To find possible plays in various situations, you may want to consider how your hand range compares to that of your opponent's - that is, the range you think she puts you on compared to the range you put her on.

Calvin Anderson

If most hands in your range beat most hands in your opponent's range, you can bet a bad hand with a good chance of picking up the pot. That is, if you think that she thinks that she's probably behind.

On the other hand, with a strong hand in that situation it will be hard to get any action. This is the motive behind slow-playing - you want to represent a wider hand range, so that your opponent will keep playing her probable lesser hand.

It's also interesting to note how the actual hand you hold compares to your hand range: is it weak or strong compared to the hand range that your opponent puts you on?

For example, if you think the opponent puts you on a medium-to-high pair or a good ace, actually holding aces puts you in a different spot compared to actually holding eights (the precise spot being defined by board cards, etc.)

If the average hand in your range is worse than the average hand of your opponent, but your actual hand is much better, you must be prepared to defend your hand against an opponent coming on strongly, understanding that he doesn't know your actual strength, only your average.

If you make him uncertain about your hand, it follows that you must not overestimate his confidence in his own hand.

As always in poker, multiple levels of reasoning are possible here. You can estimate what hand range your opponent thinks you put him on and use it in connection with betting to influence the hand range he thinks you think he's putting you on, etc.

Normally, though, two or three levels of analysis will cover most of what's happening in a game of poker.

Further Reading:

Consciously Using Uncertainty

You need to realize that this battle of hand ranges is always ongoing at the tables, even if people are not actively thinking in those terms. Players always try to understand what's happening in the game; sometimes they're not sure at all and sometimes they know exactly.

Their degree of uncertainty changes. By making uncertainty an active part of your poker thinking you can gain an extra edge against your opponents. Obviously, again, all the usual factors come into play as well: position, signs of weakness, scare cards, stack sizes, table image, etc.

Nevertheless, a lot of well-known plays and moves can be understood in terms of manipulation of uncertainty. And the concept can no doubt be applied to more obscure gambits, too.

You'll just have to keep playing poker to find out!

More Poker Strategy articles:

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bennie99
2009-11-01 14:38:00

That is true popo… you really have to play at a reasonable level for this to work because there are so many players who don’t think about anything but their own cards out there.

Being a sit n go specialist, I’m pretty good at this. The basisc strategy for sit n gos is always the same, so it makes it pretty profitable to play, at least at the low money tables.

Popo
2009-06-07 22:55:00

I think the article has a very good point – switching gears to catch your opponents off guard. However, the article forgets to mention that such strategy would only work against players who put their opponents on a hand. If your opponent is a first-level thinker who only plays his cards and never think beyond that, there is no need to switch up.

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