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Changing With The Game - Seal

Back when I first started playing poker in casinos Ronald Reagan was President of the USA. I was a single guy driving to the card clubs in Los Angeles in a small red Japanese car. Madonna had just released her first album and most of the winning poker players I knew were older, math guys who played with the odds.

Now, more than twenty-five years later, things are a bit different. The upcoming Presidential election has been full of anything but old, Reagan-type men. Many of the best poker players are young, more than a few are women, and they are definitely not playing the odds. Sure, Madonna has a new hit tour and I still drive around in a small red Japanese car, but we are both older and a lot has changed.

Honestly, I resisted changing up my game as long as I could. Up until a couple of years ago I found it was still possible to win a lot of money playing mostly tight poker and sticking with only premium hands. But this has changed as well. I do not think it is possible to do this anymore. Well, maybe if you grind out limit poker at fairly low levels, you could win more than you lose. But for winning tournament play, the game has changed indeed.

My new strategy strays far from waiting for premium hands at the beginning of a tournament. In unraised pots I have been calling with hands as weak as 57 suited and occasionally even raising with these kind of hands. Position is still a key factor in my decisions whether or not to play a hand, but at a passive table I will even play these hands up front. Of course I will also play any pocket pair and unsuited connectors from 9T up.

I am more willing to gamble early with a big draw now too.This naturally means that post flop play has gotten a lot more complicated to be sure. My goal in playing more hands has been to try to get a favorable flop and then only continue from there. But what makes a favorable flop is sometimes hard to know. The flops that hit my hand hard are still easy to spot, but the ones that offer good bluffing opportunities are often harder to sniff out.

As for those bluffing opportunities, one example of a good situation is as follows. If I raised in position with 77 and got one or two callers I will often make a continuation bet/bluff with a wide variety of flops. Any flop with an ace or a king is fair game for me to bluff at as my opponent(s) are likely to give me credit for one of those cards. But if I have more than two players in with me then it is too likely one of them will have an ace or king so I usually have to fold. Also, a small, raggedy flop is usually a decent one to make a play for even with three opponents. In fact, the only flops I tend to always check/fold on are those that have a ten, jack, or perhaps a queen in them.

If I get lucky and flop two pair with my suited 56, or something like one pair and a flush draw, I will usually play it hard and fast. Many times I've been able to get somebody all in with my two pair vs. their flopped top pair or overpair. Once in a while they hit their kicker, or the board pairs and I lose, but more often than not I can double up. And, sometimes my small flush draw runs into the nut flush draw, but I can always get lucky and win that matchup by making a small pair and missing the flush. The general point is that I want to get my money in with what is likely to be the best of it so I can build my stack.

Even though I still play my old way in most of the limit and even some of the pot limit games I play now, I have a few new moves in those as well. But modern no limit poker is so different from the old game I used to play that I can't see playing it in my old way.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that I have adapted to the new game as I see it. Faster structures and massive fields have make it necessary to gamble more early on and build a stack just to stay in the game, and tight, conservative play usually will not get me there. Next time I will talk about how and when I will change gears and when I find it is a good thing to be conservative again.

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