Play Tight
I’m often asked in interviews what is the biggest tip I can give new players. Well, my number one tip is always to play tight. From my experience, most new players play about 80% of the hands they are dealt in Texas Hold’em. In fact, the reverse should be the case; they should only play about 20% of the hands they are dealt. This probably isn’t earth-shattering news to anyone who has played a reasonable amount of poker. But it remains a deep concept that is worth deeply understanding.
The concept of playing tight actually only applies to the overall percentage of hands you play. When you are first to act or under the gun, you should play so tight that you only play around 5% of the hands you are dealt; while in other positions, like the button or the big blind, you can drastically expand that percentage. It is only the average that should be around 20%. Up front, almost no hand should look good to you unless it is A-Q or better or at least 6-6 or better. But why so tight?
There are many reasons to play super tight up front, but the one I want to focus on has to do with a decision-making disadvantage. When we play poker, we never want to lose sight of the fact that is a game of decisionmaking. If you are better at making those decisions than your opponents, you will win lots of money. The road to becoming the better decision-maker is to bring to bear the maximum amount of information available to you. In poker, this means using the information available to you to narrow down the holdings of your opponents. And therein lies the problem with playing loose up front. You will always be acting with the least information available because you don’t know what your opponents are going to do after you. They, however, will always know what your action is when they have to act. They will have been able to watch you look at your cards. They will have been able to study your face, your body posture, the way you threw the chips in the pot when you acted. But you? You will have none of that information.
Consider an example from the business world. In a business negotiation it is a huge disadvantage to go first. You have no idea what the other person’s range might be, so you run the risk of negotiating against yourself. It is a disaster when you offer an amount in a negotiation that is higher than the amount the other negotiator would have accepted.
It follows that it is better to act from a position of strength. You need to have done the maximum research on the topic so that you have acquired information that will enable you to offer the most reasonable price – one that is lower than what your opponent wants, but close enough to his range.
What about the guy who is second to act in the negotiation? Well, he doesn’t have to work quite as hard because he’s at a huge advantage. He already knows the other person’s range. He can negotiate from that. This not to say that he doesn’t need to know his stuff; he does, because he needs to know if the first guy has lowballed him. But he doesn’t need to be quite as strong acting second.
Poker is just like this: If you’re second to act, you can really loosen up. You can call raises with hands you would never raise with in first position, because you know you will be acting second throughout the rest of the decision- making process – acting with the maximum amount of information. You will be able to limp in with a much wider range of hands when people have limped in front of you, because the dangers of getting raised behind you are smaller when only the blinds are left to act. And when the action gets to the button and everyone has folded in front of you, you can raise with 70% to 80% of the hands you are dealt; because everyone knows you will act last for the rest of the hand.
The poor guy under the gun? Well, for him the opposite is always true. He can’t limp in because the danger of being raised is too high – he has no idea what the nine people left to act are going to do. For the rest of the hand, he knows he will have to act early in the decisionmaking process. Having no idea of the quality of his nine opponents’ holdings, he has to be much more choosy about the hands he raises with, since the chances of someone waking up with a much better hand are so high.
Being the first to act in poker is like being handcuffed to the decision-making process. So play tight up front!
