You enter a casino, walk up to the poker desk, and one of two things happen. Either you are blessed with an immediate choice of available seats in two or more games, or, more frequently, there is only one seat available to you - now or after waiting awhile. In the second situation you usually take the available seat, even if you do not particularly like the game, rather than sitting around until your name is called for a “better” seat. So now that you find yourself playing at some table of which your first impressions were at least somewhat negative, what is your game plan? Do you consciously try to adjust your style of play to better fit that particular game, or do you just play your usual style? Style of course refers to tightness versus looseness, aggressiveness versus conservatism, frequency of bluffs, and many other specific adjustments.

In theory at least, it clearly must be correct to adjust your game to optimize your chances of winning. Although one single style of play may give good results in certain types of games, clearly no one single style of play is optimal for all types of games unless that style includes making appropriate adjustments. For example, if there is a very tight player in a loose game, many of the other player become aware of his tendencies, and compensate, usually to the tight player’s disadvantage. The tight player would be well advised to play an occasional low end hand and to increase his bluffing frequency.

For adjusting-your-style purposes, the two major variables characterizing poker games are control and bulk. Control, the most important, refers to your degree of control over the game, ranging from dangerous (uncontrollable) to blissful (you do most of the betting and raising). Bulk refers to the looseness-tightness of the game, which often can be directly measured by the average number of players seeing the flop per deal or per round (and hence is proportional to the average dollars per pot). These two variables thus give rise to four basic categories of poker games:

Category Expected Win

  1. loose and blissful (anything works) 2+
  2. loose and dangerous (often capped out before flop) 2- 3. tight and blissful (increase bluffing) 1+
  3. tight and dangerous (you play mainly for enjoyment)

1- The average Expected Win (for an expert), given in big bets per hour, is admittedly very rough and of course can vary a lot from game to game.

Note that the 2- estimate for category 2, loose and dangerous, is for the long run (but often there is no long run) and has a rather large deviation.

Although your largest wins of the year usually occur in these games, so do your largest losses. Also it is

easy to misevaluate one of these games, and, it might well turn out that your
average hourly win is less than in the (safer) category 3 game.

Otherwise put, control directly effects your frequency of winning sessions; bulk impacts the magnitude of your wins and losses. A conservative professional who prefers a more steady income might well seek out the more controllable games.

What many of us consider to be standard good strategy for Omaha and hold’em is actually formulated for playing in good games, that is, tightish dangerous games. When playing in lesser games, adjustments will frequently increase your hourly win rate. For example, a typical “professional” approach to playing in a “good” hold’em game is to play only very good starting hands with some occasional frolics in late position (perhaps more for smokescreen than for profit). But if the game is very loose or there are some well placed fish constantly donating, clearly a number of lesser hands could and should be played at a profit. The same is generally true for limit Omaha (see my article on “relativity”, which suggests playing slightly tighter starting hands than the majority of players in the game, The Card Player, March 20, 1992), although position in Omaha is less important than in hold’em.

Perhaps the most significant adjustments have to be made for the wild and wooly dangerous and frequently capped-before-the-flop games. For these you obviously tend to play only very good starting hands. But if the two most dangerous (overly aggressive) players are well placed (generally to your right), you can sometimes sneak in on lesser hands on which you expect to show an overall profit. Even if you play some questionable hands (that might have a slightly negative expectency), the fact that you play these lesser hands (go out of your way to show it proudly) tends to add to your take on good hands. Otherwise put, this major volume adjustment at poker is much like shifting gears. Downshift to dangerous (play less hands), gear up to easy, more controllable games (play as many hands as you profitably can).