Seeing The Forest Through The (Decision) Trees

I've long thought that it would be desirable to create a flow chart, or "decision tree" to follow to when playing a hand of poker. Harrington, for example, offers up eleven or twelve elements of a hand that one should consider when deciding whether to raise, call, or fold in a specific tournament situation. Expanding on this, I believe there exists a logical flow chart of questions that one could walk through in any given poker situation to arrive at the near-optimal action. This is the holy grail of all poker bot creators, by the way; i.e., the logic that needs to be worked through to decide the best move is really just the end result of a series of questions that need to be internally asked before acting. Those questions might go something like this:

1. Is this a cash game or tournament? Tournament
2. Single table or multi-table? Single
3. What stage of the tournament am I in? Late
4. What is the payout structure? Flat
5. Do I want to just take the hill or accumulate chips? Take the hill
6. What is my M? Eight
7. How many opponents are left? Six
8. What are their Ms? Larger than mine by factor of 1.5-4x.
9. What is my position? Late position
10. Who has acted before me? Loose maniac
11. What is my hand? A8o
12. How does this compare to the loose manaic's range. Strong
13. Who is left to act after me? Tight nits
14. Do I want the nits to be in the hand or out? Out
15. Will a raise keep the nits out? Yes
16. If I raise, how much? All-in
17. Okay, what is my shoving range? All pairs, AX+, and KT+
18. Do I have one of those cards? Yes, therefore shove.

Along these same lines, Mr. Multi and I were talking cards this afternoon (yes, your tax dollars hard at work), and the subject of poker strategy vs. tactics came up. After MM left my office, I thought about all of this some more and came to the conclusion that before someone could even begin to develop strategies and tactics (let alone a detailed decision tree like above), one would have to decide first and foremost what the overall poker Objective is.

Objective. The primary objective for most of us when playing poker is the same: make money. But there may be secondary objectives, and those might be quite different for various players. My own goal when sitting down to play, for instance, is often to try out a new technique (such as mid-position blind stealing against a specific weak-tight player) or to work on improving my hand reading abilities. In other words, improving is often an objective in itself. The Guru, in contrast, may only be interested in the money-making aspect of the game. Others players I know sit down at the felt for mostly social reasons. Others do it to blow off steam and/or relax. Still others may just want a daily adrenaline fix, with money not really being a big concern.

So why is quantifying one's objective so important? Answer: because you can't get what you want in life unless you know what it is that you want in the first place. Another definition of the term "objective" is "goal." One should ask oneself what is the goal (or purpose) of playing poker for him or herself. I.e., without understanding "why" you're going to play, you cannot then move on to the next step, which is deciding on a strategy to achieve that goal.

Strategy. Okay, so what is strategy in the context of poker? This is a harder one to answer, but I think it really boils down to what one's overall plan is to achieve the original objective(s). If your primary poker goal is to simply make money, then the strategy you employ will be quite different than for someone who wants to, say, work on their beginning pot limit Omaha skills. For the former, finding three or four of the fishiest, highest-dollar games that are supportable by a bankroll should be the high level game plan, or strategy. In contrast, for the latter, finding a single, full-ring, slow, low-stakes PLO table so that you can soak up as much as you can should be your basic plan, or strategy.

Think of strategy as the high-level approach to a game. For instance, you might decide that the best strategy to win a SnG is to become the table captain and get the other players to react to you. Play offense, in other words, and not defense. Or you might decide that the opposite is the best overall strategy to achieve the goal. Like many things in poker, the strategy you employ depends on a lot of other, higher-level factors. But above all else, it depends on your objective(s). Once you've nailed down an objective, it allows you to choose a strategy, which will then in turn allow you to move on to specific tactics.

Tactics. So what is the difference between tactics and strategy? In a phrase: level of detail. While strategy looks at the big picture plan for achieving an objective (e.g., create a loose and wild image with trash hands, so that I can get my opponents to pay me off later when I have big hands), tactics are nothing more than finer grained refinements to the strategy (e.g., I will raise up suited connectors from early position and show my bluffs early in the tournament to establish my loose and wild image; later, when the blinds get above 50/100, I will tighten up and only raise big pairs from EP, but my opponents won't know that I've shifted gears….) In a sense, tactics are really just the nitty-gritty detail questions that form the basis of the aforementioned decision tree; the tactics employed are quite literally just the systematic plan of questions and actions in the decision tree that derive from the higher-level strategy.

So how does any of this really matter? Good question. I think it really boils down to stepping back from all the poker books, strategy sessions, web forums, etc. that we absorb ourselves in, to see the forest of why we each play poker. Only after we figure out the objectives for ourselves, can we decide on strategies to achieve those goals, and then employ the tactics to implement the strategies in a sound and logical manner.

All-in for now…
-Bug