Inside the Villain's Head, Part 1: Initial Stereotyping

In poker, the ability to read what cards your opponent holds--and what he thinks about the strength of those cards--is so fundamental to winning that I've included it in two separate building blocks in my (ever evolving) poker skills pyramid:

The upper yellow skill block, Reading, is the actual ability to 1) put our opponent on a specific hand range; 2) determine what, if anything, they think our hand range and line is; and 3) figure out what their ultimate line, or course of action is (i.e., what they're trying to achieve in this hand, such as bluff us, get value from us, try to get to a showdown cheaply, etc.).

The lower skill block, Basic Villain Types and Tendencies, can best be thought of as a preamble, or foundational skill, to the upper Reading block. It's also a key component necessary to mastering other beginning/intermediate skills such as blind stealing and continuation betting. This identification of villain type and tendencies is what I want to talk about here, and that process begins with stereotyping.

When we first sit down at a table against new, unknown opponents that we've never before played against, we have little knowledge of what type of players they are, and, more importantly, what types of hands they play in different situations. We're dealt Jacks in middle position and see them open in early position. What the heck do we do? We don't know how tricky they are, what level of thought they're capable of, whether they understand basic concepts such as position and c-betting, if they play fit-or-fold poker, if they're calling stations, and so on. In other words, we know essentially nothing. But to beat them, we need to start accumulating information, and to do this, we have to begin somewhere really basic. Enter stereotyping.

Stereotyping, while being a (correctly) frowned upon practice in everyday life, is actually an accepted and beneficial skill to employ at the poker table. I've posted about this before (e.g., here). Stereotyping is the first step to figuring out what is going on inside the mind of a villain. It's far from being the full story about our opponent, and it's not necessarily even very accurate, but it is better than nothing. We begin with a basic stereotype and then work from there to narrow and refine our thoughts about said villain as we observe more of his or her play.

For instance, a new player joins our game. Are they an older conservative curmudgeon or a young flashy hot-shot? Are they female or male? Both age and sex are (very) rough indicators of how aggressive an average player is going to be. Same with how they dress, what jewelry if any they're wearing, and even how they stack their chips. Hell, even their posture matters.

Similarly, we can guess how loose or tight a player is going to be by things like their nationality. European players are generally looser than Americans, for instance. Asians are said to be more "gambly" than others. Rich amateur businessmen tend to be calling stations and surburban housewives tend to be nittier. And so on. No, this is not racist, or sexist, or whatever-else-ist. This is just the reality of poker, folks. We're in a battle when we sit down at the felt, and it's foolish to ignore any information because it's not politically correct in everyday life.

Other initial factors can affect our stereotyping. Is the player loud and talkative, or quiet and reserved? How much did they buy in for? How do they handle their chips? Are they drinking? Smoking? Checking out the drink girl? Playing keno? Etcetera, etcetera. Without seeing a villain play a single hand of poker, we are already beginning the process of figuring out what kind of player they are. And without anything else to go on, this means we can only start with what we see.

We're all taught that you can't accurately judge the content of a book by looking solely at its cover, but you can get a rough indication of what's inside by reading its title. This is what poker stereotyping is about-- creating an initial idea of the probable type of player the villain is, and then refining that type as we observe them actually play.

Again, our initial impressions could be far from the actual mark, but at a minimum this process of stereotyping gets us thinking about our opponents. Categorizing our opponents starts the process of getting inside their head, and that is truly what poker is all about: playing the player.

I'm out of time for today, but in the next installment I'll delve a little more deeply about the process of refining our initial stereotype of the villains we meet at the poker table.

Now it's off to the dinner table for me. Turkey and stuffing, oh boy! Happy Thanksgiving to all, regardless of your nationality, sex, age, or stereotype!

All-in for now...
-Bug

Wheaties, Aces & Probabilities

Let's say that someone asked you to tell them what President Franklin Roosevelt ate for breakfast on some particular Sunday morning in the year 1942. You probably couldn't answer this, right?

Well, that depends on what you mean by "answer." Unless there was a specific news item or event he was attending for breakfast that day, in which the foods were specifically mentioned by a reporter, we couldn't definitively state what the man ate....

...ah, but we could do some logical deduction to narrow the possibilities. We know for instance which foods were not available in those days, such as many of the modern commercial cereals. We also know that most people of that period tended to eat traditional "breakfast"-type foods, and not things like soups, pastas, and other "lunch" or "dinner" foods. We also know that FDR was in relatively poor health during this period, afflicted with polio, advancing age, and the stress of World War II, so we might rule out some of the heavier types of foods that might have been uncomfortable for him to consume, such as steak with eggs. We also know that his wife, Eleanor, looked closely after his health, and would probably have a say in what foods the President's chef did and did not serve her husband.

We could also look at FDR's schedule, and see whether he was at the White House that day, or whether he was on a trip, and what meetings he had scheduled for that morning, etcetera. We might also note that this was a Sunday, and people tend to eat "special" breakfasts on weekends. Perhaps he reportedly loved pancakes, but knew that they made him drowsy by noon. He might also have disliked waffles, tolerated french toast, and couldn't stand English muffins... and so on.

In other words, we could narrow down FDR's food choices by looking at all the seemingly unrelated things we know or could discern about the man and the situation he was in at that specific moment of his life. This could help us fine tune our information, and if pressed we could actually come up with a probabilistic guess at what he ate for breakfast on that specific day. This might look something like: 55% probability he had eggs, bacon, and toast, 30% probability that he had oatmeal, 10% chance he ate pancakes, and 5% probability he skipped breakfast altogether and just had a cup of coffee. In other words, we could put FDR on a "range" of breakfasts using deduction and logic.

This is the same type of reduction process you need to go through when trying to put your poker opponents on hand ranges. You need to pull in all the information you know about the player and the current situation to rule out cards, and narrow down the range of hands they hold. What type of player are they? Are they loose or tight? Aggressive or passive? Bluffy or ABC? What is their current mental state? Have they won or lost a big pot recently? What types of hands have we seen them play previously? What position are they in? Are they positionally aware? Are they playing L1, L2, or Level 3 poker? Are they betting, raising, or just calling in this particular hand? How are they reacting to the board texture? Are there any tells we can discern? Betting patterns? What other players are involved in the hand? What are those people doing, and how is this player reacting to them? What is the pot size? What cards do we know he can't have, such as those in our own hand or ones that were accidentally turned upright? And so on...

Putting players on a range of hands isn't rocket science, but it does take active, logical, deductive work. A solid, mid-position ABC player cold calls an UTG player's preflop raise? Well, we probably can remove AA-QQ, AK, AQ, and KQ from his range, as he would probably reraise with these to isolate. We can also probably remove many of the trap hands from his range, small suited connectors and gappers, and of course all the usual garbage hand, as we said he as a solid ABC player. This might leave small and medium pairs, some bigger suited aces, and medium suited connectors in his range. He might also be getting tricky with some bigger suited connectors, as we just saw him drag a big pot, and we know that he tends to open up his game if he feels he's free-rolling. The downstream players from him are all loose and passive, and we know that he knows this, so we can further eliminate hands that he would limp-reraise with. Etcetera. When the board comes out and we see what he does, we can further narrow the range based on how wet the flop is.

By the time we get to the river, we should be able to put this player on a fairly tight handful of possible cards. We can then estimate our own equity against this range and make good decisions based on seemingly sparse and unrelated information. Wheaties or Captain Crunch? Aces or a bluff? Poker is all about deductive reasoning to figure out what your opponent has in his hand... and that starts primarily with what he most likely doesn't hold, eliminating those from his range....

...and in doing so, we might just also be able to tell them what they ate for breakfast, too.

All-in for now...
-Bug
PS. While fishing was FDR’s favorite outdoor social activity, poker was one his favorite sources of indoor relaxation with friends and staff. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "New Deal," eh?