This is the ninth installment of my weekly poker column in the Economic Times, Range Rover.
‘Where is your edge?’ When you play poker, it is useful to ask yourself this question all the time. You make money at a poker table only when you have an edge over the other players. But how do you find it, and how can you quantify it? One useful prism through which to view this subject is a concept I was first introduced to by Tommy Angelo’s magnificent book, The Elements of Poker: Reciprocality.
‘Before anything flows,’ Angelo writes, ‘there must be a difference. Between different elevations, water flows. Between different pressures, air flows. Between different poker players, money flows.’ Angelo defines reciprocality as ‘any difference between you and your opponents that affects your bottom line.’ He writes, ‘Reciprocality says that when you and your opponent would do the same thing in a given situation, no money moves, and when you do something different, it does.’
Let me illustrate that with an example: You have A9s on the button and call a UTG raise from a straightforward ABC nit. The flop comes A82r, and you have top pair, weak kicker and a backdoor flush draw. He bets, you call. The turn is an offsuit J, the river is another brick, and he basically triple-barrels. Now, given player profile, you fold either turn or river. But you know that had the positions been reversed, then playing against you with A9s, he would have called all three streets because he can’t fold top pair. This, then, would be one difference between you and him. This would be a winning hand for you, even though you lost money on it, because you lost less than your opponent would have in your place. Since over time, in the mythical long run, everybody will get all hands and experience all situations, that makes you a long-term winner over him. This is reciprocality.
Note that you should evaluate hands based on what the most profitable play was, not what the result of it was. For example, you call a UTG raise with JJ, and the flop comes AJ9r with an offsuit 2 on the turn and 6 on the river. The optimal play here is to get as much of your stack in as possible with middle set. Now, if your opponent has AA for top set, you get stacked, which is fine, because over time you make far more here against AK, AQ, AJ, 99 etc than you lose to AA. (You’re playing ranges, not hands.) Someone who is more timid, or likes to slowplay when he shouldn’t, might lose less money than you in this hand. But that doesn’t mean he won the reciprocality battle: you took the more profitable line here. The expected value (EV) of your actions matters, not the outcome.
Angelo makes the excellent point that reciprocality matters not just in terms of the hands you play, but in every aspect of the game. There’s information reciprocality: do you give off less information than your opponents? There’s bankroll reciprocality: do you manage your bankroll better? There’s quitting reciprocaility: are you better at figuring out when to quit a session? And so on. Even something seemingly unrelated to poker like having a healthy diet or getting adequate sleep could give you reciprocality brownie points that translate into profit. Hell, your edge in poker could lie in avoiding oily food and carbonated drinks.
Reciprocality can be a useful prism through which to view the game. It can make you more observant and aware of your opponents’ weaknesses and mistakes, while helping you cut down on your own. Also, implicit in the concept is the realisation that what matters is not the cards dealt to us, but how we play them. In life, which is inherently unfair, we are dealt just one hand and have just the one lifetime in which to make the most of it. Whining about it is sub-optimal; get off your butt and do something today that makes a difference to your life.
Previously on Range Rover:
Raking Bad
Om Namah Volume
Make No Mistake…
Kitne Big Blind The
Sweet Dopamine
The Balancing Act
The Numbers Game
The Bookshop Romeo