Confessions of a Nit

A few years ago I started hearing the word "nit" applied to a particular type of player- one who is extremely tight and cautious (I like the word "cautious" but you could also use the word "passive"). Being called a nit is kind of an insult. A lot of players equate a nit to a chicken-shit - a player who is simply afraid to take chances. Some dislike nits because it is so difficult to win big pots off them. Some players like to insult the nits in hopes it will make them play more recklessly.

The truth (and of course I'm generalizing) is that playing like a nit is profitable at low-stakes games. Why is that? I think it's because at $1/$2 NLHE, players generally make bigger bets in relation to the blind. It is not uncommon, in my experience, to see guys make $20 pre-flop bets. $20 doesn't seem like a lot of money, but when you view it as a bet that is 10 times the big blind, it is quite a lot. In a $10/$20 game, you would very rarely see a $200 pre-flop bet. Because the blinds are low at the $1/$2 level, lots of players are very loose with their starting hand requirements and want to see a lot of flops. By playing fewer hands, the nit has the advantage of usually holding the better starting hand, and only winning a few pots can be profitable because they are generally large compared to the blinds.

The big disadvantage to being a nit is that your opponents will quickly target you as a guy who can be pushed off hands. You can turn this to your advantage, however. The prejudice against the nit is that they have neither courage nor imagination - therefore when you do bet you will be given credit for having a legitimate hand. You can steal pots. as long as you don't do it so frequently as to endanger your nit status. If you have established yourself as a nit, when a bully tries to bluff you, you can bluff him back, and because at the low stakes these pots are usually several times the big blind, you only have to scoop a few to have a winning session. Let yourself be pushed off a lot of pots; you only have to scoop one here and there to stay in the positive. Don't get greedy.

Playing tight for the first couple of hours at the poker table has two advantages. 1) You develop a nit image which you can turn to your favour later on. 2) You can focus on trying to identify which of your opponents are the most likely to try to take advantage of you; these are not necessarily the most aggressive players, but the ones you think have pegged you for a nit. These are the ones you have to try to isolate and attack later on.

If this style of play appeals to you, you can do certain things to develop a nit image. When you are the only person at the table not to enter a "family pot", especially when you are in late position, it is so obvious that you are tight that even the dullest opponent will take note. Once I refused to enter an unraised family pot when I was in the small blind. This fold is so rare, particularly at the low-limit games, that the dealer remarked, "Everyone's in...except for one incredible tight-ass." I got away with murder for hours after that!

Remember, often what your opponent thinks you are holding is much more important than what you are actually holding.

Know When to Fold 'Em

The games referred to today are all $1/$2 no-limit texas hold 'em.

A few weeks ago I was playing poorly, having negative thoughts and losing money.

I remember my last trip to the casino when nothing seemed to go right. One of the things that happens when you are not doing well is that you tend to start over playing your good hands in an attempt to force things to turn around - and that's exactly the trap I fell into. I was bleeding chips, and instead of tightening up I started playing more and more hands just hoping to get lucky. I entered a family pot with 4h 5c and when the flop came down 4s 5s 6c my only thought was protecting my two pair against a flush draw. I made a bet about twice the size of the pot and the guy right after me - a guy who had been playing tight and smart - moved all-in on me. When this sort of thing happens you have to accept that your opponent either flopped a straight or trips; those are the only hands a sane person would re-raise with in this situation - just as I put in a big bet to protect against the flush, he was sure he had a better hand and he had to bet big in case I was actually drawing to the flush myself. So what did I do? Like the desperate donkey I was, I called. Yes, he had the straight. No, I did not make a full house. I realized that making a call like that, among several other donkey plays I made that day, was a sign to take a break from the game.

Yesterday I went back to the Casino. I played very well, more than doubling the money I took in. But more important than making or losing money is whether or not you played properly, and as look back on that session I am very happy with the choices I made.

Know when you are probably beat. I was in late position with $140 in chips. I had been playing for twenty minutes without having a decent hand when I looked at AK offsuit. There were six limpers ahead of me, so I decided to raise it from $2 to $15. To my surprise three of my opponents called my rather large bet. One guy, a Grouchy Old Guy, even said to me "What do you have? Ace king?" When the flop came Ac Qd 3c I was pretty sure I was good, but like the previous week I was afraid of the flush draw. So I bet $50. Two guys folded, but Grouchy Old Guy didn't seem fazed at all. "Let's make it $150," he said while pushing a big stack forward. Now the the tilty-donkey me of a few weeks ago would have called - after all I'd already put $65 in to this pot - and I've got a pair of aces with a king kicker. Well that's donkey thinking. GOG knows I've probably got an ace, so he only makes that bet if he's sure he's got me beat. So why should I throw my last $75 bucks away too? I fold and GOG shows his pocket 3's - he flopped the set. Even while part of me is angry that my hand didn't hold up, I'm very proud that I had the discipline to lay that hand down. Instead of being busted out, I still had that $75 left.

Two and a half hours later I had grown that $75 to $370 and I left with a nice profit - which could never have happened if I had made that one donkey call.

Tournament Strategy: Folding Your Way to Victory

It may sound silly but folding is sometimes the hardest thing to do, and this can be particularly true in tournaments.

I was playing an on-line free roll tournament yesterday with a massive 10,000 entrants. The top 250 players won entry into a tournament where real money could be won. This made the strategy interesting: whether you finished 1st or 250th, you got the same thing.

After a couple hours I was in 35th spot in a field with about 1,500 left. My strategy was just to try to keep my stack from shrinking and stay in the top 250 until the end. I picked on shorter stacks and avoided bigger stacks but the most important thing I did was that I folded. I folded a lot. As planned, by the time we got down to 250 players I was among them.

While I was folding my way to victory, I watched numerous others with much bigger stacks than mine play way too many hands and get knocked out. They played aggressively to build their stacks, but could not go into fold mode when doing so would guarantee they finish "in the money".

Although the tournament I'm describing is unique in it's pay out structure, I believe it illustrates an important point: In tournaments generally speaking, folding has power. Sure the all-in raise gets all the glory, but the humble fold is the move you need to perfect to become a great tournament player.

Tournament Strategy: The Early Stages

In my last post I talked about relative chip value in tournament play. In the first rounds of a tournament the blinds are small, so this is the time to play speculative hands hoping to build your stack early, right?

Wrong!

The early levels of a tournament are when you should be playing your tightest poker. Your goal in these early stages is to gather information on your opponents. You do not want to gamble away even small amounts of money. If the tournament goes well, you will win big pots to build your stack. Don't worry about contesting a lot of small pots at the start. Save those chips to double up with later.

Doyle Brunson advises playing tighter in tournaments than in ring games because if you get busted in a ring game you can buy more chips. True, there are some re-buy tournaments, where people can go nuts trying to build a stack early knowing they can buy back in. Personally I just don't understand that structure and I won't give any advice on re-buy tournaments. For normal tournaments, protecting your stack is your first priority and building your stack is a secondary concern.

T.J. Cloutier was an old school road gambler who for many years lived in Houston Texas. He used to play regularly in a big cash game in Dallas but often had only enough money for one buy in - if he lost that, he was broke. As you might imagine, this situation taught T.J. how to play very, very tight poker. For example, while other players think AK is a great hand, calling it "big slick", T.J.'s name for AK is "walking back to Houston". To T.J. every Dallas game was like a tournament, so it is not surprising that he became one of the great tournament players with six World Series of Poker bracelets.

Sure there is a time for looser, more aggressive play in a tournament. That time is when everybody else is playing scared - not in the early stages when the pots are small and nobody is afraid to play them.

Tight is Right: The Conclusion

In my post Tight is Right, I outlined an experiment to only play certain cards in certain positions over 1,000 hands of play-money hold 'em. To review, my playable hands were as follows:

From Early Position: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs, AQs, TT, and AKo
From Middle Position: all of the above hands, plus AJs, KQs, 99, A10s and AQo
From Late Position: all of the above hands, plus KJs, 88, QJs, K10s, A9s, AJo

It was really difficult at first to discipline myself to only playing these cards. Everyone folds to me on the button and I'm holding KQ off-suit? I guess I gotta fold. I have four players calling a limp ahead of me and I get dealt 77? I guess I gotta fold. This exercise was a great way to discipline myself to making tough folds pre-flop. I even folded some of the hands my rules would have allowed me to play when another player showed significant strength. You re-raised my big raise? Okay, I can fold QJs here.

The results? After 1,000 hands I finished ahead by 893 bets. In my $50 play-money game that comes to $44,650. Yes that's play money. People play better when it's real money, so you can't expect the same results but it still illustrates the general principal that playing tight poker is the foundation you should build your game around.

Once you have disciplined yourself to play tight, then you can start adding other weapons to your arsenal. You will learn the best times to steal the blinds, when and how to defend your blinds, when to raise with a strong hand and when to check with a strong hand. You will learn who you can bluff and who you can't and you will learn when someone is likely to be bluffing you. But as you learn all of these things you must never forget that tight poker is the foundation your game is built upon. You will not do silly or reckless things. You will be able to wait for as long as it takes to set a perfect trap, or to make the effective bluff. You will have more patience than those you play against and that will make you a great poker player.

Tight is Right

The formula for making money playing poker is very simple but human nature is such that most people find it almost impossible to follow the very simple formula. In a way it is like losing weight. Most of us could lose weight if we followed the simple formula: eat less and exercise more - yet it is very difficult to actually make yourself do it. The formula for winning money at poker is playing "tight"- playing when it is likely that you are holding the best hand and making your opponents pay for holding worse hands. Only playing good starting hands, and only continuing to play when it is very unlikely someone has you beat, is to play tight. A tight player does not bluff frequently, and against certain opponents (maniacs) will never bluff at all.

Play tight. Wait for the good cards. Let others bluff at you when you have the monster hands.

Sounds boring, I know. Bluffing, chasing draws, going all-in with a chance of being second best - all these things are exciting. True. You know what else is fun? Winning. If you are playing poker because you are an adrenaline junky, go ahead and play as loose as you like. If you want to make money I suggest you play tight.

The key to playing tight is to establish before you even sit down at the table what hands you can play from which position. When I'm in tight mode, these are the only hands I will allow myself to play:


From Early Position: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs, AQs, TT, and AKo

From Middle Position: all of the above hands, plus AJs, KQs, 99, A10s and AQo

From Late Position: all of the above hands, plus KJs, 88, QJs, K10s, A9s, AJ

That's it. I will leave the blinds out of it for now. Playing from the blinds requires a separate discussion.

If believe you restrict yourself to these starting hands, you will improve your chances of winning dramatically, particularly if you are playing against weak opponents. To test my theory, I am going to play 1,000 hands on-line restricting myself to these hands. Okay, I'm going to be playing for play money, but it should be interesting to see what happens.

(Note: results of this experiment were posted Sept.22/10 in Tight is Right: The Conclusion )