The Perils of Game-Play Scripts

You went broke as soon as the dealer cut the deck. You just didn't know it yet. You raised with the A K, got called, and flopped a beautiful Q J 10. You checked, your opponent bet, and you raised all in. He called with top set (Q Q). You were the favorite, but then another jack fell on the river and his full house beat your Broadway straight.

That was bad, ugly luck. It made you paranoid. You wanted to check the cameras and everyone's sleeves. It was scripted. The truth was that as soon as those cards got shuffled and cut in that way, the rest of the events happened as they had to.

Phil Laak likes to say the dealer holds "the future." It's an existential concept. You think you have free will, but those events had to play out the way they did. Granted, that is an extreme example.

But there are those times when you simply have no choice. Do yourself a favor and just accept it. Remind yourself that those situations can go the other way and help you. If you don't want to get "zen" about it and embrace the fate of the universe, think about it in a practical way. How does freaking out help you? If getting paranoid makes you more vigilant, maybe there's a small positive effect. But for most of us, getting worked up about it is toxically counterproductive.

What's my advice? Try to enable this dynamic to profit you in more basic situations. Here's an example: You're in the money in a no-limit hold'em tournament with two tables to go; 18th place pays double the buy-in ($200), whereas first place pays $6,000. There's $100,000 in tourney chips in play, and your stack is well above par ($13,000) with the blinds at $200-$400. The under-the-gun (UTG) player (also with $13,000) limps in, you raise to $1,200 with A-Q, and only he calls. The flop comes A-8-3 and Mr. UTG checks. You bet $2,000, and he calls. The turn is a 7. He checks again. You bet $4,000, and he thinks about it and calls (now there's a whopping $15,000 in the pot). The river is another 8 and he goes all in. There's $20,800 in the pot and it will cost you everything ($5,800) to call. Should you call? If I were in that situation, I would have to call. If he showed me A-K or trip eights (or better), he earned it. I would just be hoping he had A-J or worse. That is an example of what I call a "game-play script." You made reasonable, common, generally profitable bets, and the winner was simply determined by the cards.

Try to think about what game-play scripts you can exploit. How can you play your hands so that you profit from them? How can you limit your losses in game-play scripts?

Let's flip it around. If you have A-K in early position and are moderately deep-stacked in a tournament, I suggest you not raise with it preflop. If you raise, you announce your hand and can't easily exploit the game-play script. Instead, try to trap an A-Q or A-J in a situation like the one above. And remember that the amounts and order of the bets tell a story. Mr. UTG was playing as if he had a weak ace. If he was trapping with A-K, he was exploiting the game-play script.

As an exercise, consider those situations in which you can't get away from a losing hand and then find a way to be on the positive side of it. Good poker is not scripted, because pros mix up their play to be unpredictable. Novice and bad players are very predictable and fall into more game-play scripts. Learn the common game-play scripts and how to exploit them.

More important than knowing most everything is knowing when you don't.

I don't know everything. Tell me when I'm wrong.

Dan Abrams was the writer/producer of the documentary on the World Series of Poker in 2000 for the Discovery Channel, and the post producer/writer for the World Poker Tour in its first season. He may be contacted at: resolver@corpania.com.