We've all heard the famous saying: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." The person who mistakes a few scraps of awareness for a comprehensive grasp of a particular activity is doomed to make huge errors when engaged in that activity. Lacking a foundation of integrating principles, and a recognition of the subject's true scope, he will inevitably distort and misapply the few lessons he has "learned." Such knowledge will then become a person's worst – and most dangerous – enemy.
The other day I was at the poker table when I witnessed a classic example of this. The game was $15-$30 hold'em, and the player on the button turned a 10-high flush. Let's call him Player Z, since he was last to act. Four other players paid to see the river card, which happened to pair the board. Given the progression of the action, there was more than ample reason for Player Z to conclude that he no longer held the best hand, if indeed he ever had. (For one thing, the final round of betting was the only round when the small blind's chips entered the pot first, and he wasn't the kind of player who had any illusions about bluffing four loose opponents.) Nevertheless, the pot was easily large enough to warrant a call of one final bet. And the good news for Player Z was that one bet was all it cost – or rather, that's all it should have cost. With the small blind leading and no raises to him, Player Z's button call would have closed the action.
But the devil in his ear told him to put in a raise, so that's what he did, despite all the available clues that he was beaten. Not surprisingly, the pot was raised and reraised by the time it got back to him, and since it's practically against Z's religion to fold a flush, he called. His hand didn't even win the bronze – there were two full houses out there and a higher flush, all of which was just as predictable as could be. In the end, he paid four big bets to find out what should have cost him one.
A couple of players not involved in the pot exchanged amused looks. Player Z noticed this, and felt compelled to offer a rationale for his course of action. So, he repeated something he'd heard at the poker table before. He said, "Well, I had to raise to find out where I was at."
Oops. Suddenly, I was reminded of yet another famous saying: "Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt." This is a textbook example of banging the square peg of a valid concept into a round hole marked "Does Not Apply."
To be sure, there are situations in poker in which the immediate purpose of betting or raising is to "find out where you are." But this strategy is contingent upon the idea that the information thus acquired can be put to some practical purpose, such as abandoning a weaker hand or a dead draw. Also, discovering where the strength lies can help to determine a strategy based on positional leverage – or it might reveal that one's position is all wrong for any such creative moves, which would factor heavily into the decision of whether to continue.
But does any of this pertain to Player Z's situation? For this concept to apply, the probe has to be sent out early, usually right after the flop. In some instances, it can apply to the betting on the turn as well, but Player Z waited until the very end, when there would be no further occasion to utilize the data he was supposedly seeking. At that point, if determining "where he was at" was truly his concern, all he had to do was call one bet and watch his opponents turn their cards up – and he would know soon enough.
The price being charged for knowledge here was $30; the only thing raising accomplished was to trigger a hike in the tuition to $120.
A few moments later, another player at the table proceeded to explain to Player Z the flaws in his reasoning. He wasn't overbearing or condescending about it, and Z listened intently, not the least bit offended. Still, in an attempt to show off how knowledgeable he was, this player was going out of his way to educate his opponent, which flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Indeed, one of poker's most fundamental maxims states that you should never educate your opponents, and the logic of that tenet would seem to be self-evident. And the fact that I was close enough to witness this tutoring meant that he was educating my opponent as well. Normally, I tend to be appalled by such impulses, but in this instance there was no harm done. You see, just as it's possible for a perfectly valid concept to be misapplied, so too is it possible for a perfectly valid poker axiom to have exceptions.
It shortly became apparent that this was just such an exception. Three hands later, after the rest of us had forgotten all about it, Player Z abruptly blurted out the dramatic pronouncement: "No! I still think I was right to find out where I stood by raising. My mistake was that I didn't have the discipline to act on what I found out. When I was reraised, I should have folded."
To put it kindly, Z's conclusion was even goofier than his original premise. After thinking about it, he had decided that putting in two bets and then mucking was somehow a superior strategy to paying off one bet and preserving the live status of his hand, thus retaining a chance (however slim) of winning a very large pot. Clearly, this illustrates that there is a certain type of opponent who won't hurt you even if other players do "educate" him – so there's no reason to get upset when you see them try. After all, if a little knowledge leads certain players to warped reasoning and expensive poker blunders, won't a little more knowledge lead them to more of the same? Won't that simply multiply their opportunities to distort and mismanage winning concepts?
I'm not suggesting that you go out of your way to mislead unsuspecting beginners with unsolicited false advice – which would be a pretty shabby thing to do. But if an opponent thinks badly, as opposed to not thinking very much at all, where's the danger to your profit if someone merely provides him with plenty of food for thought?