1. If you make enough +EV bets, you must win.
2. If you make enough–EV bets, you must lose.
If you bet only when you are +EV and don’t bet when you are–EV, you must eventually win. However, because there are so many unknowns, it is impossible to make only +EV bets. Even the greatest players often misread situations and make–EV bets.
Winners continually strive to make +EV bets.17 They constantly count the pot, calculate the odds of making their hands, determine the probability that their hand will win, assess the chances that others will fold, check, bet, call, or raise, and consider many other factors. Of course, they make some mistakes, but they are right more often than they are wrong. Once they estimate the EVs, they act decisively.
Losers don’t know or don’t care about EV, don’t bother to make these calculations, or miscalculate. Sometimes they get the best of it, but fail to act decisively enough. Many aggressive losers appear to be acting decisively, but they are just gambling foolishly. Decisive action occurs only after you have determined that you have the best of it.
The Central Information-Management Principles
Accurately estimating your EV is often difficult, and it’s occasionally impossible. You usually can’t calculate the exact probabilities and potential gains and losses because you don’t know the other players’ cards, nor do you know what they’ll do.
Risk management depends on information management because:
• The less information you have, the higher your risks and the lower your rewards.
• The more information your opponents have, the higher your risks and the lower your rewards.
For example, since you don’t know your opponents’ cards, you can’t know whether your hand is better, equal, or worse than theirs. You may not know whether the cards you hope to catch will let you win the pot. And you can rarely be sure of what your opponents will do. Without knowing their cards and thoughts, you can’t be sure of your EV. (Slansky puts this all in bold type.)
If everybody’s cards were showing at all times, there would always be a precise, mathematically correct play for each player. Any player who deviated from his correct play would be reducing his mathematical expectation and increasing the expectation of his opponents.
Of course, if all cards were exposed at all times, there wouldn’t be a game of poker. The art of poker is filling the gaps in the incomplete information provided by your opponents’ betting and the exposed cards in open-handed games, and at the same time preventing your opponents from discovering any more than what you want them to know about your hand.
That leads us to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker:
Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their cards the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.18
Virtually every significant winner knows and applies that theorem. It is the foundation of all information management. It can be briefly summarized as the more you know, and the less they know, the lower your risks and the greater your edge. Therefore, the critical risk/information-management tasks can be simply stated.
1. Learn your opponents’ situations and intentions.
2. Conceal your own situation and intentions.
If you perform both tasks well, your risks go down and your rewards go up. For example, if you see that an opponent will fold if you bet, you can easily bluff him. Your superior information management lets you take an apparently risky action without taking any risk!
The law of supply and demand applies to information. If everyone knows certain information, it has hardly any value. If you are the only one who knows it, it can be priceless. Speed is therefore critically important. The sooner you learn something, the more valuable it is. As an extreme example, if you could learn in advance which cards were coming, you would always win. If you can read your opponents faster and better than they can read you, you will usually have the best of it.
More Details About Information Management
Sklansky’s theorem and Malmuth’s quotation are, I believe, the most important statements ever written about poker. The rest of this book will discuss the ways that winners:
• Get the best of it by acquiring more information, processing it well, and transmitting only the information they want opponents to have.
• Make the most of it by acting decisively.
The goal of parts 2–5 is to help you create a favorable information balance by getting more and transmitting less information.
Part 2, “Winners Control Their Focus,” states that winners focus on whatever helps them to win, and they ignore or minimize everything else. They are so single-minded that poker becomes their entire world, at least when they are playing. If something helps them, they will use it. If it does not affect them, they will ignore it. If it harms them, they will avoid it. Losers do not focus nearly as well. Their attention drifts from subject to subject, and they waste time and energy on irrelevancies.
Part 3, “Winners Control Their Thought Processes,” states that winners and losers don’t just focus on different subjects. They think in very different ways. It doesn’t matter what information you get if you don’t process it correctly. Losers think badly because they don’t want to work hard, and they want to preserve their cherished illusions about poker and themselves. Winners have the discipline to work hard, they want to know the truth, and they think in ways that help t0 discover it.
Part 4, “Winners Control the Information They Transmit,” discusses the second half of The Fundamental Theorem of Poker, deceiving your opponents. Since deceptive actions normally reduce your short-term EV, you must ensure that you pay less now than you gain later. One cost that winners minimize, but losers overvalue is their opponents’ feelings about them. Winners make deceptive moves and create images that cost them affection or even respect, but get the best long-term results.
Part 5, “Winners Control Their Reactions to Feelings,” is a transition between getting the best of it by managing information and making the most of it by acting decisively. You need to control your emotional reactions to perform both tasks well. Poor emotional control has destroyed many talented players, and good control has helped many less gifted players to win consistently.
Accepting responsibility for your own results is the foundation of good control. Losers blame bad luck, mistakes by dealers and other players, unfair rules, and many other factors to protect their egos by rejecting this responsibility. Winners accept responsibility, and it helps them stay in control.
You Must Act Decisively
Parts 2–5 tell you how to get an edge. but that edge will accomplish little unless you exploit it by acting DECISIVELY.
The word “decisive” was emphasized because you can’t fully exploit your edge without being decisive. The ability to exploit edges is almost independent of the ability to get them. Some losers know what to do, but don’t do it.
Unfortunately, no matter how well you manage information, nearly all poker decisions must be made with incomplete information. Some risk seekers don’t care; instead of trying to get enough information, they just act impulsively. Some risk avoiders say, “Don’t make a decision until you get all the facts,” but you’ll hardly ever get them all. This position is often just an excuse for indecisiveness.
Whether