Hi! While patience, revered as the most important virtue in poker, will protect your chip stack, patience alone will not win a sit n go poker tournament. Aggression, on the other hand, is the flip side of patience. Patience is about waiting. Aggression is about acting. And, it is aggression that wins poker tournaments. And, it wins at almost everything else in life, too.
So, what is this mystical, magical, valuable poker commodity we call aggression? Tournament aggression is the unified application of a finely honed set of skills - a deep understanding of both probabilities and psychology, together with knowing when, where, against whom, and how much to most effectively bet.
In the context of relentless, suffocating aggression, our definition of aggression includes all of these possibilities:
- Bluffing, semi-bluffing, continuation betting, and betting and raising with air.
- Doing all of those things, but with a legitimate hand. And,
- Exotic moves and plays, against strength or weakness, with or without a hand, against any number of opponents, and in position or not.
Does this mean that you should bet and raise every hand like a maniac? Nope. You must still carefully pick your spots and targets, that is part of the skill. But, when you do decide to play, you usually play very aggressively.
All of the preceding describes the obvious, mechanical side of aggression. The visible output, so to speak. Now, for the good part. The mental side of aggression. Learning how probability affects aggression, and how aggression affects psychology.
Before you can become naturally and suffocatingly aggressive, you must first gain the confidence to overcome your fears and uncertainty about aggression. That is where a deep understanding of probabilities comes in. Poker probability favors aggression. So, let's talk about the counter-intuitive science of probability.
Most aggression seems counter-intuitive. Indeed, it may seem like throwing good chips after bad. You are concerned, and concern is a natural instinct. Your brain wants to protect you, it does not want to see you hurt yourself. So, you cannot help but think:
- What if my hand is beaten?
- What if I are walking into a trap?
- What if I run out of chips during the hand?
- What if I get unlucky?
These are seemingly legitimate concerns. So you are hesitant. Consequently, you are inclined to wait patiently for a solid hand, rather than to act in a way that seems unwise. In a very real sense, achieving the ability to aggress, is mostly about learning to overcome your fear and uncertainty - fear of the unknown and fear of losing. Fearlessness, in this setting though, is a learned skill, not blind maniacal behavior.
When you have been stopped by fear, you are failing to appreciate that the probabilities are actually with you. This is because, probabilities often seem to, and indeed often do, work counter-intuitively.
A good example of the way counter-intuitive probabilities work is the solution to The Monty Hall Paradox. Behind one door is a valuable prize, but nothing is behind the other two doors. You are asked to pick one door. Then, Monty opens one of the two other doors, which opens to reveal nothing. He then offers you the chance to change your pick to the other unopened door.
Should you change? Would you change? Most folks do not change. But, the counter-intuitive, probability correct, answer is that you should change.
Why? Because, in very lay terms, you probably picked wrong in the first place, when the odds were 2-to-1 against you. But, now Monty has offered you what likely is a 1-in-2 chance to win. Definitely better odds than your first try. So, if you change your pick to the other unopened door, rather than your first choice, you will win the big prize more often than had you not changed.
Still not a believer? Okay, go to http://math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/monty.html. Play their Monty Hall Paradox game a few thousand times. Then, let me know about your new found appreciation for the counter-intuitiveness of probability science.
Alright, so what does Monty Hall have to do with poker aggression? Well, not much. But, the example serves well to illustrate how problems in probability often have answers that do not seem logical. So, in the case of poker, aggression will indeed tend to shorten your odds, as you will soon see below. Just as Monty shortened the odds for you by allowing you to change doors. Neither intuitively seem right, changing doors or aggression, but probability-wise they are the correct plays.
Here is a short explanation of how poker aggression works. For example, most of the time, neither you nor your opponent will hold or flop a solid hand. That is an absolute mathematical fact. One in which you can have a great deal of confidence. Indeed, one upon which you can bet, a lot. In the Monty Hall analogy, think how the odds are against you selecting the right door on your first attempt. In poker, the probabilities work the same. The odds are against anyone, including yourself, holding or hitting a solid enough hand worth risking a lot of chips.
Therefore, when you aggress, since no one likely holds a playable hand, you give yourself several possible ways to win. For example, you could win right there because:
- Your opponent prefers for himself to be the first aggressor, and folds.
- Your opponent may value his currently comfortable situation over engaging in any risk taking, and folds.
- Your opponent likely does not have a solid enough hand to play, and folds. And,
- Your opponent, fearing your tactics, does not want to lose chips or damage his table image by having to back down later in the hand, and folds.
So, you see, an affect of aggression is that it tends to transfer your fear and concern to your opponents. Once you aggress, your worrying is likely over. Then, it is your opponent's turn to worry. Reverse psychology at work. Now, your opponent is having concerns like:
- Does he really have it?
- Is he bluffing?
- Can I out play him?
- Can my hand beat his?
- Can my hand improve to beat his?
- If I give up will I lose my good table image? And,
- If I lose the hand will I have enough chips left to play my game?
Hence, your opponent begins to fashion his own probability model for the situation:
- He has me beat, thus I lose.
- He is bluffing, but still has a better hand, thus I lose.
- I have him beat, but I get unlucky, thus I lose. And,
- I have a better hand that stands up, thus I win.
So, he thinks to himself, 'three out of four ways to lose, I fold'. This is not necessarily good logic, nor is it an entirely accurate statement of the probabilities. But, it represents a likely, intuitive style of thought, skewed by the heat of battle, to fit a battered opponent's perspective, supplied by a brain that wants to protect its owner from harm.
In other words, aggression can help make your opponents think wrong. And thus, you have yet another advantage of aggression. There in, is the essence of the psychology of aggression. Thus, for all of these reasons, aggression will shorten your odds. Or said differently, aggression will significantly increase your chances of winning the pot right there, regardless of whether you hold or hit a playable hand. So, rather than aggression being a wasteful proposition; which would be our natural inclination, since probabilities are often counter-intuitive, aggression is, probability-wise, a winning proposition.
And, as you refine your aggressive skill, you will become very hard to read, still another benefit of aggression. At that point, all that your opponents will know for certain is that if they play in a hand with you, it is going to be a rough, expensive ride. And, that they could lose a lot of chips. Consequently, they will often decline your invitation to the dance.
For a lot of players, though, aggression just does not feel right. It runs against their natural or cultural tendencies. In some cases, it might even make them physically uncomfortable. Not only does it go against their logic, as when aggressing with nothing; but, it also can trigger feelings of guilt, as it is akin to bullying, lying and stealing. Well, I just hope that those players are sitting at my table.
To sum up, aggression is not something we can easily learn in a book. We have inherent roadblocks - such as our logic, our fear, and for some, their ethics. Nevertheless, it works. Time and time again, it is aggression, plus a bit of luck, that wins sit n go poker tournaments.
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Thanks and Good Luck!
R. Steve McCollum (rstevemccollum) www.sitngoholdempoker.com
"Good judgement comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgement." ~Cowboy Proverb
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