Poker as SPORT

When I walked into the club last Wednesday, a number of people came up to me to ask we whether I would be playing "No, No, No" again.

I was able to answer "No" (just the once). Tonight was "SPORT".

Almost universally, the other players immediately offered a possible meaning for today's acronym (at least for the "S" - some of them petered out after that).

Kirit came up with the quickest and most complete alternative version: "Shove, Push, Overbet, Re-shove and Tilt"

I decided to keep the real meanings to myself for the time being (mainly because I didn't want to stifle the creative guessing ... )

S for Spew ? S for Solid ? S for Stud ? S for Stacks ?

I can now reveal that this is what I had in mind:

S for Situations / Situational. I do believe that optimum poker is about identifying, understanding and exploiting the situations that arise. A situation can be as simple as "I have 8BB on the button; it's folded to me; I have two cards; I'm all-in !".

Most are a little more complex, and there can be dozens of factors to consider. However, by paying attention to the key variables - stacks, position, betting patterns and so on - we can make more good decisions.

In today's case, I intended "S" to focus me on actively seeking out good situations that didn't rely excessively on hitting good cards.

P for Position. Many of my acronyms will contain "P" since position is so crucial. I like to think it has the special property that no matter how much importance you have given to it, it's always a little bit more important than that.

Position is of course vital in creating and maximising many Situations.

O for Opponents. Playing at The International, one is generally facing a strong field. I do believe that the standard of play is high. I have certainly found that a standard £100 MTT here attracts a tougher field than a GUKPT ot a WSOP event.

The other thing is that I will know a lot of the players. In any case, I was conscious that I wanted to actively bring my knowledge and history with players into my thinking.

Studying the Opponents and their Position is of course useful in identifying good Situations.

R for Reads. When I first started playing, I believed it was a waste of time looking for reads. I thought betting patterns and other objective information were much more important.

Part of the reason I did not pay much attention to reads was that I knew I was too inexperienced to process all the basic info, let alone get into the ephemera.

Now, however, I come to realise that once you and your opponents reach a certain level then the relative importance of live reads grows considerably. I am a long way from being able to do this competently, but it's important to practice.

My plan was to explicitly look for and make reads and then compare my reads with the reality. I resolved to try to make reads in hands that I was not involved with as well, to gain extra practice "for free".

Naturally, Reads combined with information on the Opponents and the power of Position can put us in a good Situation

T for Timing. The "Timing" here refers to a number of tournament concepts - thinking about the stage of the event, deciding when to change gears, evaluating good opportunities to make a squeeze or a steal etc. It's also a reference to taking my time in making important decisions.

Well-judged Timing, strong Reads on the Opponent and good Position can make for a great Situation.


Just after the break, I thought I found a good Situation: I had Position on my my Opponent, Robin Dhinsa. I felt I had a good Read that his raise was weak (he himself was in hijack seat where he would be raising a lot) and that he could fold a lot of hands to a shove.

Timing looked good - I had 20 Big blinds and for Robin to call would be over 1/3 of his stack.

I re-raised all-in with 7h4h.

Robin dwelled. It seemed I had made the right move.

However, Robin obviously believes fishing is a sport as well and made the call with KhQh (only kidding Robin).

Unbelievably, I missed. Next time, I am playing "WHOOPS".