How Understanding Your Player Pool Can Boost Your Winrate
The most iconic concept introduced to the poker discourse by the great Tommy Angelo, in my humble opinion, is that of Reciprocality.
The core idea is simple and inarguable: In order to have an edge, there must be a difference between your approach and that of your opponent.
Today, I’d like to take “doing something different” a step further.
I’m going to explain why you should actively seek to do something uncommon in the games you play.
Not randomly, but calculated.
And not so uncommon that you intend for it to stand out.
Simply opposite.
Player Pools and “Adaptive Equilibrium”
Ever since there have been poker players – heck, ever since there’ve been people – there have been tendencies.
We all have our tendencies as poker players – even the best of us. The not-so-best of us have even stronger ones.
As you likely know by now, exploiting those strong tendencies (leaks), is how you generate a lot of value at the poker table.
Oftentimes, a leak in a player pool will lead to another one.
Let’s look at an example:
You play in a local $2/$5 game with a lot of regulars.
On the whole, this player pool tends to way underbluff the river.
Through conditioning, regulars start calling river bets as often as they used to.
This is further amplified through natural selection.
The winners, who survive and continue to play this game, are the ones who correctly over-fold to river bets.
Perhaps some of the most successful players teach their friends, or even create free or paid training content sharing their strategies. And now more and more people learn to fold the river.
The players – teachers and students – don’t need to realize they’re over-folding the river. The teacher can show others how they play, and the students or peers can emulate it without understanding why it works.
What started as a general tendency to underbluff has created a new (and strong) population tendency to over-fold, and many of the players making that good adjustment may not even know they’re making it.
This is what I’m calling an “Adaptive Equilibrium” in poker (a term that is used outside game theory, as I understand it) – a player pool is, consciously and/or unconsciously, making a good adjustment to a bad tendency, and has settled into now having these two tendencies.
Opportunity
Any player pool tendency that is not GTO provides an opportunity for an edge.
In this case, players are not “wrong” to generally over-fold the river, but you can take advantage of it!
This is a player pool that you should be bluffing rivers against as much as possible!
And, funnily enough, you should also employ the exact same strategy that you’re exploiting – folding rivers – because the rest of the player pool won’t have made the adjustment you have.
A Closing Window?
You might be thinking, “How long will I really be able to overbluff them?”
Nothing is guaranteed to last forever.
For the same reason that underbluffing led to overfolding, that overfolding could lead to overbluffing.
The same process of players becoming aware and natural selection can take place in the other direction.
It happens slowly, which is good for you, the astute player. You’ll see it happening over time, and you can react and flip your strategy.
For some leaks, though, things may not flip.
Underbluffing tends to come from a psychological place. Humans are usually more loss-averse than they are win-driven.
If you’re playing at low enough stakes, many players won’t be putting in the work to flip this tendency of theirs, so the player pool might continue to respond the same way indefinitely.
Math Is On Your Side
“But,” you may ask, “Even if the player pool doesn’t entirely change their tendency, won’t they adjust to me specifically?”
My answer: Maybe!
I want you to keep in mind a few things:
1) First, players need to notice.
Nobody at the table is going to be nearly as aware of your adjustments as you are.
You might feel like you’re going crazy, but that’s because you see your cards every hand you play, you are always paying attention to yourself, and you know exactly what you’re doing.
Nobody else at a 6 or 9-handed table
is thinking about you much at all.
They also don’t get to see many showdowns. Online, showdowns and stats will add up faster, and players tend to be more attuned to these things. However, player pools tend to be much bigger online as well.
At the live poker table, even in a small player pool, and even if your opponents are astute, they can’t see your stats, and they don’t get to see many showdowns.
It’s harder for them to notice than you think.
2) Next, they need to know how to adjust.
Many players over-folding rivers don’t even know they’re overfolding.
They’re using heuristics that tell them what a good calling hand, or spot, is.
Many of them aren’t strategically-enlightened players. Even if they’re winning, they might not understand how to adjust correctly.
3) Even if they notice and decide to adjust, they often won’t adjust far enough.
If someone is folding 70% of the time to half-pot river bets, and they decide they want to call you more because “you’re a bluffer,” they might make some calls that feel looser but only get their fold frequency down to 50%.
You’re still risking 0.5 to win 1, meaning they need to adjust ALL the way down to folding 33% for you to break even on a bluff.
So often, when people are worried about others adjusting to their counterstrategy, they don’t realize how far their opponent would truly have to shift strategies in order to make the counter clearly bad.
Even if Bob in seat 6 is astute enough to get his fold frequency down from 70% against everyone else to 28% against you, you’re still barely losing money by bluffing him, and you’re crushing by bluffing everyone else.
The bottom line: Don’t let unfounded fear and anxiety lead you to shy away from a powerful exploit.
Cause or Effect?
Why does it matter if two tendencies are linked like this in many player pools?
Because this concept shows you where to hunt for more edge.
It can be hard to notice if people are over-folding the river if you’re not tracking stats.
So perhaps the first thing you notice is that players are underbluffing. You get to see the showdowns, and you start to notice that not many bluffs are being shown.
You should first make the obvious adjustment - fold rivers.
But then you should ask yourself… “If players clearly aren’t bluffing enough, is that the cause of another tendency, or is it the effect?”
Cause: Their underbluffing (origin) causes people to over-fold
You’ve now sought and uncovered the player-pool response.
Effect: Their underbluffing (response) is a result of people over-calling
You’ve now sought and uncovered the leak origin.
When you notice a strong tendency, it should alert you to search for the complimentary leak.
Then, you go against the grain.
Be the only player bluffing in a pool that doesn’t bluff. Or be the only player folding in a pool that under-folds.
And then join the player pool by employing the exact tendency you’re exploiting.
Takeaways
Be different, but not for the sake of being different.
Be astute, be vigilant, and let each uncovered clue lead you to the next!
I hope you’ve found this helpful, and that you’re enjoying these weekly insights. It’s more time-consuming than I’d like, but I’m having fun writing them.
Until next week!
