The Wild Image Paradox
Poker is a game of misdirection and deception.
You want their image of you to be the opposite of how you actually play.
Or do you?
Today, I want to talk about the #1 exception to this rule: The Wild Image Paradox.
Common Sense
Common sense would dictate that you want your opponents to misunderstand your playstyle. And in almost all cases, that’s true:
You want them to think you’re underbluffing if you intend to bluff them
You want them to think you 3-bet a wild range if you actually intend to have the goods
You want them to think you’re easy to bluff if you plan to call them down
But in some formats, against some opponents, there’s a unique type of (mostly) true image that you actually want to have.
Leveraging Variance
In tournaments, there are a lot of chips out there to pick up.
They tend to attract relatively weak competition on average, and these weaker players tend to play on the overly nitty side, especially as blinds get big and relative stack sizes decrease.
For this reason, a loose-aggressive style of play works excellently in large-field tournaments.
By playing a loose-aggressive style, you can pick up a lot of small-medium pots and chip up. Plus, you can sometimes get paid off when you finally do make a big hand, thanks to your image.
Ideally, you’d like to pick up most of these chips up without much variance.
Variance is problematic in tournaments, especially once ICM becomes a big factor, and taking a near-coinflip for your tournament life is very costly. You want to avoid big confrontations.
So, while you’re out there fighting for pots, you generally want your opponents to fold, and you very much want them not to play back at you.
Now, you might think that if you want to enter a lot of pots and bluff people, a tight image would be valuable. You’d want them to think you’re raising with good hands.
But in tournament poker, especially given the average softness of the fields, fear routinely overpowers logic.
A Game of Chicken
Many tournament poker situations are, in a sense, a game of chicken:
Neither player wants to get all-in on a coin flip, and the first one to commit themselves often forces the other to make the wise decision to back down.
But in poker or chicken, what if you can’t trust the other person to make a wise decision?
What if they’re an unpredictable maniac?
I’ll tell you what: They’re usually going to win.
The Ideal Tournament Image
The optimal image to have in a poker tournament is:
Fearless
Capable of anything
Can see into their opponents’ souls
With an image like this, your opponents aren’t going to want to play a big pot with a decent hand where you’re going to threaten their stack.
When you check-raise the flop, they don’t think, “This is probably a bluff. I’m going to call down.”
They’re thinking, “Oh man, I’m probably going to see a big turn bet and a river jam. I’ll wait til I have a hand I can happily call down with.”
And they fold.
When you bet flop and check turn OOP, they aren’t thinking “weak preflop and flop range, now weaker because of the turn check… I should protect my hand (or bluff).”
They’re thinking, “If I bet, I might get raised! If I bluff, I might get called down by Ace High!”
And they check.
They stay out of your way, even if they know you’re starting with a weak range.
This is the paradox of a maniacal image.
They think you’re going to play a lot of hands, and you do.
They think you’re going to bet or raise a lot of flops, and you do.
They think you’re going to play big pots on turns and rivers, and you do.
Yet, it works for you.
It works because each of these aggressive actions carries with it an implied future threat.
They don’t want to play chicken against the maniac.
