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Not Too Tight
Getting general about stud strategy.
I get a lot of emails and instant messages from holdem and stud poker players from all over the world asking me my opinion about various and sundry poker strategy questions. I don’t think it’s that I am known to be the clearest or cleverest poker thinker in the world, but rather that among those of us who write a lot about poker, I happen to have the most accessible email -- using it everywhere I write online. For whatever reason, a simple instant message came across my screen one weekend that prompted me to review my thoughts on something I have often written and spoken about. They asked me the simple question, "How tight is too tight?" At first I laughed at the question. "How can I answer a poker question like that?" I thought. And, indeed, it seems a bit ridiculous -- general as it is. But the more I pondered it the more I realized that the answer is at the heart of many poker questions. There are rarely simple, clear, definitive answers to most poker strategy questions. So why should questions be definite? Here’s the answer I emailed to the questioner. I hope it satisfies him and you. A while back I remember reading how to install the handle of a door. The instructions read, "Tighten the handle, but not too tight." Instead of giving me exact and definitive instructions about something delicate like this, instead of trying to tell me precisely how much pressure to use, the author of the manual went in another direction entirely. He used a fuzzy concept: "not too tight." And yet it proved to be the perfect way of instructing me on how tightly to turn that handle: Tight enough to make it hold firmly but not so tightly that I risked breaking it off or ripping the threads. Curious, I thought. And as I explain concepts in poker I sometimes find that this same kind of inexact language is often the best way of communicating. There are so many variables at the stud table that, from time to time, the best explanation is sometimes the most general. You can't always specify exactly how to play certain cards in certain situations that arise in Stud. So we're better off with just some deliberately vague, general concepts -- with maybe some examples thrown in. Take the example of how to play your starting three cards in Stud. Rather than focusing only on what cards to play and not play, it's sometimes more useful, I've found, to concentrate on the general concept. Typically, the instruction to lower limit players is to play tight and aggressive. But for me, "tight" is not quite right for anyone but the rank beginner. Players shouldn't just play tight. They should play tight but not too tight. What I mean by "tight but not too tight" is that we play carefully, but not rigidly. We adjust generally tight play to suit the game conditions. So if everyone is very, very loose, then our tight but not too tight play will be looser than it would be if our opponents were rocks. If the bet is small on Third Street relative to the size of the pot we can also play more hands. "Tight, but not too tight" invokes that flexibility in a way that "tight" does not. Say, for example, when we’re playing with people who tend just to call the bring-in and not raise on Third Street (as is often the case in no-ante spread limit Stud), tight play might mean folding everything but a high pair, a 3-Flush headed by an Ace or a King, or maybe a high 3-Straight like 10-J-Q. But when we add "not too tight" we open up a number of other possibilities -- without becoming too loose. We allow for players who are just calling the bring-in on Third Street to play a low pocket pair or even a low or medium split pair with a high kicker. We allow people to play low 3-Straights and low 3-Flushes and even, if they're nearly last or last to act 3-straights with a gap in them like 4-5-7 or 8-10-J. We might even allow our player to call along in last position, with no chance of being raised, with a suited A-K. How tight is too tight? If you’re a novice,
you’re probably best to just play tight for a while until you get the
hang of things at a casino poker table. But for the rest of you looking
for general guidance on how to play Third Street, I think tight but not
too tight is the right approach.~~ |
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