Is it a Soft Play When It's Subconscious?
Wednesday, 30 August 2006 13:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipitfishLast night, I got all my chips in out-of-position in a multiway pot at
a NYC club;
Dawn
was in the pot. I held the 5
It came out as I expected, the tight player folded, and Dawn thought for a while. Now, I am totally against soft-playing, so I wouldn't have told Dawn to fold or otherwise given her any direct information. However, I really wanted Dawn to fold because I knew what she probably had and knew she'd have trouble folding QQ.
I should interrupt my story to note that I'm typically the type to give off false tells. I've noticed a few tells common with players who have big hands — there's the classic hand-shaking, but also they tend to breathe heavier when they've made a big bet with a strong holding than they do with a bluff.
I try to use a reverse tell in these instances. When I don't want a call, I get myself all excited and breathing heavier, and if I can get it going (usually I can't), I get my hands shaking a bit. I do the reverse when I have a hand.
However, in this situation, I suddenly found myself shaking a bit and breathing heavy. I am usually in total control of this tell and frequently reverse it or otherwise mix it up. And here I am, up against Dawn, knowing that I don't want to see her lose, and I'm inadvertently giving off the correct signals of a big hand.
Dawn folded after much deliberation, and I haven't yet had a chance to ask her if the tell was a factor. I sure hope it wasn't, because I feel somewhat that effectively I made a subconscious soft-play. I agree that a soft-play of any kind is 100% cheating. I think two articles recently on the subject get that point across well.
So, did I subconsciously soft-play? Should I feel bad about it? I know that I am consciously in control of that tell because I used it three other times that night to give the wrong signal to other opponents. But, heads-up with Dawn with a player all-in and one folded, I let it come out as a straight-up signal. By the time I was breathing heavy and shaking a bit and realized it, I couldn't get control of it to stop it, so I let it go. Did I cheat? Should I try to avoid playing at the table with Dawn in the future anywhere but home games?
I think I'm helped by the fact that Dawn likely didn't pick up on the tell one way or the other, but she'll probably comment here to say. Still, that doesn't excuse it if I was, even subconsciously, trying to give her a signal to fold.
Oh, finally, for those who want to know how it turned out, Dawn folded,
I claimed the side pot, and had to show my hand to show it down with
the all-in player who had committed his chips preflop with Q
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 19:11 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 19:39 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 20:53 (UTC)BTW - when I play on Full-Tilt, I use the 4-color deck, so I like your use of that here.
Another thought. If you consistently try to play those false tells, then they actually become real tells to anyone who is familiar with your play. Or do you mix them up?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 23:43 (UTC)Oh, I definitely mix them up! My default is to do the regular reverse against players that I don't know and that has worked well. I am not sure if they actually work, because I'm the type to pick my spots extremely carefully when bluffing, and people play so donktastically these days that it's not like you have to work that hard to induce a call.
Against players I know are strong, I try to learn something about what they look for by listening them talk to others and that sort of thing. If I don't think they know what I know about what they are looking for, I do the reverse tell thing. One of my favorite things to do, though, is to be completely game theoretical about a tell (based on the color of the first card on the board or something) when I know it's something I've discussed with someone.
Generally, there are classic things that are simply true about how people process non-verbal communication. It has to be a really strong player to actually be seeing pass that, so if I just give the wrong signs most of the time, most of the competition will fall for it, or, they just weren't sophisticated enough to look for anything and therefore it doesn't matter.
That said, I think people give a bit too much weight to tells in general. I watch people closely at the table, but I'm not looking for tells, I'm looking for moods. I see people shift their play when their feelings and moods shift, and I look to anticipate their shifts and be one step ahead. That's reading people and keeping the human factor, but it's not the “he scratches his nose when he has a monster” kind of stuff.
On my side of it, I'm focused on making sure people don't realize what kind of mood I'm actually in or try to get across something different. I want them to think I'm tight and ABC-poker when I'm gambling it up and gambling it up when I'm playing tight. Those kind of reverse meta-tells are much more important than the stuff I'm talking about above. The stuff above is just icing on the cake; the mood stuff is the cake itself.
Oh, and, I didn't mean to be whining over on the other journal. I actually know from my logs I got plenty of lurkers. I like lurkers, because it means I don't burn up too much time at work answering comments and then feel guilty that I'm a bad employee.
I'm very glad you enjoy the blog, though, and feel free to work away. Feel free to use the four-color deck graphics. I just made those last weekend from the Wikipedia entry on the four color deck. I still have yet to go back and change all my old posts to use them.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 00:07 (UTC)I agree that some people empasize tells too much (especially since they're not (for the most part) available online.
I try to stay attentive to tells, but I mostly react to a gestalt perception of strength or weakness (*real* strength or weakness, given the obvious weak==strong). It works pretty well for me, but that may just be because I'm not yet playing against the caliber of players good enough to fake that well.
Oh, and I was aware that you had your winky-face on when complaining over at IHOs. Meant to make sure mine was showing when calling you a whiner.
(It's interesting that it's an acceptable social interaction to make fun of somebody as a sign of affection. Kind of like the weak==strong thing.)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 02:35 (UTC):) No problem. I just want to make sure I'm not whining by accident. :)
I agree completely that the basic Caro “weak means strong” and “strong means weak” are what you need most of the time at the lower limits. I actually find myself overthinking this stuff sometimes. Recently, F-Train was trying to get a read on me and I acted disinterested in the hand, figuring that he would read disinterest as strength in most people, but might put me on a double-reverse tell. Of course, as it turned out, he read it straight up, and put me on strength and decided to fold. If I had not double-reversed it and simply sat still, he probably would have called.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 13:15 (UTC)I think this gives us the answer to
Did I cheat?
...which is "no". In my book at least. Were you giving off a tell that was detectable? Yes. DO you now have a tell that others can use? Yes. When you have a monster and Dan's in the hand you give off "monster" signals. This may have been why Very Tight Player folded. However, when Dawn's not in the hand the opposite it true.
You're gonna get pwned.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 15:38 (UTC)NYC Club
Date: 2006-09-01 14:43 (UTC)Thanks Bradly,
Laurie
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 14:45 (UTC)