Pokerwiner.com → Lessons of poker
“MISTAKES” ACCORDING TO THE FNUDAMENTAL THEOREM OF POKER
It is very important to understand that when we talk about making a mistake according to
the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, we’re not necessarily talking about playing badly.
We’re talking about a very strange kind of mistake playing differently from the way you would if you would if you could see all your opponents’ cards.
If I have a royal flush and someone has a king-high straight surely cannot be accused of playing badly by calling or, as is much more likely, raising with a king-high straight flush.
Since he doesn’t know what I have, he is making a mistake in a different sense of the word.
In advanced poker you are constantly trying to make your opponent or opponents play in a way that would be incorrect if they knew what you had.
Anytime they play in the right way on the basis of what you have, you have not gained a thing.
According to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, you play winning poker by playing as closely as possible to the way you would play if you could see all your opponents’ cards; and you try to make your opponents play as far away from this Utopian level as possible.
The first goal is accomplished mainly by reading hand and players accurately, because the closer you can come to figuring out someone else’s hand, the fewer Fundamental Theorem mistakes you will make.
The second goal is accomplished by playing deceptively.
MULTI-WAY POTS
We stated at the start of the chapter that the Fundamental poker Theorem of Poker applies to all two-way pots and to nearly all multi-way pots.
The reason we qualify multi-way pots is that there are certain situations with two or more opponent when you actually want one or more of them to play as they would if they knew what you had.
Let’s say that with cards still to come, you have a 30 percent chance of winning a pot odds.
Opponent A has a 50 percent chance, and Opponent B has a 20 percent chance. If you bet, you might not mind Opponent A’ raising with the best hand to force Opponent B out.
A’s chances of winning may now increase to 60 percent, but yours increase to 40 percent.
You have both profited at the expense of C. You might, for example, bet a pair of aces. Opponent A has two pair, and Opponent B has a straight draw.
You’d like Opponent A to knew you have only aces, not aces up, so that he will raise and drive the straight draw out.
You would be getting good enough odds to call the raise and at the same time wouldn’t have to worry about Opponent B’s drawing a straight.
Summary
The Fundamental Theorem of Poker states that the best way for players to play is the way they would play if they knew their opponent’s cards. poker logic.
Anytime a player sees an opponent’s cards when the hand is over and says, “Oh, if I’d known that’s what he had, I would have played differently,” that player has cost himself money and made (or saved) money for his opponents.