Taking a Shot

I've just submitted a column to Card Player about what happens to you when you are running bad in a game. Specifically, suppose you have been losing and several people in the game decide that because of your poor results they will take a shot at you. The question I ask is this to your benefit or detriment?

First of all, for people to decide to take a shot at you, they must first and foremost have seen and have come to the conclusion that the fact that you're running bad has made you generate the kind of negative emotions within yourself (frustration, confusion, feeling intimidated, desperate, discouraged) that result in you playing weak tight. Remaining and looking poised and confident will, in my experience, act as a detterent to being the target of "taking a shot" attacks from your observant and opportunistic adversaries.


My point, essentially, is that people generally don't take shots at you because you are running bad. People take shots at you BECAUSE you are responding negatively (as seen thru your body language, verbal language, and shift to tight passive gear) to the fact that you're running bad, not directly to the fact that you're running bad itself.


Since the fact that you are feeling/playing bad is the reason that people are ultimately taking shots at you, this can be nothing but detriMENTAL to you.

What if despite running bad, I project confidence and solid play instead, yet they take a shot at me anyway. Well, this may be a sign that these players are poor readers of emotions. And I can benefit from this by simply continuing to play solid and in an Aikido like fashion, use their own momentum to beat them.

First off, I am real excited about this new forum.


To answer the question:

I agree with Jedi that your opponents will take shots at you if they believe that your bad run is putting you on tilt. I also believe that it is to your benefit to have opponents take shots at you, as long as you are still playing solid.

When playing with people that you have played with fairly regular, I'm not sure it makes a difference. These players, in my own experience, will know what you can do once you start running good again, so they will tend to stay away from you.

Players that don't know you will take shots. I've been fairly succesful in waiting out these cold streaks until I get a strong board for my cards, and enticing these players to give me much more action than I would have normally gotten.

Just don't bluff in these situations!

It's almost the reverse of running well, when your raises get too much respect.

like jedi said, it depends on how you react. if you can take bad beats and still play your usual solid game, i think you put your opponent at a big disadvantage. if he is changing his style of play to take shots at you, that's good for you. anything that causes him to stray from correct play should definitely help you. just weather the storm and when you hit, make him pay...

No matter what it is or why, knowing what somebody is up to is always a benefit.


So it's a benefit if you understand what they're thinking.


eLROY

I like what the Jedi K. said.I believe alot of my profit comes froms well timed Bluffs.Bluffs are hard to pull off because you may have the image of betting with nothing.Lets put it this way supose you have a hand like AQ and chaser has QK and the flop is 24Q he bets you raise 9 comes on the turn you bet,K comes on the river[UGH]he bets you call he shows, you muck,and this type of thing has been happening all evening the less astuit player thinks you have been betting with nothing,IF I have to play in a game and am not able to bluff I have only 5 bullets in my 6gun when everyone else has six.

There's no question that players who virtually never bluff play poorly. But if you knew you were always going to be called, you should never bluff.


MM

There are two situations. The first is when other players decide to play more hands against you because everyone seems to beat you. The second is when they decide to bluff or raise in spots that they would normally not.


Since my upcoming column is about these two possibilities I won't comment on them now. But some of you may wish to do so.

I'm not sure how realistic your first situation really is. These people are just looking to play more hands, if your simply losing hands is taken as an excuse. Are you raising stupid second-best hands? Or are you getting drawn out on? It seems that if people are simple enough to play more hands just because you got drawn out on, that they have probably found enough excuses to play every hand prior to this event.


Now, if someone sees you getting beat over, and over and you know it without having to pay off and show down - meaning you lay down - they may not know how good a reader you are, or exactly how unlucky you have been, and they may just think you're a nervous quitter. I wouldn't analyze this in the context of the narrow situation of you losing, and so other people try to knock you out. I would put it in the broader category of "When the cards create impressions."


There may be many times when how the cards fall is more a source of your image than your own style of play throughout those card falls. And there are other times when the game just gets juiced up, and the cookie crumbles in such a flurry of bluffs and raises and surprising turns and losses, that everybody overreacts, and loses trac of one anothers' play. So that would be "When you wrongly put your opponent on putting you on a specific type of play, because he does too."


eLROY

the key is your being able to recognize what they are doing

It should help your end result, but increase your variance substantially. This assumes that you have the ability to adapt to the changing circumstances and value bet and value call more correctly.

"These people are just looking to play more hands,"


That's probably the case, but very often these people are aware that tight play gets the money. So they need an excuse to get in there, and your poor results just might be it.


MM

No question that that's the case. It should be fairly easy to recognize when someone starts to play more hands against you. But it can be very tough to recognize when they start to bluff you more.

"The second is when they decide to bluff or raise in spots they would normally not."


BINGO!! This is precisely why it is important to leave a game where everyone can see you are losing heavily and are not a threat. What happens is that weak/timid players start to become tough/adventurous players when they are in a hand against you. Furthermore, semibluffing which is an important tool in the arsenal of a good player, because useless for you since your opponent(s) will not be folding because of you betting or raising.